A Study Of The Relationship Between Employment Relation Types And Organizational Trust

Tetrick (2004) pointed out in his research that employee-organization relationship (EOR) could be understood from two perspectives:the content and process. With content research we have inducement-contribution model, which has been studied by many scholars (Tsui et al,1997; Wang et al,2003; Zhang,2004; Hom et al.2009; Chi,2009). With process research we have exchange relationship, which has been topic of papers (Westwood, Chan,&Linstead,2004; Parzefall,2008). We have merely see content research and process research in the same framework, however, we are clear that these two parts come together, influencing each other. So our research is to bring them two into one framework.EOR and reciprocity are based on the same theory, which is social exchange theory. In this research, the author checks the relationship between EOR, reciprocity and organizational trust. Besides, this paper try to test the mediating role of reciprocity in the relationship between EOR and organizational trust, opening the black box never checked before. We hope this can further our understanding of EOR and its impact on corporate management.Firstly, we have theory review on EOR, reciprocity and organizational trust; Secondly, we try to reason the mediating role of reciprocity; Thirdly, we designed questionnaire based on western mature scales and collected1127valid of them, which proved to be statistically perfect in scale and factor analysis; Finally, we analyzed data with software SPSS16.0. The results support the hypotheses with following conclusions.(1) The level of organizational trust is significantly different under different types of EOR. Organizational trust is highest under mutual-investment EOR, lower under over-investment EOR, next under under-investment EOR, lowest under quasi-spot contract.(2) Organizational trust is significantly different under different forms of reciprocity. General reciprocity and balanced reciprocity are positively related to organizational trust; while negative reciprocity is negatively related to organizational trust.(3) Reciprocity manifests different forms under different types of EORs. General and balanced reciprocity is higher under mutual investment EOR; balanced reciprocity is lower under quasi-spot contract; general reciprocity lower under under-investment EOR; and negative reciprocity lower under over-investment EOR.(4) Reciprocity mediates the relationship between EOR and organizational trust.That means, mutual investment EOR has positive relation with organizational trust through general and balanced reciprocity. Quasi-spot contract has negative relation with organizational trust because it failed in balanced reciprocity. And finally, under investment EOR is so negatively related to general reciprocity that it corresponds to very low organizational trust.