Mediating Effect of Perceived Organizational Support on the Relationship between Leader-Member Exchange and the Innovation Work Behavior of Nursing Employees: A Social Exchange Perspective

The present study aimed at investigating the relationship between Leader-Member Exchange and Innovative Work Behavior in Pakistani nursing sector. Additionally, the study examined the relationship between Leader-Member Exchange as an independent variable and dependent variable Innovative Work Behavior moreover it has examined the impact of Leader-Member Exchange and Innovative Work Behavior further this explored mediating role of Perceived Organization Support between Leader-Member Exchange and Innovative Work Behavior. The main study was conducted through systematic randomly selected sample of 400 nurses of ages between 24 and 60 belonging to public and private sector hospitals at Lahore. Survey method was used to collect data. Correlation analysis exposed the significance and strength of relationships between variables i.e. Innovative Behaviour, Perceived Organizational Support (POS) and Leader-Member Exchange (LMX). Moreover, regression analysis was performed for direct relationships. Baron and Kenny (1986) method are used for mediation analysis. The results showed that Perceived Organizational Support (POS) partially mediate between Leader-Member Exchange (LMX) and Innovative Behaviour. The LMX and POS, POS and IWB and LMX and IWB have significant relation which are 0.569(0.000),0.232(0.000) and 0.521(0.000). Key WordPerceived Organizational Support, Innovation Work Behavior, Leader-Member Exchange


I. INTRODUCTION
A worldwide marvel in today's human resource assumes a key part in accomplishing organizational results. Each worker undertakings to turn out to be an earth-shattering part of the competitive change and hierarchical achievement. Subsequently desired to change needs of the workplace, clients need through everyday communication, organizations need to give independence, freedom of work, supervisor coordination and organizational support building a trust-based relationship, access data and include in decision making process.
Research on perceived organizational support shows that as the organization stresses over the devotion of employees to them, same way employees are in like manner stressed with the commitment of organization to them. Employees ought to be quite regarded, as organization is the essential wellspring of their unmistakable advantages, for instance, health advantages and pay, and social advantages, for instance, profound respect and mind. A sign by the organization to be compensating for extending effort gives substance of obligation which adheres the workers to the organization. Higher perceived organizational support always develop more responsibility for any employees towards their organization (Hussain & Asif, 2012).Leadership behaviour has straight and inimitable effect on the workplace, work results and the achievement of organizations (Ahmad & Yekta, 2010). Past studies highlighted that workers' reaction to supervisor behaviour and organization's values shows a very strong impact on their enactment (Fu et al., 2006). Moreover, while Innovation Work Behavior is considered to incorporate a few measurements (problem identification, solution development, and solution support); (Stashevsky, Burke, Carmeli, Meitar, & Weisberg, 2006). There is a developing group of writing about Innovation Work Behavior and its significance in the work environment. Nonetheless, there have been not very many studies that have satisfactorily analyzed the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees. To further extend very few studies have been conducted to analyze the organizational factors that are required to build up a situation that encourages the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees (Knol & Van Linge, 2009). Accordingly, this examination will layout suggestions for hospital's administration and human resource managers trying to enhance organizational viability, efficiency, and patient results by building up the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees.  (Eisenberger, Huntington, Hutchison, & Sowa, 1986). These perceptions help employees determine whether their organizations recognize increased work effort, reward improved performance and enhance innovative behaviour (Lam, Liu, & Loi, 2016). Nurses play a critical role in delivering exemplary health care. For nurses to perform at their best, they need to experience high engagement, which can be achieved by providing the necessary organizational support and proper working environment (Gupta, Agarwal, & Khatri, 2016). According to (Jaiswal & Dhar, 2016) the importance of good relations between superiors and subordinates, autonomy and freedom to employees in performing their jobs and support and guidance from superiors increasing commitment levels of employees which results in employees delivering high-quality service. Nurses' retention and motivation have become a major concern for hospitals and policymakers (Munir, Ghafoor, & Rasli, 2016). A perceived organizational support system plays a significant role in generating a mutually comprehensive and healthy working environment, which ultimately plays a significant role in leading nursing sector. The supportive work environment which includes human resource practices also provides opportunities for participation and skills development which further enhance the motivation level of nursing staff. To enhance the affective commitment level among nursing staff, management and supervisors can implement various HRM practices related to Perceived organizational support (POS). In addition, countries with a collectivist culture such as Pakistan, employees anticipate support and care from their organization. In such a culture, supervisors can play a crucial role in strengthening the employeeorganization relationship. In public sector, if nurses involve in the policy-making decision-making process the ultimate enhancing the performance (Sharma & Dhar, 2016 Nurses having a good relationship with their supervisors are seen as important, yet the mechanisms of how such relationships are beneficial, or which aspects of the relationship are important, is less clear (Rodwell, McWilliams, & Gulyas, 2017). LMX is based on the theoretical concepts and findings of role theory propounded by (Liden & Maslyn, 1998) and focuses on the unique connection between leaders and their followers; a leader-member relationship is based on employment contract, interpersonal belief, esteem, dedication and communal responsibility (Srivastava & Dhar, 2016). LMX explains the two-way relationship between a leader and followers, and has the following dimensions: contribution, affect, loyalty and selfdetermination (Liden & Maslyn, 1998) (Graen & Uhl-Bien, 1995). Supervisors show more kindness and give positive evaluations of subordinate behaviour when both supervisors and subordinates share a high-quality working relationship. Therefore, employees who enjoy high-quality relationships with their leaders become obliged to reciprocate favourable treatment by showing their efforts on behalf of their supervisor or their organization (Garg & Dhar, 2016). In an era of intense competition, organizations must understand and manage the intricacies of how leadership behaviour enhances or compromises the creation of a positive service climate ( sector and business life, the majority of health care sector research appears to be based on the HRM (for human resources management) blueprint for business life staff policy and practice for nurses. As nurses' dominant work orientation is based upon the fundamental concern for patients' welfare, it is important to carefully monitor the character of their job in order to guide the degree of organizational and professional support (Ruiller & Van Der Heijden, 2016). Supportive leader behaviours such as in highquality LMX are most effective when they take place in the context of HRM systems that also signal social exchange (Audenaert, Vanderstraeten, & Buyens, 2017). LMX considers advancement in the working interactions between leaders and direct subordinates. It comprises attributes of two-way respect, support and trust, which seek to promote access to information and contribution to decision making, the construct POS has a marginally stronger relationship with affective commitment compared with LMX (Robson & Robson, 2016). The Social Exchange Theory (Blau, 1964) suggests that the actions of individuals depend on 'rewarding reactions' from others (Penger & Černe, 2014). The focus is thus on reciprocity. Leadership can therefore be perceived as a social exchange between leaders and subordinates (Hsieh & Wang, 2015);(Coxen, van der Vaart, & Stander, 2016).

Innovative Work Behavior (IWB)
Despite a plethora of literature on organizational climate for innovation and the persuasive arguments establishing its link to perceived organizational support, few studies hitherto have explored innovative work behaviour of managers (Shanker, Bhanugopan, Van der Heijden, & Farrell, 2017). Specifically, limited attention has been paid to explaining how organizations perceive the importance of stimulating innovative work environments. (Gupta et al., 2016) Nurses play a critical role in delivering exemplary health care. For nurses to perform at their best, they need to experience high engagement, which can be achieved by providing the necessary organizational support, innovative work behaviour and proper working environment. Employees' innovative work behaviour (IWB), defined as the development, adoption and implementation of new ideas for products, technologies and work methods by employees (Yuan & Woodman, 2010), is often claimed to be an important determinant of organizational success. In the public sector, innovation is viewed as the factor that contributes to the quality of public services and the problem-solving capacity (De Vries, Bekkers, & Tummers, 2016). The challenge to deliver ever more customized, reliable and technologically advanced patient care, quicker treatment response, efficient communication and coordination to increase patient retention and patient referral and increased quality of medical care has instigated hospital management to engender innovative work behaviours among their nursing staff. Self-evidently, the necessity for continuous innovation in hospitals is a crucial driving force for the greater benefit of the patients and the nursing community (Duarte, Goodson, & Dougherty, 2014); (Piening, 2011).
Studying innovative employee behaviours within public sector organizations might seem an odd thing to do given the lack of competitive pressures, the limited identification of the costs and benefits of innovative ideas and the lack of opportunities to incentivize employees financially. In recent study (Bos-Nehles, Bondarouk, & Nijenhuis, 2017), role of supervisors in supporting innovative work behavior (IWB) by considering the unique challenges, the conditions and characteristics of IWB in this context of nursing sector After collection of the data, Statistical Program SPSS 17 will be used for inference and analysis. The reliability will be operationalized through Cronbach Alpha analysis.
The procedures recommended by Baron and Kenny (1986) will be used to investigate the mediating effects of POS on LMX and Innovative Behavior. Factor analysis will be carried out to check the dimensions of all operationally defined constructs and reliability and validity (convergent and discriminant) of the scales will be checked. All identified four steps will be conducted by running multiple regression analysis. Sobel test will be applied for the validation.

III. METHODOLOGY
The population of this research consists of chronicled nurses employing in the city Lahore. stratified random sampling technique was employed for data collection. Data was collected through questionnaires. A questionnaire is an effortless method of collecting data. They diminish deformation in data appropriate to 'interviewer biases' through the procedure of interview (Zikmund, 2003 The purpose of Cronbach's alpha is to check the reliability of the variables in accordance with the related items included in the questionnaire, Cronbach's alpha utilized for the estimation of inner uniformity of the variables built from survey questions which discovers that how close these related survey questions are as a set to construct a variable.

Convergent Validty
It tends to examine that the constructs of the study that should be related are actually related or not. Of all the three dimensions of validity, the most widely used is Convergent validity; which is examined through Principal component analysis also known as Factor analysis with varix rotation method. All the 21 items of the instrument were loaded into the factor analysis, and after the analysis no item was dropped as all the items were above the cut-off value of 0.50 for the factor loading used. Further we applied these KMO and Bartlett's test which also signifies the results and assumptions. Although recent research from Scandinavia shows that public employees are not necessarily less innovative than employees in private organizations (Bysted & Jespersen, 2014), in general we know little about the innovative behavior of employees in the public sector and even less how innovative behavior can be initiated, and supported (Bos-Nehles et al.,

2017)
The results in Table ( Table: 08 Mediation results The results presented above in the Table-15, show that all paths were fully significant with p-value <0.05. This showed that Perceived Organizational Support (POS) partially mediated the relationship between Leader Member Exchange (LMX) and Innovative Behavior. These above results showed that in Public Sector hospitals POS has stronger partially mediating effect (on the basis of their coefficient values) between the relationship LMX and Innovative work behavior with compare to Private Sector hospitals. In order to further validate the findings of mediation test, Sobel's test (Sobel, Schmitt, & Meriwether, 1990) has been utilized. The Table-16 shown below, presents the test statistic (Z) which is well over 1.96 and p-value is also significant, which means that the results presented above were significant and Perceived Organizational Support (POS) mediated the relationship between Leader-Member exchange and Innovative Work Behavior.  Table: 10 Results of Hypotheses Tested

Sr. No
Hypothesis Results H1 LMX will be positively related to nursing employees' Innovative Behavior.

Accepted
H1a LMX will be positively related to nursing employees' Innovative Behavior in Public Sector.

Accepted
H1b LMX will be positively related to nursing employees' Innovative Behavior in Private Sector.
Accepted H2 POS will be positively related to the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees.

Accepted
H2a POS will be positively related to the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees in Public Sector.

Accepted
H2b POS will be positively related to the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees in Private sector.
Accepted H3 LMX will be positively related to nursing employees' perceptions of organizational support.

Accepted
H3a LMX will be positively related to nursing employees' perceptions of organizational support in Public sector.

Partially Mediated
H4a POS mediates the relationship between LMX and the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees.

Partially Mediated
H4b POS mediates the relationship between LMX and the Innovation Work Behavior of nursing employees.

Partially Mediated
V. CONCLUSION This research has added a valuable contributed towards the literature of Social Exchange Theory. Moreover, nursing worker's effectiveness and capability are two modules are created for learning and convincing the better environment which can be created through Social Exchange Theory. In case that human resource managers and hospital supervisors can enhance nursing employees' behavior, competence, and effectiveness the comprehensive framework is made adding to the change of patient results and safety. Also, the study contributes knowledge to current writing giving confirmation that Innovative Work Behavior and current practices has reassure the perfect levels of support required by a relationship and also fill the gap between other supportive elements of IWB, POS and LMX.
Through this study, it has suggestions for medical organizations and heads, giving an understanding for the administration and it has to develop a strong relation and support Innovative Work Behavior in hospitals. The encroachment of Innovative Work Behavior is especially perilous for hospital management administration and managers, since it adds to enhancing worker conduct to expand hierarchical productivity and sustainability. Further supervisors and head nurses that effectively adjust worker behavior to organizational goal make a vigorous human resource function, that is, HR that precisely add to the fulfillment of organizational goal. Specifically, this study gives understanding into the significance of worker view of organizational backing and the employee-employer relationship. Besides, our outcomes suggested that workers see organizational support to be low; the suggestion for administration is to build up a strong methodology to enhance this observation in real scenario. Such a system ought to include, amongst different things, proper compensates which leads in a positive way and support for workers when they show Innovative Work Behavior.
With the support of significant literature and research work for future areas has highlighted for further exploration. Further instance that study has acknowledged to inside writing that work environment connections and the sharing of learning are variables that support and cultivate Innovative Work Behavior. In any case, there is an absence of empirical study looking at the effect of work environment connections which directly showed the Innovative Work Behavior of nurtures, in given paradigm further study has highlights the necessity under the banner of social exchange theory. This study showed a few glimpse of nurses and their supervisors relationship; thusly, more data is required from different departments of nurses, supervisors and head of nurses from all categories of hospitals either they are from public sector or from private sector to have the capacity to sum up and generalize from such discoveries in bigger scale. Therefore, this ought to provide more information regarding the relationship of nurses and the organizations.
As we earlier mentioned, this study has a cross-section of the relationship between innovative work behavior, leader member exchange and perceived organizational support and that cross study sectional study characterizes limitations to research. On the grounds that such information is not fitting for concluding generalizable causal implications. Thusly, advance exploration giving a longitudinal method ought to give further understanding into the Innovative Work Behavior of nursing workers. Through this study which showed that leader member exchange is positively influenced perceived organizational support, however in private sector perceived organizational support was still observed to be low. In this way, encourage research looking at different precursors of POS may give a superior general understanding of the components that straight forwardly and in an oblique way impact of Innovative Work Behavior in public and private sector. At the end, results showed that in Public Sector hospitals POS has stronger partially mediating effect (on the basis of their coefficient values) between the relationship LMX and Innovative work behavior with compare to Private Sector hospitals. Understanding employee engagement in the public sector: The role of immediate supervisor, perceived organizational support, and learning opportunities. The American Review of Public Administration, 47 (8), 881-897.