Russell Cropanzano

Social Exchange Theory: An Interdisciplinary Review

Social exchange theory (SET) is one the most influential conceptual paradigms in organizational behavior. Despite its usefulness, theoretical ambiguities within SET remain. As a consequence, tests of the model, as well as its applications, tend to rely on an incompletely specified set of ideas. The authors address conceptual difficulties and highlight areas in need of additional research. In so doing, they pay special attention to four issues: (a) the roots of the conceptual ambiguities, (b) norms and rules of exchange, (c) nature of the resources being exchanged, and (d) social exchange relationships.

Emotional exhaustion as a predictor of job performance and voluntary turnover.

Recent research suggests that a better understanding of emotional exhaustion requires the development of new theoretical perspectives. To that end, with the conservation of resources model (COR) as the theoretical framework, the present 1-year longitudinal study was undertaken. Composed of 52 social welfare workers, this research examined the relationship of emotional exhaustion to job satisfaction, voluntary turnover, and job performance. Positive affectivity (PA) and negative affectivity (NA) were used as control variables. Whereas emotional exhaustion was unrelated to job satisfaction, it was associated with both performance and subsequent turnover. In addition, the relationship between emotional exhaustion and performance and also between emotional exhaustion and turnover remained significant above and beyond the effects of PA and NA. Future research directions and implications of the findings are introduced.

Perceived Fairness of Employee Drug Testing as a Predictor of Employee Attitudes and Job Performance

Although management of drug testing programs is becoming a critical organizational issue, no systematic conceptual framework has been applied to the study of employee reactions to drug testing. In this study an organizational justice framework was used to explain and predict the relationships among two types of justice (procedural justice and outcome fairness) employee attitudes (job satisfaction, commitment, and management trust), and behavior (turnover intentions and performance). Survey data from 195 employees in a pathology laboratory indicated that justice predicts employee attitudes and performance. Specifically, procedural justice, but not outcome fairness, predicted all 5 criterion variables. These results demonstrate the importance of procedural justice perceptions for predicting employee reactions to drug testing programs.

The relationship of organizational politics and support to work behaviors, attitudes, and stress

The purpose of this paper is to report two studies that investigated the consequences of organizational politics and organizational support on two separate samples of employees. Study 1 surveys 69 full-time employees, while Study 2s sample includes 185 part-time workers. Four major findings were observed. First, the present studies replicated prior findings concerning the relationships of politics and support to such variables as withdrawal behaviors, turnover intentions, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. In general, politics is related to negative work outcomes while support is related to positive ones. Consistent results were obtained within both the full- and part-time samples. Second, we elaborated upon previous work concerning the relationship of politics and support to job involvement. Third, we found in both samples that politics and support did predict above and beyond each other, suggesting that they should be viewed as separate constructs rather than opposite ends of a single continuum. Lastly, Study 2 extended the research on politics and support by analyzing their relationships to four work stress variables: job tension, somatic tension, general fatigue, and burnout. Each of these four variables was predicted by both politics and support.

Using Social Exchange Theory to Distinguish Procedural From Interactional Justice

Organizational justice researchers have long debated the distinction between procedural and interactional justice. Recently, several researchers have proposed that procedural and interactional justice can be distinguished from one another using social exchange theory. In particular, procedural justice applies more to the exchange between the individual and employing organization, whereas interactional justice generally refers to the exchange between the individual and his or her supervisor. If this theory is correct, procedural justice should be more closely associated with reactions toward upper management and organizational policies, whereas interactional justice should be more closely associated with reactions toward one’s supervisor and job performance. These predictions were tested in a field study involving approximately 107 employees and their supervisors. Predictions were generally confirmed, though there were some unexpected findings.

Effects of justice conditions on discrete emotions

Research on organizational justice typically focuses on attitudinal, cognitive, or behavioral outcomes. Emotional reactions to justice have been suggested but not studied. The emotional appraisal literature provides a framework within which to analyze emotional reactions to just and unjust events. Undergraduates (67 females and 55 males) were randomly assigned to conditions crossing either a positive or negative outcome and a procedure which was either fair, biased in the participants favor, or biased in favor of another, after which their emotional responses were assessed by self report. Results support predictions about discrete emotional reactions. As predicted by emotional-appraisal theories, reports of happiness were influenced only by outcome, whereas reports of guilt, anger, and to a lesser extent pride, were influenced by specific combinations of outcome and procedure. Results are discussed within an emotional appraisal framework.

The mediating effects of social exchange relationships in predicting workplace outcomes from multifoci organizational justice

This study tests a social exchange model of multifoci justice. We compared perceptions of justice emanating from the supervisor to those emanating from the organization as a whole. In presenting our model, we hypothesize that the link between multifoci justice and multifoci outcomes (e.g. performance and OCB) is mediated by the formation of multifoci social exchange relationships. We further expected organizationally focused justice and relationships to predict organizationally relevant outcomes and supervisory focused justice and relationships to predict both supervisory and organizationally relevant outcomes. Findings generally supported our expectations, but more so for interactional justice and less so for procedural justice.

Organizational politics and organizational support as predictors of work attitudes, job performance, and organizational citizenship behavior

This study investigated the relationship of organizational politics and organizational support to various work attitudes and behaviors among a field sample of 128 participants. Consistent with our hypothesis, politics and support were related to job satisfaction, commitment, turnover intentions, and supervisor ratings of organizational citizenship behaviors. However, only support was related to job performance. We also examined whether or not organizational politics and organizational support comprise two distinct constructs or one global factor. The evidence here was ambiguous. Fit indices obtained from confirmatory factor analysis suggested that it is more parsimonious to treat politics and support as opposite ends of the same construct, though the two-factor model did show a slightly better fit. On the other hand, subsequent multiple regression analyses showed that support tended to account for additional criterion variance beyond the effect of politics, implying that there may be some practical utility to retaining politics and support as distinct constructs. Copyright

Psychological Well-Being and Job Satisfaction as Predictors of Job Performance

The happy-productive worker hypothesis has most often been examined in organizational research by correlating job satisfaction to performance. Recent research has expanded this to include measures of psychological well-being. However, to date, no field research has provided a comparative test of the relative contribution of job satisfaction and psychological well-being as predictors of employee performance. The authors report 2 field studies that, taken together, provide an opportunity to simultaneously examine the relative contribution of psychological well-being and job satisfaction to job performance. In Study 1, psychological well-being, but not job satisfaction, was predictive of job performance for 47 human services workers. These findings were replicated in Study 2 for 37 juvenile probation officers. These findings are discussed in terms of research on the happy-productive worker hypothesis.

Three roads to organizational justice

In this paper, we review current theoretical thinking about organizational justice. We contend that there are three major perspectives for understanding why justice perceptions predict work-relevant criteria: (a) an instrumental approach which emphasizes gains and losses, (b) an inter-personal approach which emphasizes the nature of the relationships among individuals and organizations, and (c) a moral principles approach which emphasizes commitment to ethical standards. We review each of these perspectives, identify the many conceptual frameworks that underlie each approach, and describe both common themes and gaps that exist between the three approaches.