The roles of perceived organizational support, social exchange, and economic *exchange in employment relationships in China

Past research on employee-organization exchange relationships mostly used perceived organizational support (POS) to represent social exchange relationship. Such approach confuses the conceptual meanings of POS and social exchange, and excludes economic exchange in the analysis of employment relationships. The roles of POS, social exchange, and economic exchange have not been properly specified and examined in a conceptual model. In addition, research on POS focuses on procedural justice and hence neglects the roles of other types of justice perceptions (e.g., distributive justice and informational justice) as antecedents of employees' outcomes. This limits our full understanding of the determinants, process, and consequences of exchange relationships between employees and their organization. To fill the above research voids, this study develops a comprehensive model to examine the relationships among organizational justice, POS, social and economic exchanges, and three major employees' outcomes (i.e., affective commitment, in-role performance, and organizational citizenship behavior). In view of the unique characteristics and dynamic changes in employment relationships, China has been chosen as the research site.;Data of this study were collected from 239 supervisor-subordinate dyads working in a foreign-invested enterprise in China. Structural equation modeling and hierarchical multiple regression analyses were employed to test the hypotheses. Results showed that procedural justice, informational justice, and distributive justice contributed positively to POS. POS was positively related to social exchange, and negatively related to economic exchange. Furthermore, both social exchange and economic exchange acted as the mediators on the relationship between POS with affective commitment, but not on the relationship between POS with in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior. Discussions are made on the study's findings as well as its theoretical and practical implications. Limitations of the study and future research directions are also suggested.