IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/inm/ororsc/v25y2014i1p73-92.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Status and the True Believer: The Impact of Psychological Contracts on Social Status Attributions of Friendship and Influence

Author

Listed:
  • John B. Bingham

    (Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602)

  • James B. Oldroyd

    (Fisher College of Business, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210)

  • Jeffery A. Thompson

    (Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602)

  • Jeffrey S. Bednar

    (Marriott School of Management, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah 84602)

  • J. Stuart Bunderson

    (Olin Business School, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri 63130)

Abstract

This article examines how the fulfillment of obligations viewed as essential to an individual’s relationship with his or her employer (i.e., the psychological contract) affects attributions of friendship and influence within the organization. Drawing on social exchange theory and self-categorization theory, we hypothesize that individuals who fulfill relational obligations will receive more friendship nominations from others in the organization, whereas individuals who fulfill ideological obligations will receive more influence nominations. In contrast, we hypothesize that those who fulfill transactional obligations will receive fewer friendship and influence nominations. We also predict that individuals who hold similar beliefs about their relationship with the organization will be more likely to nominate similar coworkers as friends or as influential in the organization, and that ideological contract similarity may provide a more compelling rationale for influence nomination than transactional or relational contract similarity. We tested our framework in two samples and find support for these general hypotheses. Our findings suggest that positions of status and influence in ideologically oriented organizations may accrue to “true believers,” i.e., those whose contracts with the organization are construed in ideological terms. Accordingly, this study has important implications for research on psychological contracts and social influence.

Suggested Citation

  • John B. Bingham & James B. Oldroyd & Jeffery A. Thompson & Jeffrey S. Bednar & J. Stuart Bunderson, 2014. "Status and the True Believer: The Impact of Psychological Contracts on Social Status Attributions of Friendship and Influence," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 25(1), pages 73-92, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:73-92
    DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2013.0827
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2013.0827
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1287/orsc.2013.0827?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hinds, Pamela J. & Carley, Kathleen M. & Krackhardt, David & Wholey, Doug, 2000. "Choosing Work Group Members: Balancing Similarity, Competence, and Familiarity," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 81(2), pages 226-251, March.
    2. Peter V. Marsden & Noah E. Friedkin, 1993. "Network Studies of Social Influence," Sociological Methods & Research, , vol. 22(1), pages 127-151, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gaëlle Angelergues, 2021. "L'engagement "idéologique" : nouvelles voies conceptuelles de la théorie du contrat psychologique et enjeux pour la RSE," Post-Print hal-03390281, HAL.
    2. Anna Pereverzieva, 2019. "A Methodical Approach to the Assessment of Human Resources` Interactions," Journal of Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation, Fundacja Upowszechniająca Wiedzę i Naukę "Cognitione", vol. 15(1), pages 171-204.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Sébastien Damart, 2010. "A Cognitive Mapping Approach to Organizing the Participation of Multiple Actors in a Problem Structuring Process," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 19(5), pages 505-526, September.
    2. Starling David Hunter & Henrik Bentzen & Jan Taug, 2020. "On the “missing link” between formal organization and informal social structure," Journal of Organization Design, Springer;Organizational Design Community, vol. 9(1), pages 1-20, December.
    3. Zhang, Yin & Lu, Baozhou & Zheng, Haidong, 2020. "Can buzzing bring business? Social interactions, network centrality and sales performance: An empirical study on business-to-business communities," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 112(C), pages 170-189.
    4. Segrest Purkiss, Sharon L. & Perrewe, Pamela L. & Gillespie, Treena L. & Mayes, Bronston T. & Ferris, Gerald R., 2006. "Implicit sources of bias in employment interview judgments and decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 101(2), pages 152-167, November.
    5. Lee, Sunyoung & Pitesa, Marko & Pillutla, Madan & Thau, Stefan, 2015. "When beauty helps and when it hurts: An organizational context model of attractiveness discrimination in selection decisions," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 15-28.
    6. Martine R. Haas & Sangchan Park, 2010. "To Share or Not to Share? Professional Norms, Reference Groups, and Information Withholding Among Life Scientists," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 21(4), pages 873-891, August.
    7. Katarina Zigova, 2017. "Specifying Social Weight Matrices of Researcher Networks: The Case of Academic Economists," Working Paper Series of the Department of Economics, University of Konstanz 2017-10, Department of Economics, University of Konstanz.
    8. Ruolian Fang & Blaine Landis & Zhen Zhang & Marc H. Anderson & Jason D. Shaw & Martin Kilduff, 2015. "Integrating Personality and Social Networks: A Meta-Analysis of Personality, Network Position, and Work Outcomes in Organizations," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 26(4), pages 1243-1260, August.
    9. Sylvia Keim & Andreas Klärner & Laura Bernardi, 2009. "Who is relevant? Exploring fertility relevant social networks," MPIDR Working Papers WP-2009-001, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany.
    10. Amihai Glazer, 2010. "Ideological externalities, social pressures, and political parties," Public Choice, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 53-62, July.
    11. Paulo B. Goes & Mingfeng Lin & Ching-man Au Yeung, 2014. "“Popularity Effect” in User-Generated Content: Evidence from Online Product Reviews," Information Systems Research, INFORMS, vol. 25(2), pages 222-238, June.
    12. Perry, Brea L. & Ciciurkaite, Gabriele, 2019. "Contributions of personality to social influence: Contingent associations between social network body size composition and BMI," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 224(C), pages 1-10.
    13. Nekovee, Maziar & Pinto, Jonathan, 2019. "Modeling the impact of organization structure and whistle-blowers on intra-organizational corruption contagion," Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, Elsevier, vol. 522(C), pages 339-349.
    14. Mary M. Maloney & Priti Pradhan Shah & Mary Zellmer-Bruhn & Stephen L. Jones, 2019. "The Lasting Benefits of Teams: Tie Vitality After Teams Disband," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 30(2), pages 260-279, March.
    15. Christoph Bühler & Hans-Peter Kohler, 2003. "Talking about AIDS," Demographic Research Special Collections, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Rostock, Germany, vol. 1(13), pages 397-438.
    16. Chabowski, Brian R. & Hult, G. Tomas M. & Mena, Jeannette A., 2011. "The Retailing Literature as a Basis for Franchising Research: Using Intellectual Structure to Advance Theory," Journal of Retailing, Elsevier, vol. 87(3), pages 269-284.
    17. Violet T. Ho & Laurie L. Levesque, 2005. "With a Little Help from My Friends (and Substitutes): Social Referents and Influence in Psychological Contract Fulfillment," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 16(3), pages 275-289, June.
    18. Hector G. Ceballos & Sara E. Garza & Francisco J. Cantu, 2018. "Factors influencing the formation of intra-institutional formal research groups: group prediction from collaboration, organisational, and topical networks," Scientometrics, Springer;Akadémiai Kiadó, vol. 114(1), pages 181-216, January.
    19. Mohamed Bin Abderrazek Boukhris, 2019. "Does Performance Homophily Matter in Acquisition Decisions? Evidence From Acquisition Network in the Global Electricity Industry," The Journal of Social Sciences Research, Academic Research Publishing Group, vol. 5(3), pages 715-722, 03-2019.
    20. Yili Hong & Benjamin B.M. Shao, 2021. "On Factors that Moderate the Effect of Buyer‐Supplier Experience on E‐Procurement Platforms," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 30(4), pages 1034-1051, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    social influence; psychological contracts;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:inm:ororsc:v:25:y:2014:i:1:p:73-92. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Chris Asher (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/inforea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.