Instrumental Exchange Research Articles

Tastes, emotions, and social cohesion: Toward a cultural theory of social exchange

AbstractThe Affect Theory of Social Exchange (ATSE) research program has produced cumulative insights on how instrumental exchanges lead to the development of affectual attachments. With its focus on task responsibilities, ATSE leaves space to interrogate how factors not related to task execution are at play in the production of interpersonal bonds. In this paper, we integrate insights from social psychology, cultural sociology and organizational research to develop a theoretical framework suggesting (a) why and how cultural tastes contribute to social cohesion and (b) the conditions under which cultural tastes remain a source of strategic advantage or, worse, symbolic exclusion. Our theory rests on the basic proposition that shared cultural tastes increase the likelihood of experiencing positive emotions, which in turn are key in the development and maintenance of affectual attachments. Variations to this proposition are subsequently introduced, considering culture in declarative and nondeclarative forms.

Communication, Ethics and Relational Peace

Although social media often is trumpeted as an answer to the divisions bedeviling humankind, social media users also lament the violence enacted on one another through digital interactions. Is digital interaction capable of fulfilling the hope of human community? How ought persons communicate through social media? A baseline understanding of ethical communication is crucial for answering these questions. Martin Buber and Emmanuel Levinas’ philosophical analysis of relational peace lays the groundwork for an ethic of dialogic communication that may guide everyday interactions. As individuals navigate the call of unending responsibility for others, and the strength of existence that arises from a genuine encounter with others, the peace of human relationship becomes a hopeful possibility. The relational mode of asking questions operationalizes this peace. Whether face-to-face or digital, human communicators ought to subordinate their instrumental exchanges to an interpersonal approach of dialogic questions. Therefore, rather than seeing social media interactions as primarily the occasion for agreements or disagreements, one nurtures hope in human community by approaching interactions with a curiosity nurtured by the primordial call of the Other.

Intergenerational solidarity in triads of adult grandchild, parent, and grandparent: the positive view of elders, positive expectations towards the future and young-elders divide

ABSTRACT Introduction The remarkable growth of older adults represents a challenge for our societies. The population of aging requires adjustments that sometimes are difficult to achieve for already stressed welfare systems. In this context, intergenerational solidarity may play a central role. Demographic shifts over the past century have also increased the percentage of grandchildren who, as young adults, have living grandparents. Adult grandchildren could become an important source of intergenerational solidarity, but few studies have explored intergenerational relations, including grandparents, adult children, and adult grandchildren. None to our knowledge have examined which aspects of intergenerational solidarity affect the positive view of elders, positive expectations toward the future, and old-young divides. Objectives We aimed to explore three critical dimensions of intergenerational solidarity (affinity, contact, and instrumental exchange) and examine how each component is related to positive views of elders, positive expectations toward the future, and the young elders divide. Methods The study was conducted in Italy; it involved 420 participants divided into 140 triads. Semi-structure interviews with elders, adult grandchildren, and parents were used to measure intergenerational solidarity. Each triad was composed of 140 grandparents aged 65 to 92, 140 parents aged 39 to 72, 140 grandchildren aged 17 to 50. Results Affinity variables such as perceived similarity, sharing the same micro-culture, and giving importance to grandchild–grandparent relation, promoted a positive view of aging, positive expectations toward the future, and lower perceptions of a young-elders divide in society. The contact variables had mixed effects. Conclusion Overall our results highlight that mostly affinity variables promoted a positive view of aging, positive expectations toward the future and reduced the perception of the generational gap.

Satisfied with what? Contested assumptions about student expectations and satisfaction in higher education

ABSTRACTThis paper aims to contribute to the contested body of work about the factors influencing student motivation, expectations, engagement and satisfaction in higher education (HE). Policy surrounding the deployment and use of the National Student Survey (NSS) and the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF) constructs social relationships between teachers and students as calculated instrumental exchanges, whereby, in exchange for the fee they pay, students expect to receive an education designed to ensure they have the knowledge, skills and innovative capabilities required by businesses and the economy in the competitive global market place. Drawing on fieldwork conducted between 2011 and 2015; and using narrative data obtained from face-to-face conversations and email interviews with sampled cohorts of post 30s students enrolled on two vocational degree programmes in a post 1992 university; the paper aims to highlight the flawed assumptions about student expectations, engagement and satisfaction, which fail to acknowledge the positive life-changing impact the higher education experience can have on students and in their work. Bourdieu’s concepts of habitus, field, capital and illusio, and Goffman’s classic pieces on ‘The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life’, ‘Stigma’ and the ‘Cooling out the marks’ process, are used to develop this argument.

Interpersonal feelings and knowledge seeking in China

ABSTRACT This study investigated the roles of interpersonal feelings in knowledge seeking in China. Specifically, the study examined and tested the potential effects of two interpersonal feelings (jiaoqing and ganqing) prevalent in China on Chinese employees’ seeking of explicit and tacit knowledge from others. Using data from a survey of 143 employees from Chinese firms, the study found jiaoqing (based on instrumental exchanges) positively related to both explicit and tacit knowledge seeking. On the other hand, ganqing, which is more expressive in nature, had no effect on either explicit or tacit knowledge seeking. Implications for future research and practice are discussed.

With whom should you have dinner? A multidimensional framework for understanding political ties in China

Political ties are often considered a critical resource for firms to succeed in China. The way companies build political ties receives noticeably less attention. Academic research traditionally uses the prior government work experience of firms’ top management, in addition to executive membership in the National People’s Congress (NPC) and/or the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), as surrogates to quantify political ties. However, such measurements only expose the tip of the iceberg and do not sufficiently answer questions about how these connections are organized and controlled. Drawing insights from institutional theory, in this article we introduce a multidimensional framework to shed light on the study of political ties in China. Specifically, by using the framework of regulative, normative, and cognitive institutional pillars, we identify government work experience, political membership, family connections, shared social identity, and instrumental exchange as effective ways of building political ties in China. We also discuss theoretical and managerial implications, as well as limitations to our research.

A theoretical classification of helping behavior and helping motives

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to develop a new classification of helping behavior using the recipient’s solicitation and the helper’s proactiveness. Additionally, the authors explore helping motives for each of the forms of helping behavior that the authors identify.Design/methodology/approach– The authors examined relevant research and performed a theoretical analysis.Findings– The authors classified helping behavior into three distinct forms, including unsolicited proactive helping behavior, unsolicited reactive helping behavior, and solicited reactive helping behavior. Additionally, the authors claimed that unsolicited proactive helping behavior is an outcome of personality and dispositions, that unsolicited reactive helping behavior is a process of social and instrumental exchange, and that solicited reactive helping behavior is a product of functional motives.Practical implications– First, from the perspective of organizational justice, the authors recommend managers to take the form of helping behavior exhibited into consideration when evaluating employees’ helping behavior because certain forms of helping behavior require greater degrees of cooperation and sacrifices from the helper than other forms. Second, because employees who engage in high levels of unsolicited proactive helping behavior are likely to experience interrole conflict, the authors suggest that managers provide counseling and managerial support that help cope with emotional and psychological strain created by excessive role demands. Finally, findings of this study imply that managers need to create a workplace culture where employees can feel comfortable to solicit help when necessary.Originality/value– This is the first study that classifies helping behavior and helping motives using both of the helper’s and recipient’s perspectives.

Mastery-approach and mastery-avoidance goals and their relation with exhaustion and engagement at work: The roles of emotional and instrumental support

The results of two cross-sectional studies (N = 220 and N = 258) indicate that employees' work-related mastery-approach goals (i.e. the striving to improve one's performance at work) were positively associated with work engagement. Further, this relationship is explained by high levels of instrumental support. In contrast, employees' work-related mastery-avoidance goals (i.e. the striving to avoid performing worse than one aspires to) are positive predictors of job detachment and fatigue. The relationships between mastery-avoidance goals and these detrimental work outcomes are explained by low levels of perceived emotional support. Altogether, these results suggest that workers with mastery-approach goals tend to invest in their social work environment by establishing instrumental exchange relationships. Such relationships are considered functional for task performance and explain the positive relationship with work engagement. Employees who hold mastery-avoidance goals, on the other hand, tend to withdraw from the social structure of the workplace which explains the negative relationship with emotional support. In turn, given the lack of emotional support, psychological detachment and fatigue may emerge. These results are discussed in relation to the surging interest in the social mechanisms that result from the pursuit of achievement goals.

Castells’ network concept and its connections to social, economic and political network analyses

Abstract This article discusses the conceptualization of network in Manuel Castells’ theory of network society and its relation to network analysis. Networks assumed a significant role in Castells’ opus magnum, The Information Age trilogy, in the latter half of the 1990s. He became possibly the most prominent figure globally in adopting network terminology in social theory, but at the same time he made hardly any empirical or methodological contribution to network analysis. This article sheds light on this issue by analyzing how the network logic embraced by Castells defines the social, economic, and political relations in his theory of network society, and how such aspects of his theory relate to social network analysis. It is shown that Castells’ institutional network concept is derived from the increased relevance of networks as the emerging form of social organization, epitomized by the idea of global networks of instrumental exchanges. He did not shed light on the internal dynamics of networks, but was nevertheless able to use network as a powerful metaphor that aptly portrayed his idea of the new social morphology of informational capitalism.

Journalist–Source Relations

This article examines the news work of Taiwan correspondents in mainland China, focusing particularly on the issue of journalist–source relations. Drawing upon the concepts of tie strength and homophily from social network analysis, this article argues that strong and heterophilous ties play a crucial role for foreign correspondents working within a context where news information does not always flow freely. Data from in-depth interviews and a supplementary survey show that different types of source ties offer different types of information to the Taiwan correspondents. The analysis illustrates how strong ties with Chinese officials and correspondents from other countries allow Taiwan journalists to obtain the news information and clues that are of the highest value, i.e., information and clues about exclusive and/or sensitive stories. The Taiwan correspondents established such strong ties through long-term interactions and instrumental exchange. Implications of the findings for understanding the work of foreign correspondents are discussed.

Beyond Boundaries. Reconceptualizing Exchanges between Management Scholars and Practitioners

This paper challenges orthodox understandings about the existence of a theory-practice gap in organization science and points out the limitations of, and uncertainties behind, seeing management academics and practitioners as two separate communities with different systems of expertise (i.e., theoretical and practical expertise). Based on an ethnographic study of two groups of academics and practitioners in an executive master’s program, the research articulates a process view of how academics and practitioners, in particular, and individuals belonging to different occupational communities, in general, exchange expertise across boundaries. Findings suggest that academics and practitioners can resourcefully deal with exchanges that are pervaded by information shortage, differences and misunderstandings, thanks to their exceptional ability to develop provisional relations: temporary, open-ended and malleable relations that draw on the broader systems of relations in which they are entangled elsewhere. Accordingly, theories and practices are not exclusive systems of expertise but common resources for instrumental exchanges; when called to interact, academics are easily able to pass from theory to practical theorizing, as practitioners can switch from an involved practical mode to a quasi-theoretical one. These findings contribute to boundary spanning literature by discussing the issues of exchange multiplicity, hybrid systems of expertise, and continuous transformation through relationality

Making Institutional Theory More Critical

The relationship between organization and management theory (OMT) and critical management studies (CMS) has been limitedly developed. It has been widely acknowledged that following its early proliferation in the study of organizations, power swiftly fell out of favor for numerous reasons, including the incorporation of organization theory into business schools (Courpasson et al., 2012), the narrowing interests of organization studies to questions of instrumental exchange and performance, and increased specialization of the field, which have resulted in “inward gazing communities, increasingly impotent as a critical voice of contemporary societal institutions and contributor to policy and public debate” (Zald & Lounsbury, 2010, p. 964). The consequences of turning away from questions of power and authority has resulted in theoretical approaches that are ill equipped to explain contemporary challenges, including the recent US mortgage meltdown and global financial crises (Cooper, Ezzamel, & Willmott, 2008; Lounsbury & Hirsch, 2010; Willmott, 2013a). The purpose of this symposium is threefold: (1) to highlight points of agreement and divergences across diverse perspectives on the study of power and institutions; (2) to engage in lively debate and discussion to animate the current and future potential for the study of power in institutional theory; (3) and to seed the development of a more critical institutionalism.

Is Efficiency Overrated?

When we buy our daily cup of coffee, sometimes we engage in a social interaction with the barista, and sometimes we are in a rush. Every day we have opportunities to transform potentially impersonal, instrumental exchanges into genuine social interactions, and the happiness literature suggests that we may reap benefits by doing so; in other words, treating a service provider like we would an acquaintance (i.e., weak tie) might make us happier. In the current study, people who had a social interaction with a barista (i.e., smiled, made eye contact, and had a brief conversation) experienced more positive affect than people who were as efficient as possible. Further, we found initial evidence that these effects were mediated by feelings of belonging. These results suggest that, although people are often reluctant to have a genuine social interaction with a stranger, they are happier when they treat a stranger like a weak tie.

Transcendent Sacrifice and Spirituality: Cambodian Grandparents raising Orphaned Grandchildren

ABSTRACT The aim of this study was to analyze the lives of 10 grandparents raising orphaned grandchildren in Cambodia. Using family exchange theory, this study shows that families struggle to engage in instrumental exchange and continue to provide affective exchanges but greatly sacrifice their own spiritual growth in symbolic exchanges. Struggles to provide for everyday existence limits participation in Buddhist merit building practices that are associated with movement into a higher spiritual level. Grandparents willingly accept the obligation to provide care to orphaned grandchildren, yet this transcendent sacrifice constrains grandparents' likelihood of better existences in their next lives.

Ethnic differences in patterns of social exchange among older adults: the role of resource context

ABSTRACTUsing social capital and social exchange theories, this investigation examined ethnic variation in patterns of social exchange in two heterogeneous racial groups, Blacks and Whites in the United States, and the effects of education and income on these patterns. The sample was 1,043 people aged 65–86 years from four ethnic groups (US-born European-Americans, immigrant Russians/Ukrainians, US-born African-Americans, and immigrant English-speaking Caribbeans) who had provided details of their instrumental and advice exchanges with kin and non-kin. Hierarchical multinomial logistic regressions were used to predict patterns of social exchange, variations by ethnicity, income and education, and the interactions. Ethnic differences in patterns of social exchange were found, but almost all were qualified by interactions. Those with income showed within-group heterogeneity: African-Americans and Russians/Ukrainians with higher income were more likely to engage in reciprocal instrumental kin exchange, whereas among English-speaking Caribbeans and European-Americans such exchanges were not associated with income. Unlike among European-Americans and English-speaking Caribbeans, Russians/Ukrainians with higher income and education were more likely to engage in reciprocal non-kin exchange. The findings suggest that ethnic variation in social exchange reflects both aspects of ethnic group membership and the relational context, as well as the enactment of reciprocity values in varying resource contexts.

Family Occupations in Later Life

Literature on famiiy interactions of older adults suggests that famiiies vary widely, and that many families have reciprocai sodal, emotional, and instrumental exchanges. Research disproportionately emphasizes elders as redpients of care, and lacks darity abont the precise occupations in which elders and families engage together. This stndy reports on interviews with 26 well, commnnity-residing older adults to determine how they delineated occupations in which they engaged with their families, and their evaluations of family interactions. Family membership as described by participants differed greatly. Family occupations involved giving care, getting care, and enjoying pastimes. The majority of participants reported at !east two of these occupations, reflecting reciprocai relationships with spouses, adult children, and grandchildren. No participant was entirely dependent on other family members. Based on Connidis' (2001) categorization of family dynamics, elders assessed family occupations in terms of solidarity or ambiguity; none perceived family solely in terms of problems.

The New Structuralism in Organizational Theory

Over the past decade, a new structuralism has begun to emerge in organizational theory. This exciting new research program draws inspiration from the social structural tradition in sociology, but extends that tradition by more broadly conceptualizing social structure as comprised of broader cultural rules and meaning systems as well as material resources—revealing the subtleties of both overt and covert power. Building on the insights of Bourdieu and related work in social theory and cultural sociology, new structuralist empirical research focuses on concrete manifestations of culture in everyday practice and has pioneered the measurement of cultural aspects of social structure using a variety of relational methods. In this essay, we revisit mid-century social structural approaches to organizations, review the development of organization theory as a management subfield that increasingly focused on instrumental exchange, highlight key aspects of the new structuralism in organizational theory, and discuss promising new research directions.

Ethnic Differences in Neighboring Behavior in Urban China

Using a data set collected in a Chinese city in 2001, I compare patterns of neighboring behavior between two ethnic groups (i.e., the Hui and Han) in urban China. Existing theories and evidence have generated different expectations about ethnic differences in voluntary association involvement. Findings from this paper contribute to race and ethnic studies by arguing that ethnic minority status is positively associated with neighboring; that instrumental exchange rather than expressive interaction underlies ethnic differences in urban neighboring; and that modifications of existing theories are warranted for research on ethnic differences in neighborliness in China. Findings of my research may also contribute to research on racial differences in neighboring in the United States.

Limiting Factors on the Transformative Powers of E-Mail in Patient-Physician Relationships: A Critical Analysis

In this article I analyze doctor-patient use of e-mail within the context of the evolving doctor-patient relationship and ongoing changes in the U.S. health care system. Evidence from the published literature on doctor-patient relationships and doctor-patient communication, empirical studies of uses of the Internet by doctors and patients, and commentaries about the Internet's role in health care are examined and discussed to reveal common, unsupported assumptions about the likely impact of e-mail on the doctor-patient relationship and also the value structure associated with current e-mail practices between doctors and patients. I argue that existing research does not adequately account for the technical, professional, and economic forces that are shaping doctor-patient use of e-mail. I conclude that physicians' preferences for technical, instrumental exchanges with patients will likely mitigate the positive influence that e-mail could have on the doctor-patient relationship, and doctor-patient communication is unlikely to improve as a result of their use of e-mail.

Social Solidarity and Social Exchange

Hechter's (1987) theory of group solidarity points to the need for clarification of the meaning of social solidarity and the related concept of social exchange. In order to clarify these conceptual issues, a distinction between social exchange and instrumental exchange is developed. Social exchange is motivated by a desire to promote or maintain a positive attitude from other group members, while instrumental exchange is a means of obtaining behaviour from others which promotes the self-interest of the actor. Social solidarity, in contrast, is characterised by the motive of promoting group goals in their own right, provided the actor perceives positive attitudes from others towards himself. A related distinction is then made between instrumental exchange and co-ordination. This yields a fourfold typology which shows an interesting correspondence with Parsons's AGIL scheme and sheds light on Habermas's distinction between social integration and system integration.