Explaining employment relationships with social exchange and job embeddedness.

Abstract

The research reported in this article clarifies how employee-organization relationships (EORs) work. Specifically, the authors tested whether social exchange and job embeddedness mediate how mutual-investment (whereby employers offer high inducements to employees for their high contributions) and over-investment (high inducements without corresponding high expected contributions) EOR approaches, which are based on Tsui, Pearce, Porter, and Tripoli's (1997) framework, affect quit propensity and organizational commitment. Two studies evaluated these intervening mechanisms. Study 1 surveyed 953 Chinese managers attending part-time master of business administration (MBA) programs in China, whereas Study 2 collected cross-sectional and longitudinal data from 526 Chinese middle managers in 41 firms. Standard and multilevel causal modeling techniques affirmed that social exchange and job embeddedness translate EOR influence. A second multilevel test using lagged outcome measures further established that job embeddedness mediates long-term EOR effects over 18 months. These findings corroborate prevailing views that social exchange explains how mutual- and over-investment EORs motivate greater workforce commitment and loyalty. This study enriches EOR perspectives by identifying job embeddedness as another mediator that is more enduring than social exchange.

A general multilevel SEM framework for assessing multilevel mediation.

“…For example, Hom et al (2009) found that job embeddedness (Level 1) mediates the influence of mutual-investment employee-organization relationship (Level 2) on lagged measures of employees' quit intention and affective commitment (Level 1). Similarly, Zhang et al (2009) hypothesized that job satisfaction (Level 1) mediates the effect of flexible work schedule (Level 2) on employee performance (Level 1).…”

An Empirical Study on the Organizational Trust, Employee-Organization Relationship and Innovative Behavior from the Integrated Perspective of Social Exchange and Organizational Sustainability

“…Previous literature pay more effort towards investigating the direct effect of EOR on employee attitudes and behaviors [18], however, there was little effort put into identifying the mediating mechanism between EOR and innovative behavior. We have found that organizational trust partially mediates the relationship between EOR and innovative behavior, which can then provide us with evidence to interpret the effect of EOR on individual attitudes and behaviors.…”

“…Previous literature has found that EOR will promote employee positive psychology and behavior [15][16][17]. Hom et al (2009) [18] argued that employees' organizational trust might be a mediator mechanism between EOR and employee behaviors, different extents of EOR would lead to different individual outcomes via mediator (e.g., organizational trust). Therefore, EOR is a key predictor of organizational trust.…”

Investigating the Impact of Communication Satisfaction on Organizational Commitment: A Practical Approach to Increase Employees’ Loyalty

“…In order to build high organizational commitment among employees, the top management of organizations must build strategies and work have practices to reinforce one another in order to produce such settings (Hom et al, 2009). Individuals with higher levels of organizational commitment have a sense of belonging and identification with the organization that increases their desire to pursue the organization's goals and activities, and their willingness to remain a part of the organization (Meyer & Allen, 1991;Mowday et al, 1982).…”