Employment Relationship

During the last fifteen years, researchers have shown increasing interest in the exchange relationship between the employee and employer. Until now, the literatures examining the employment relationships have tended to operate either from the employer or the employee perspectives and have typically approached the topic from a single discipline be it psychology, sociology, human resource management, organizational behavior, industrial relations, law or economics.Failure to consider multiple perspectives has created a fragmented understanding of the employment relationship. This volume incorporates social exchange, economics, industrial relations, legal, and justice theory perspectives. In addition, chapters have been written by authors that reflect the full international body of research on the employment relationship and provide information about legislation, governance, and cultural differences across nations. The conceptual and empirical foundations for understanding the employment relationship from these different theoretical perspectives facilitates theestablishment of the convergent and discriminant validity of the psychological contract and the investments-contributions models of the employment relationship in relation to related exchange constructs such as perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange. The interdisciplinary andinternational nature of the employment relationship literature reviewed and integrated in this volume provides a richness that is rarely available in studies of the workplace, and many new and provocative ideas are presented in this volume. Bringing these perspectives together provides greater comprehensiveness, clarity, synthesis and understanding of the employment relationship. This volume is designed to promote the thinking of scholars in the employment relationship area. It will also have relevance to practitioners primarily through the implications of this multi-disciplinary perspective. The volume offers implications of a holistic, multi-disciplinary, international, conceptualization of the employment relationship for theory development, empirical research and measurement, and policy.

This is by far the most comprehensive, authoritative, and scholarly work of a extraordinarily complex phenomenon from multiple perspectives and multiple disciplines. It is a must read for anyone interested in understanding the why, how, when and the so what in the relationship between employees and the firm. It is rich with new insights for both the researchers and the managers, a truly outstanding contribution to the field.

Jacqueline A-M. Coyle-Shapiro is a reader in Organizational Behavior in the Department of Industrial Relations at the London School of Economics where she received her PhD. Her current research interests include the employment relationship, psychological contracts, organizational citizenship behavior, and organizational change. She has published in such journals as the European Journal of Work and Organizational Psychology, the Journal of AppliedBehavioral Science and the Journal of Vocational Behavior. She is Consulting Editor, and has served as Guest Editor, for the Journal of Organziational Behavior.Lynn M. Shore is a Professor of Management and Senior Associate in the W.T. Beebe Institute of Personnel and Employment Relations at Georgia State University. She is also a Visiting Professor at the Graduate School of Management at the University of California, Irvine. She is an Associate Editor for the Journal of Applied Psychology, has served as Guest Editor for the Journal of Organizational Behavior, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of OrganizationalBehavior and Human Resource Management Review.M. Susan Taylor is Deans Professor of Human Resources and Director of the Center for Human Capital, Innovation, and Technology (HCIT) at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland at College Park. She received her Ph.D from Purdue University and is currently working the areas of organizational justice, strategic human resource management, the employee-organization relationship, and managerial career transitions. Taylor has published in such journals as the Academy ofManagement Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, the Journal of Applied Psychology, Organizational Science, Personnel Psychology, and Orgnaizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes.Lois E. Tetrick is Director of the Industrial and Organizational Psychology Programme at the George Mason University. She is Associate Editor of the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology, and serves on the editorial board of the Journal of Organizational Behavior. Her research has focused primarily on individuals' perceptions of the employment relationship and their reactions to these perceptions including issues of occupational health and safety, occupational stress, andorganizational/union commitment.