The relationship between researh assistants? perceived organizational support and organizational cynicism

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between researh assistants? perceived organizational support and organizational cynicism via the survey model using the data obtained from a population composed of 305 research assistants working as 50/d staff at Akdeniz University in the academic year of 2007-2008, out of whom 214 could be reached.A questionnaire, composed of three sections, was used to collect the data. In the first section, participants? personal information was given. In the second section, ?Percieved Organizational Support? instrument developed by the researcher and in the third section, ?Organizational Cynicism Scale? developed by Brandes, Dharwadkar and Dean (1999) were used. The Cronbach?s Alpha value of the ?Percieved Organizational Support? instrument was r =0,933 whereas that of ?Organizational Cynicism Scale? was r =0,931.Percentage, frequancy, mean, standard deviation, pearson correlation coefficient, multiple linear regression, structural equation model, t-test, one-way ANOVA for independent samples, and in case the assumptions of parametric tests were not satisfied, Mann Whitney U and Kruskal Wallis-H tests were used.This study reveals that the research assistants percieve organizational support at ?Academic Consultancy? dimension the most and at ?Improvement Opportunity? dimension the least. The research assistants? organizational cynicism is the highest at the ?Cognitive? and the lowest at the ?Affective? dimension. Multiple linear regression results confirm that research assistants? perceived organizational support dimensions have effects on their organizational cynicism dimensions. In the structural equation analysis, it is concluded that the relationship between perceived organizational support and organizational cynicism is strong and significant statistically while perceived organizational support is a crucial precursor of organizational cynicism.Key Words: Researh Assistant, Perceived Organizational Support, Cynicism, Organizational Cynicism, University