Lateral Social Influences in Organizations: Coworker Support

The need for relationships is a fundamental human need that, together with the need for autonomy and competence, determines the level of efficiency and performance of the individual at work. Interpersonal relationships create the social climate at the workplace; it has a significant influence on the psychological comfort of the employees, supporting them in carrying out their tasks and protecting them from the possible harmful effects of multiple or excessive demands. The relationships with co-workers that can be classified into two large categories: coworker support and coworker antagonism. In this paper we present a set of fundamental information about coworker support which can manifest as instrumental support (informational or behavioral) or affective support. It can influence employee’s role perceptions, work attitudes and effectiveness, and organizational citizenship behaviors, but it can also induce negative phenomena such as counterproductive behaviors and certain forms of withdrawal. In modern organizations, coworker support can also manifest as a non-traditional form of mentoring based on “development networks” that are made up of sets of relationships with people who show interest and act so that an individual advance in his career, providing him with assistance in multiple and varied directions.