Social Exchange at Work and Emotional Exhaustion: The Role of Personality1

Abstract

Unbalanced social exchange processes at work have been linked to emotional exhaustion. In addition to organizational factors, individual differences are important determinants of reciprocity perceptions. This study explored whether broad and narrow personality traits were associated with perceived lack of reciprocity (organizational and interpersonal level), and whether personality moderated the relationship between reciprocity and emotional exhaustion, in a sample of 322 civil servants. Extraversion, agreeableness, emotional stability, internal locus of control, and Type-A behavior predicted reciprocity. The relationship between perceived lack of reciprocity with the organization and emotional exhaustion was stronger for individuals reporting lower negative affect or higher extraversion. These findings highlight the importance of personality for understanding perceived reciprocity at work and its impact on emotional exhaustion. Reciprocity, Emotional Exhaustion and Personality 3Perceived inequity has often been presented as a determinant of ill health, poor wellbeing, and reduced motivation (Masterson, Lewis, Goldman, &Taylor, 2000;Taris, Kalimo, & Schaufeli, 2002). Specifically, investigations of the role of social exchange relationships present a major trend in the study of burnout. It has been noted that cognitive and social processes may underline the experience of stress and burnout (for a theoretical review, see Halbesleben & Buckley, 2004). The role of perceived inequity for burnout has been acknowledged since the early 1990's and continues to be of major research interest (e.g., Buunk & Schaufeli, 1993;Disley, Hatton, & Dagnan, 2009). A number of social exchange theories, such as the Dual-Level Social Exchange model (DLSE, Schaufeli, van Dierendonck, & van Gorp, 1996), have been proposed in order to explain this link. However, research on the role of individual differences in perceived lack of reciprocity and on the relationship between perceived reciprocity and burnout is not systematic. The present study aims to contribute to this field of enquiry by investigating a wide range of personality traits. We start by examining current conceptual and empirical work before developing specific hypotheses on the relationships between perceived lack of reciprocity, personality, and emotional exhaustion.Equity theory (Adams, 1965) suggests that individuals seek reciprocity in social relationships, expecting that their investments and gains in a relationship will be proportional to the investments and gains of the other party in the relationship (interpersonal reciprocity).Furthermore, Pritchard (1969) introduced internal standards to the perception of reciprocity and argued that individuals would also expect their own perceived gains to be proportional to their perceived investments (intrapersonal reciprocity). This quality of exchange can be expressed by the ratio of investments to exchange outcomes between the two parties in a relationship (Adams, 1965). Equity theory is one of the most influential th...

The Predominant Factors Affecting Frontline Employees’ Engagement: Case of the Lebanese Service Sector

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Role of Personality in the Formation of Psychological Contract

“…Conscientious people are described as punctual, well organized (Petrou, Kouvonen & Maria, 2011), methodological, dependable and risk-averse (Goldberg, 1990). Conscientiousness is positively correlated with performance and job satisfaction (Barrick & Mount, 1991; Judge, Heller & Mount, 2002; Judge, Higgins, Thoresen & Barrick, 1999), achievement motivation and task accomplishment rather than with economic rewards (Stewart, 1996).…”

Perceived supervisory support and service recovery performance

“…The support from their supervisors, such as providing resources and information to facilitate their job, could make it easy for extroverts to perform better in service recovery. Moreover, Petrou et al (2011) found that 302 APJBA 8,3 extroverts are willing to perform better when they perceived an equality exchange relationship between them and the employer are existed in the workplace. Hence, it is expected that employees who are high in extraversion are likely to perform better in terms of service recovery after they have received support from their immediate supervisors.…”

“…supervisors and management, it should induce in them the desire to support the organization (Blau, 1964;Eisenberger et al, 1986). Petrou et al (2011) argued that despite these findings, personality traits could lead to unexpected and adverse outcomes. Consistently, research by Ashill et al (2009) on service behaviors showed that personality traits can influence employees' performance in dealing with service failure.…”

“…Consequently, there are calls for research to examine the personality traits in the SPC model, i.e. how personality traits could explain variance in employee perceptions of internal service quality and their service behaviors (Kamdar and Van Dyne, 2007;Petrou et al, 2011). In particular, the service recovery literature has yet considered personality traits as an influencer that moderates the relationship between management support and employees' service recovery performance (SRP).…”