Exchange Relationships at Work

The authors investigate how perceptions of the exchange relationships among coworkers in traditional work group settings are related to supervisor evaluations of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). Perceptions of coworker relationships were collected from employees at six companies representing a range of industries, with the employee's supervisor completing a measure of OCB for each employee. Using matched data for 235 respondents, the regression analyses showed that team-member exchange (TMX) was related to supervisor ratings of an aggregate measure of OCB. In addition, TMX was related to four of the five subdimensions of OCB: altruism, conscientiousness, civic virtue, and courtesy. The results indicate the strong influence of social exchange and the norm of reciprocity for engaging in OCB.