To be or not to be unionized? A question of organizational support and identification

Stinglhamber, Florence [UCL] Gillis, Céline [UCL] Pinto Teixeira, Càtia Noémia [UCL] Demoulin, Stéphanie [UCL]

This research aims at analyzing the association between two core variables of the employee-organization relationship (i.e., organizational identification and perceived organizational support) and union membership. Our study shows that perceived organizational support was negatively related to union membership but only for low identifiers. In line with prior research, highly identified employees proved less sensitive to a poor-quality exchange relationship with the organization. These findings suggest that union membership would be one possible response to a lack of support from an organization to which employees do not necessarily identify. However, future research should examine the relative weight of these variables compared to other known determinants of union membership.