이 논문은 조직에서 사회적 교환이 계속적으로 유지되기 위해서 수용자의 능력이 중요한 역할을 할 것으로 가정하고, 이를 증명하기 위해 연구하였다. 구체적으로, 사회적 교환이 수용자의 능력인 행동의 자주관리에 미치는 영향과 행동의 자주관리가 성과에 미치는 영향, 그리고 행동의 자주관리가 매개효과를 발생시키는지 연구한 것이다. 연구 자료는 경상북도와 경상남도에 위치한 기업을 대상으로 최고경영자의 양해를 구해 각 부서의 부서장이 부하와 직속상관에 대한 목록을 작성하여 수집했다. 총 배부된 설문지는 800부이고, 분석에 사용된 설문지는 610부이다. 구조방정식 모형을 사용하여 자료를 분석한 결과, 사회적 교환이 수용자의 능력인 행동의 자주관리에 정(+)의 영향을 주는 것으로 나타났다. 또한 행동의 자주관리가 조직의 성과변수인 직무만족, 조직몰입, 조직시민행동, 직무성과에 정(+)의 영향을 미치는 것으로 확인되었다. 사회적 교환은 대체로 조직의 성과에 직접적인 영향을 주지 않는 것으로 나타났으며, 행동의 자주관리를 매개로 하여 간접적으로 조직의 성과에 영향을 미치는 것으로 검증되었다. 이러한 연구결과를 바탕으로 연구의 시사점, 한계 및 추후연구 과제에 대해 논의하였다.
Social exchange theory suggests that employees and their supervisors and organizations build social exchange relationships(i.e., supervisory and organizational social exchange, respectively) within which parties continuously exchange socio-emotional benefits such as recognition and esteem(Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005; Rupp and Cropanzano, 2002). Social exchange relationships are different from pure economic exchange relationships in that the obligations of parties in social exchange are unspecified. An open-ended obligations strengthen bonds of indebtedness and trust which trigger one exchange party to become committed to the other(Blau, 1964). As a result, employees in social exchange relationships tend to form a high degree of trust, a high level of investment and obligation, and a long-term orientation relationship with their supervisors and organizations(Rupp and Cropanzano, 2002; Shore, Tetrick, Lynch, and Barksdale, 2006). In addition, employees who enjoy a goodwill and a caring of an organization will feel obligated to reciprocate with positive behaviors toward supervisors and organizations.
Current social exchange studies have contributed to enhance our understanding about the effects of social exchange relationships on employee outcomes. However, they paid little attention to examining how social exchange relationships influence employees’ intentions or abilities to reciprocate with behaviors and attitudes that benefit supervisors and organizations. Supervisory and organizational social exchange can be maintained if the receiver, who gets the benefits(e.g., employees), can provide some intangible socio-emotional resources to the giver(e.g., supervisors or organizations). On the other hand, if the receiver harms the giver, the social exchange relationship can be broken(Gouldner, 1960). In general, receivers in social exchange relationship are willing to improve their ability to benefit the giver and maintain the trust. In this study, we examined how supervisory and organizational social exchange influence receiver’s(i.e., employees) behavioral self-management(i.e., ability) and how employees’ behavioral self- management affect their work attitudes and behaviors.
We collected the data from three organizations in Republic of Korea(i.e., one air manufacturing, one hotel, and one telecommunication company). In the survey we provided, employees assessed supervisory and organizational social exchange, their behavioral self-management, job satisfaction and organizational commitment. Supervisors reported their subordinates’ job performance and organizational citizenship behavior. We distributed the survery to 500 employee-supervisor pair. Of 351 surveys collected(i.e., response rate=70.2 %), we deleted 34 due to errors and missing values. All measures had high reliabilities. The average of supervisory and organizational social exchange was 4.43 and 4.53, respectively, which are not high based on a 7-point Likert- type scale. As expected, correlations between supervisory and organizational social exchange and employees’ behavioral self-management were statistically significant. To test the research hypotheses, we used structural equation modeling and tested the mediation effects using Sobel’s(1982) test.
Results revealed positive effects of supervisory and organizational social exchange on employee’s behavioral self-management. Employee’s behavioral self-management was also significantly associated with their job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance. In addition, supervisory and organizational social exchange indirectly influenced employee outcomes(i. e., job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, and job performance) through employees’ behavioral self- management.
This study provides several theoretical and practical implications. First, the study theoretically and empirically contributes to social exchange by showing that social exchange relationships can enhance employees(receivers)’ ability(e.g., behavioral self-management). These results suggest that when employees have high quality of social exchange relationships with their supervisors and organizations, they willingly manage their behaviors to improve themselves and organizations. These findings also suggest that organizations can benefit from employees who can manage to enhance supervisory behavior and organizational social exchange. As a result, organizations need to develop personnel management system that helps organizations to build social exchange relationships among employees. On the other hand, organizations also need to provide a leadership program that help mangers to develop favorable and trustful relationships with their subordinates.
In addition, this study theorized and empirically tested the mediating effects of behavioral self-management on the relationships between social exchange and employee outcomes. Specifically, we found that when we included behavioral self-management as a mediator, the direct effects of social exchange on employee outcomes occurred only in two of the cases(i.e., the effects of organizational social exchange on organizational commitment; the effects of supervisory social exchange on job satisfaction). Given that most current social exchange research ignored the underlying processes by which social exchange relationships influence employee outcomes, this study is advanced. These findings cast a doubt to the argument that organizational policies or strategies can enhance organizational effectiveness without the capabilities of employees. Future researches need to examine other psychological mechanisms that link social exchange and employee outcomes beyond behavioral self-management.