The Contingent Effects Of Social Relationships On Organizational Performance

The "Social relations" are playing an increasingly important role in current recruitment,but when faced with job seekers who have social relations before the organization,such as relatives,alumni,fellow villagers or former colleagues,different organizations have different attitudes:Some are very concerned with the presence or absence of social relations,while others are not.Existing research believes that social relations have a certain impact on organizational performance:social capital theory believes that the external social relations of members in an organization brings resources to the organization and reduce organizational risks and costs to a certain extent to positively affect organizational performance;the latest research on social relations believes that the entry of social relations will strengthen the compensation sensitivity among members with social relations to affect organizational performance;even the theory of political economy believes that the entry of social relations will lead to the formation of power alliances among members with social relations and breed corruption to negatively affect organizational performance.However,regardless of the theory,it is believed that social relations have an impact on organizational performance,but it does not explain the specific path through which it affects organizational performance;and no matter which impact is applicable to any organization,it cannot explain why some organizations are very concerned and some organizations don’t care at all.Therefore,it is necessary to clarify the reasons behind this phenomenon and to clarify the differential impact of social relations on organizational performance,which provides theoretical support for organizations to make better use of social relations.This study aims to address the question of why different organizations have different attitudes towards the same social relationship.Based on the theoretical framework of social incentives,this study constructs a logical main line of "social relations-social comparison-individual behavior-organizational performance",expands individual behaviors into effort intensity and cooperation orientation,and embeds organizational task decomposability to reveal its contingency effect on the relationship between social relations and organizational performance.Specifically studied:(1)the influence of social comparison motivated by social relations under the framework of social incentives on the degree of effort and cooperation orientation after individual behavioral choice;(2)the influence of the two dimensions of individual behavioral choice on organizational performance;(3)the moderating effect of task decomposability on the relationship between individual behavioral choice and organizational performance,and further analyze the contingency impact of social relations on organizational performance on this basis.This study took 219 enterprises as the research object,used data analysis tools such as SPSS26.0 and Amos26.0,and adopted the method of multiple regression to process the obtained data to test the mediating role of individual behavior choices between social relations and organizational performance and the moderating role of task decomposability between individual behavioral choices and organizational performance.And use Bootstrap test and group regression test to test the mediating utility and moderating effect to further strengthen the reliability of the path of this paper.The main conclusions of the study are:(1)Social relationships affect organizational performance through social incentives.The entry of social relations in an organization is more likely to cause social comparison among members,and the comparison results directly affect the behavioral choices of individuals,reducing the incentive cost of the organization to a certain extent,thereby affecting organizational performance.Social incentives act as an intermediary mechanism between social relations and organizational performance.(2)Social relations positively affect the effort level and cooperation orientation of individual behavior.The result of social comparison between individuals promoted by social relations makes individuals perceive the gap between themselves and others,and motivates individuals to output a higher level of effort and cooperation orientation in order to bridge the gap,improve their abilities,and improve their relative status in the organization.Therefore,social relations positively affect the effort level and cooperation orientation of individuals.(3)Effort and cooperation orientation of individual behavior positively affect organizational performance.The higher level of effort and cooperation orientation output under the incentive of social relations means that organizational members have greater input,more communication,and more targeted problem solving and innovation in subsequent work,which is conducive to the improvement of organizational performance.Therefore,two dimensions of individual behavior positively affect organizational performance.It also further shows that it plays a mediating role between social relations and organizational performance.(4)Task decomposability has a contingency effect on the relationship between social relations and organizational performance.Individual effort and cooperation orientation have different effects on organizational performance under different task decomposability,with the increase of task decomposability,the positive impact of individual behavior choices on organizational performance will decrease.with the decrease of task decomposability,especially when the task has low decomposability or even no decomposability,the positive impact of effort level and cooperation orientation on organizational performance is enhanced.Therefore,task decomposability negatively modulates the positive relationship between individual behavioral choices and organizational performance,so based on the mediating role of individual behavioral choices,the contingency impact of task decomposability on the relationship between social relations and organizational performance can be further explained.The study revealed the contingency effect of task decomposability on social relations affecting organizational performance through individual behavior,explained the different behaviors of different organizations in the face of social relations,and provided theoretical support for organizations facing different task decomposability to optimize organizational structure and scale.