The authors introduce the concept of perceived organizational obstruction (POO) to fill a theoretical gap in the social exchange literature. They draw on four different samples of employees working in various organizations to: (a) generate items to measure POO, (b) assess the psychometric properties of the POO scale, (c) replicate the factor structure and other psychometric properties of the scale, (d) assess the discriminant validity with respect to existing measures of the employer-employee relationship, and (e) determine whether POO explains additional variance beyond existing constructs (perceived organizational support, psycholosgical contract breach, organizational politics, procedural justice, and organizational frustration) in the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect framework. The results of this study indicate that the POO scale is internally consistent and unidimensional, demonstrates discriminant validity with respect to existing employeremployee relationship constructs, and explains additional variance in the exit, voice, loyalty, and neglect framework.

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Social exchange, Social identity, Psychological contracts, Perceived organizational support, Organizational identification,

We argue that perceptions of organizational support and obstruction will have unique implications for employees' cognitive association and disassociation with their employers. As expected, the results of 2 studies support the hypothesis that perceived organizational support is positively related to an overlap in individual and organizational identities (i.e., organizational identification). Further, perceptions of organizational obstruction predict cognitive separation in individual and organizational identities (i.e., disidentification, ambivalent identification, and neutral identification). Implications for research and practice are discussed.j asp_748 1083..1109