The Social and Economic Exchange Relationships in the Context of Organizational Commitment

Abstract

Social Exchange Theory (SET) is one of the fundamental theories that has presented theoretical viewpoint in the several disciplines such as anthropology, social psychology, and sociology. It is known that the theory roots which early conceptualized by Thibault & Kelley (1959), Homans (1961), Blau (1964) and Emerson (1962, 1972) base on back to the 1920s (Malinowski, 1922). The main idea of exchange theory is to a series of interactions that generate obligations (Emerson, 1976). At this point, the findings from social exchange studies have many contributions and benefits in order to understand workplace behaviors (Cropanzano & Mitchell, 2005). SET has been one of the main theories that provide a wide comprehension upon exchange dynamics both at an interpersonal and organizational level. Divided into two categories, namely social (SE) and economic (EE), exchange relationships have seen to be related to many organizational outcomes, including organizational commitment (OC), which can be defined as employees’ attitude towards their organization. The present study purposes to determine the correlation between SET and sub-dimensions of OC (affective commitment and continuance commitment). Data of the study has been obtained from 186 employees who work in private sector in Turkey and analyzed through Statistical Package for the Social Sciences. Results indicated that Social Exchange is positively related with affective commitment and continuance commitment, Economic Exchange was found to be negatively related with affective commitment and positively correlated with continuance commitment.