Exchange Relationships Research Articles

Asymmetric Metabolic Adaptations Undermine Stability in Microbial Syntrophy

Abstract Syntrophic interaction, driven by metabolite exchange, is widespread within microbial communities. However, co-inoculation of most auxotrophic microorganisms often fails to establish a stable metabolite exchange relationship. Here, we engineered two auxotrophic Escherichia coli strains, each dependent on the other for essential amino acid production, to investigate the dynamics of syntrophic relationships. Through invasion-from-rare experiments, we observed the rapid formation of syntrophic consortia stabilized by frequency-dependent selection, converging to a 2:1 ratio of lysine-to-arginine auxotrophs. However, laboratory evolution over 25 days revealed that syntrophic interactions were evolutionarily unstable, with cocultures collapsing as ΔL cells dominated the population. Reduced fitness in cocultures was driven by the emergence of a “selfish” ΔL phenotype, characterized by decreased arginine production and exploitation of lysine produced by ΔA cells. Dynamic metabolic assays revealed that metabolite production and utilization patterns strongly influenced the fitness of each strain. ΔL cells displayed metabolic plasticity, adjusting lysine utilization in response to lysine availability, which enabled them to outcompete ΔA cells. In contrast, ΔA cells lacked similar plasticity, resulting in their negative selection. These findings demonstrate that asymmetric metabolic responses and the emergence of selfish phenotypes destabilize syntrophic relationships. Our work underscores the importance of balanced metabolic exchanges for developing sustainable synthetic microbial consortia and offers insights into the evolutionary dynamics of microbial cooperation.

Impact of Leadership Styles and Organisational Citizenship Behaviours on Organisational Green Innovation Performance: The Moderating Role of Organisational Legitimacy

ABSTRACTFirms' green innovation performance is influenced by several factors, including external legitimacy pressures and internal leader–member exchange relationships. Existing studies make little distinction between types of sustainable innovation and neglect leader, employee and organisational factors in the same strategic management framework. Based on institutional and social exchange theories, data from 537 Chinese enterprises are analysed through a hierarchical regression to explore how different leadership styles, organisational citizenship behaviours and legitimacy outside organisations affect green innovation performance. Research findings suggest that both transactional and transformational leadership contribute to organisational citizenship behaviours and green innovation performance. Organisational citizenship behaviours partially mediate between leadership styles and green innovation. Organisational legitimacy only positively moderates between leadership styles and organisational citizenship for green product innovation. This implies that organisations should pay attention to fostering high‐quality leader–member exchange relationships, formulating sustainable innovation management strategies and seeking a balance between obtaining organisational legitimacy and promoting organisational citizenship.

EXPRESS: Customer-Centric Contract Changes

Customers would frequently benefit from changes to an existing purchase contract with a supplier (e.g., due to a wrong order). Salespeople can voluntarily make such a change, which we label a “customer-centric contract change.” Formally, we define a customer-centric contract change as an act of a salesperson of amending the purchase contract in the customer’s favor without a legal obligation to do so. Since literature has neglected this prevalent and important phenomenon, we draw on social exchange theory to study the impact of such contract changes on relationship performance. Toward this end, we leverage panel data on over 57,000 customers, four experiments, and a survey study. Results suggest customer-centric contract changes increase relationship performance because customers are grateful for a salesperson’s relinquishing of power. Interestingly, this effect is less pronounced in close exchange relationships where a norm of solidarity between customers and salespeople exists. These findings add to emergent work that finds that business partners in close exchange relationships expect each other and are willing to forgo power advantages to alleviate each other’s hardships; we integrate these findings into what we coin “power-solidarity theory.” For practitioners, the findings offer guidance on whether and how to approve contract change requests.

BLOCKCHAIN AS A MANAGEMENT TECHNOLOGY: INSTITUTIONALIZATION OF CRYPTO-ASSETS AND TRANSFORMATION OF ENTREPRENEURIAL MODELS USING THE EXAMPLE OF ETHEREUM

The rapid development of blockchain technologies creates a new paradigm of economic relations, requiring a rethinking of traditional approaches to management and business organization. The relevance of Ethereum research is due to its significant potential for creating new forms of economic coordination that go beyond existing institutional structures. With the growing complexity of global economic systems, Ethereum offers a unique approach to solving trust, transparency, and transaction efficiency problems. The purpose of the work is to substantiate the role of blockchain as a new management technology using the example of the Ethereum platform, as well as to reveal the mechanisms for projecting imaginary autonomy in the process of its design and institutionalization through the activities of various actors. The study focuses on the formation of alternative modes of economic coordination of entrepreneurial structures and social organization.Key characteristics of the “governance through transactions” implemented in Ethereum are identified, including the focus on exchange and association relationships, the epistemological gap between the calculation and meaning of transactions, and the specific processes of forming and articulating these transactions. The process of institutionalization of the autonomy of cryptoassets is analyzed, demonstrating the complex interaction of various actors, technologies and social practices. A conceptual model of the evolution of digital economy management has been developed, reflecting the development trajectory from fragility to antifragility using the example of Ethereum. The transformational potential of Ethereum for existing economic and social structures is substantiated. This platform is considered an alternative proposal for managing the digital economy, capable of changing the fundamental principles of organizing economic activity. Problems and limitations associated with the implementation of decentralized systems are also identified, including technical challenges of scalability, difficulties of coordination, and risks of excessive algorithmization of social relations.

15세기 초 조일교섭에서 대장경 청구·사여의 의미

Changes of Japan’s foreign relations in the period of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu and Yoshimochi who were the 3rd and 4th shōguns of Ashikaga shōgunate were greatly influenced by domestic political changes in Japan, activities of Japanese raiders, relations with other East Asian countries. During the Yoshimitsu period, the political turmoil in Japan was ended, and the Japanese Northern and Southern dynasties were integrated to focus on stabilizing the shogunate's rule. While Yoshimitsu tried to stabilize the regime by resuming diplomacy, the shōgunates officially resumed international diplomatic relations with China and joined the Ming dynasty's Tribute and Investiture System. As the political condition in East Asia had gradually stabilized and Japanese raiders had infested less since the fifteenth century, the peaceful exchange relationship was formed around Joseon, Ming dynasty and Ashikaga shōgunate. However, as the political instability of the shōgunate was rekindled by several political events during the Yoshimochi period, the concentration of the shōgunate became weakened in the Kyushu region which was adjacent to the Korean Peninsula and China. The change in these circumstances heightened some political tension between the power of Kyushu Tandai and the Ōuchi clan and the power of the Shōni clan that competed with them. And a large scale of Japanese raiders availed themselves of this political instability and reappeared. It occasioned a great outcry in the political scene of East Asia and led to Joseon’s Ōei Invasion in 1419. As the attack by Joseon became a reality, Japan’s various powers including the shōgunate started focusing on resolving the situation. The shōgunate dispatched envoys to Joseon for the purpose of subduing public sentiment and grasping Joseon's intentions. And the power from Kyushu actively cooperated while they had a close relationship with the shōgunate and benefited from trade with Joseon. Afterward, the negotiation between Joseon and Japan was proceeded, envoys traveled back and forth between Joseon and Japan in forms of the request and bestowal of Tripitaka three times. On the other hand, the shōgunates preferentially distributed to the sect that had an affinity with them so that they would continuously maintain the relevant sects as amicable powers. The main beneficiaries were five temples of Kyoto, affiliations of the Rinzai school that was then responsible for the diplomacy of the shōgunate, the Shingon Buddhism and Tendai Buddhism temples that had traditionally high political status, and prominent local temples. The Tripitaka had been mainly distributed to Zen denominations, such as Rinzai school among them, although they did not have a great connection with the Tripitaka. In short, the Tripitaka in the Muromachi period did not merely function as a work of doctrinal characters, but a symbol of authority and dignity of temples for Buddhism powers and a means of negotiating with Buddhism powers for the shōgunate. And, this could lead to assuming the intention of the shōgunate who aimed to take political advantages.

Threads of change: textile production and consumption during the Early Iron Age in Eastern Iberia

The establishment of Phoenician colonies in the South and East of Iberia between the 9th and 8th centuries BCE directly and indirectly provided an unprecedented stimulus for the economic and social development of the local communities, which became increasingly integrated into the trade dynamics of the Mediterranean. Textile production and consumption seem to have played a significant role that has not been sufficiently appreciated so far and that will be the basis of the spectacular textile development that followed. Therefore, this article analyses the textile tools and elements related to clothing found in different archaeological sites in Eastern Iberia between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, both indigenous and Phoenician, which coexisted in the same territory, establishing important economic and exchange relationships. The evidence seems to indicate significant changes in textile tools, but above all in the organisation of production and forms of textile consumption.

Unravelling the Path to Organizational Commitment: The Mediating Role of Perceived Organizational Support and the Moderating Role of Career Stages in High-performance Work Systems

The study explains how and when high-performance work practices (HPWPs) positively relate to organizational commitment. Specifically, it tries to unleash the black box mechanism between perceived HPWPs and organizational commitment through mediating and moderating factors from the social exchange perspective. A quantitative research design and a cross-sectional approach are used to collect data with the help of a self-administered questionnaire from 250 employees of different cities in Punjab, Pakistan. According to the findings, when employees are in the maintenance stage instead of the establishment and advancement stages, HPWPs are significantly positively associated with perceived organizational support (POS). It expands our understanding of human resources (HR) practices and empirically investigates the significance of career stages in this context. The contribution of this study is twofold; first, our study adds to the body of empirical work on HPWPs and the discussion of organizational commitment. It includes a more comprehensive understanding of social exchange relationships in the form of social, human and cultural capital that we know as POS, which organizations provide to employees. Second, by examining the function of POS in an HPWP environment, it identifies the antecedents of POS through HR practices at the employee level. It shows that POS generates strong working relationships among employees through the HPWPs process.

THE SYNERGISTIC EFFECT OF AMBIDEXTROUS LEADERSHIP AND AMBIDEXTROUS LEARNING ON TEAM INNOVATIONS

As enterprises and other types of organizations are facing complex and changing internal and external environments, it is increasingly difficult for a single leadership behavior to maintain the organization's sustainable competitive advantage. Scholars and enterprises have extensively studied the application of the "both/and" dual management thinking characteristics. Simultaneously, the team not only enhances innovation performance using a single learning model, but also strategically allocates resources to achieve a balance between dual learning, thereby enhancing innovation performance. Team leaders often influence the interactive behavior of team members, as learning behavior fosters communication, cooperation, and joint decision-making among team members. Due to limited energy, leaders often treat employees differently based on their abilities and contributions to the team, thus forming differences in the exchange relationship between leaders and members of the team. However, the existence of such differences may motivate employees through a reward mechanism of more work and more pay, but it may also destroy the team atmosphere because staff perceive unfairness.

The Role of Attributes Organizational Commitment as mediators Between Work-Life Balance on Employee Performance

Work-life balance contributes to a healthy, satisfying, and successful life. An imbalance in work-life dynamics can negatively impact both employee performance and their personal lives. This study employs exchange relationship theory to explore organizational commitment as a mediating variable, which includes affective commitment, continuance commitment, and normative commitment, in the relationship between work-life balance and employee performance. The research focuses on employees of micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs) in Salatiga Regency. Data were collected through questionnaires distributed to 111 respondents, and the analysis was conducted using structural equation modeling. The findings reveal that affective and continuance commitments are crucial in linking work-life balance to employee performance. In contrast, normative commitment does not significantly influence this relationship. Theoretically, social exchange theory highlights that continuance commitment is a key mediator in the connection between work-life balance and employee performance.

Time after time: optimizing individuals’ experience of work through leaders’ facilitation of employee flow

ABSTRACT We examine the nexus of leadership and flow through the lens of two inherently positive psychological leadership approaches. In so doing, we examine how leaders can craft conditions to make work more conducive to followers’ flow, and the beneficial effects this has on well-being and performance. Data were collected from 40 employees who completed an initial survey and subsequent daily surveys over two weeks (273 data points). Results from hierarchical linear modeling (level-1 days; level-2 persons) suggest that transformational leaders and leader-member exchange (LMX) relationships impact employees’ work characteristics, subsequently impacting daily flow. In turn, followers’ daily flow predicted daily psychological well-being and performance on subsequent days, further evidencing the downstream importance of flow-facilitative leader behaviors. Both transformational leadership and LMX were also found to predict psychological well-being through leaders’ impact on flow preconditions and flow itself in a full multi-stage mediation model.

When work–life balance fails to boost organizational citizenship behaviors: the moderating role of leader–member exchange

PurposeSupporting employees’ work–life balance (WLB) has been a standard human resource management practice, thus the concern is now shifted toward its outcomes. The present study predicts that while WLB can boost organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs), this positive effect may depend on the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX) relationships. The study seeks evidence to clarify how the WLB–OCBs relationship can be moderated by the LMX quality.Design/methodology/approachA sample of 216 frontline employees in New Zealand was used to test two moderation models using SPSS, AMOS and PROCESS macro.FindingsWLB was found to have substantial effects on OCBs-individual (OCBs-I) and OCBs-organization (OCBs-O) if the quality of LMX was high. Under low LMX quality, however, WLB failed to boost OCBs-I and OCBs-O. Thus, the influence of WLB on OCBs seems to be conditional on the leader–subordinate relationship as a boundary factor.Practical implicationsSupporting low-LMX-quality employees to balance their work–life roles seems insufficient to push OCBs. Managers and organizations need to improve the quality of leader–subordinate relationships to unblock the desired effects of WLB toward OCBs, and, ultimately, organizational effectiveness and performance.Originality/valueThe findings extend the research stream around the boundary impact of LMX relationships on the employees’ WLB – OCBs link in which the OCBs construct was especially examined in terms of OCBs-I and OCBs-O.

Dual‐Cation Activation of N‐Enriched Porous Carbons Improves Control of CO2 and N2 Adsorption Thermodynamics for Selective CO2 Capture

AbstractPorous carbons have potential to facilitate energy‐efficient separation of CO2 from post‐combustion flue gas. However, the complicated interplay between chemical and textural properties has prevented a comprehensive understanding of selective CO2 adsorption. This study demonstrates how dual cation activation of carbons serves as a synthetic platform to help modulate porosity independent of nitrogen content. For samples derived from nitrogen‐poor precursors, surface areas deviated significantly (2200–4500 m2 g−1) at a constant total nitrogen content (2.3 ± 0.3 at %). Surface area changed less for samples derived from nitrogen‐rich precursors (400–675 m2 g−1 at 23.1 ± 0.1 at % N). Rigorous structure‐function and thermodynamic analysis of these carbons not only helped to uncover the nature of the different adsorption sites, but also established a fundamental linear free energy exchange relationship. This coupled with material property correlations informed the properties that facilitated selective capture of CO2. Critically, for these physisorptive carbons, selectivity is almost entirely a function of relative porosity and chemical adsorbent‐adsorbate interactions play a negligible role.

Social Exchanges in Family Businesses: A Review and Future Research Agenda

Different social exchange relationships among family members and between family and non-family stakeholders influence individual, group, and family-firm outcomes. Although many studies provide insights into social exchange relationships in family businesses, these studies are scattered across multiple literatures. Using the lens of social exchange theory, we review and organize 74 such studies. After discussing what is known and what gaps remain, we juxtapose our review with new theorizing about social exchanges to elicit research opportunities for family business research and for leveraging the family business context to “give back” to social exchange theory.

Actions speak louder than words: The adaptive use of behavioral repair strategies on trust recovery

While trust is the cornerstone of marketing exchange relationships, even the best salespeople can damage a buyer's trust. Drawing on the relational selling literature, we hypothesize how a salesperson's repair strategies (words and actions) shape a buyer's perceptions of fairness after the buyer's trust has been damaged. We contend that behavioral repair strategies will be more effective than verbal repair strategies in increasing relational fairness, providing a reliable signal of whether the salesperson can be trusted again. We also argue that the efficacy of various behavioral repair strategies depends on the buyer's perceptions of the salesperson's level of culpability for damaging the buyer's trust. These behavioral repair strategies have positive relational implications for how the buyer perceives both the salesperson and the selling firm. A field survey results with 204 professional buyers and an experiment with 308 professional buyers provide evidence for our theory-based assertions.

Putting workers’ safety front and center: Employee-organization exchange and employee safety performance

Introduction: The global occupational accident situation remains severe. As enhancing employee safety performance constitutes a crucial part of accident prevention and safety management, the study aims to examine, from an employment relationship perspective, the cognitive, motivational, and behavioral mechanisms through which employee-organization exchange (EOX), as a social exchange type of employment relationship, can affect employee safety performance. Method: Data were collected from 672 subordinates and their immediate 100 supervisors in three large manufacturing firms in Guangdong province, China. Results: The results shows that: (1) EOX has a positive effect on employees’ safety risk perception, psychological ownership of safety promotion, and safety communication; (2) safety risk perception, psychological ownership of safety promotion and safety communication (as cognitive, motivational and behavioral mechanisms) mediate the relationship between EOX and safety performance (both safety compliance and safety participation); and (3) management commitment to safety moderates the direct effect of EOX on safety risk perception, psychological ownership of safety promotion, and safety communication, and its indirect effect on two forms of safety performance via the three mediating mechanisms. The moderating effect and moderated indirect effect are stronger when management commits more to safety. The study contributes to the employee safety literature. Practical Applications: Employers should establish a long-term oriented social exchange relationship with their employees for effective safety management.

Friend or foe in the eyes of the beholder? How and when LMX increases and decreases workplace ostracism

PurposeThis study aims to build on social comparison theory to develop a theoretical model of leader–member exchange (LMX) relationship to workplace ostracism through perceived organizational status by coworkers and envy. This study further proposes that warmth and competence may potentially moderate these two indirect effects.Design/methodology/approachThis study tested the hypotheses in a battery manufacturing company located in South China by a survey of 216 employees organized in 55 work teams, using different sources. Additionally, the authors conduct two online vignette experiments to test this study’s mediation, proving the causality.FindingsThe authors found that high-level LMX leads to both envy and perceived organizational status by coworkers, which results in a mixed blessing on workplace ostracism toward the employee with high-level LMX. The focal employee’s warmth and competence moderate these indirect relationships.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors use LMX to explore antecedents of workplace ostracism and explain how and when these focal employees suffer workplace ostracism from their coworkers. The authors extend the research on LMX by examining the interpersonal risk of being a focal employee. The authors discover two critical boundary conditions – warmth and competence.Practical implicationsThis study suggests that it is important to balance the level of the differential LMX; appropriately endorsing other members is a good way to avoid eliciting envy and opposition. Meanwhile, person-oriented citizenship behaviors such as demonstrations of concern or help may shortly build up an employee’s warm impression on their coworkers.Originality/valueBy discovering the bright and dark sides of LMX, this paper has the potential to advance theories on LMX and workplace ostracism. Therefore, the authors believe the current research will have an important impact on relevant research in the future.

Does B2B salespeople’s love of money attitude mediate the relationships between a growth mindset, a fixed mindset, grit, and job performance?

Purpose To most people, money is a motivator, which is robustly true for salespeople. A high love of money attitude predicts university students’ poor academic performance in a business course and cheating in laboratory experiments and multiple panel studies, but money (income) itself does not predict dishonesty. Extrinsic reward undermines intrinsic motivation. Very little research has incorporated the grit construct in the sales literature and explored the relationship between grit and the love of money. Further, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset may also impact salespeople’s job performance. This study aims to explore a brand-new theoretical structural equation model (SEM) and investigate the relationships between individual characteristics (growth and fixed mindsets and grit orientation) and job performance directly and indirectly through a mediator – salespeople’s love of money attitude. Design/methodology/approach This study uses Qualtrics and collects data from 330 business-to-business (B2B) salespeople across several industries in the USA. This study uses a formative SEM model to test this study’s hypotheses. Findings First, there are significant correlations among grit, a growth mindset and a fixed mindset, revealing no construct duplication or redundancy. Second, both a growth mindset and grit indirectly enhance job performance through the love of money attitude – a mediator, offering a brand-new discovery. Third, counter-intuitively, a growth mindset and grit do not directly improve job performance. Fourth, grit is significantly and negatively related to the love of money attitude, adding a new twist to this study’s theoretical model. Fifth, a fixed mindset undermines job performance directly but is unrelated to the love of money. Overall, B2B salespeople’s love of money attitude (employee demand) undermines sales personnel’s self-reported job performance (organization demand) in the organization and employee’s supply and demand exchange relationship. Originality/value The findings reveal that a growth mindset, a fixed mindset and grit contribute differently to sales personnel’s love of money attitude and job performance in this study’s theoretical model. The love of money serves as a mediator. A commonly accepted belief is that money is a motivator. Money (income) itself and the love of money attitude are two separate constructs. This study’s novel discoveries provide the essential missing monetary-aspirations-to-job-performance link in the literature – ardent monetary aspiration undermines self-reported job performance. This study offers inspiration to help decision-makers make happy, healthy and wealthy decisions and improve performance.

Avatar effect of AI‐enabled virtual streamers on consumer purchase intention in e‐commerce livestreaming

AbstractIn recent years, digital avatars employed as virtual streamers are experiencing a surge in popularity in e‐commerce livestreaming. However, the influence of the avatars' anthropomorphic features on their effectiveness as virtual streamers remains unclear. This study investigates the avatar effect of artificial intelligence‐enabled virtual streamers, wherein their form and behavioral realism interactively affect consumer purchase intention. Three lab experiments with 604 participants were conducted to test this effect and its underlying mechanism and boundary conditions. Based on the findings, behavioral realism positively affects consumer purchase intention only when the virtual streamers' form realism is low. Parasocial interactions underpin this avatar effect, which only holds when consumers exhibit a communal relationship norm orientation. When consumers possess an exchange relationship norm orientation, the effect of behavioral realism becomes positive regardless of the level of form realism. Overall, our study proposes an avatar effect in livestreaming, and extends the literature by offering insights on the interactive effect of the anthropomorphic features of human‐like avatars (as virtual streamers) on the effectiveness of e‐commerce livestreaming. By revealing the mechanisms and boundary conditions of this effect, our conclusions offer guidance for companies in developing appropriate combinations of form and behavioral realism for the avatars of virtual streams while considering consumer characteristics.

Enhancing flight attendants’ well-being: exploring the impact of social exchange relationships and job crafting

Enhancing flight attendants’ well-being: exploring the impact of social exchange relationships and job crafting

Leader support for recovery: A multi‐level approach to employee psychological detachment from work

AbstractThis research examines the role of leaders for employee recovery. We hypothesize that leader support for recovery (empathy for recovery, respect for boundaries, and role modelling) relates positively to employees' psychological detachment from work during non‐work time that, in turn, predicts well‐being outcomes. We argue that leader support for recovery can only be effective when the leader‐member exchange (LMX) relationship quality is sufficiently high. In a series of scale‐development and scale‐validation studies, we demonstrated the construct and content validity of a new measure of leader support for recovery. We tested our hypotheses with diary data collected from 152 employees. Respect for boundaries was positively related to employees' psychological detachment from work during non‐work time at the person level. Psychological detachment from work was positively related to low emotional exhaustion and a high morning recovery state, both at the person and the day level. LMX moderated the relationship between leader support for recovery (overall measure), empathy for recovery, and respect for boundaries on the one hand and psychological detachment on the other hand, such that the relationships became non‐significant when LMX was lower. The study suggests that leaders in high‐quality relationships can contribute to employee recovery – a process that helps to maintain employee well‐being.