The Effects of Perceived Organizational Support and Leader-Member Exchange on Contextual Performance: A Study in the Banking Sector

Introduction

In recent years, it has been more important to observe social relations between employees in the organizations, due to increasing social exchanges and needs in the business environment. In this context, one of the most important theories in social sciences, social exchange theory, signals that if one party does a favor to another, and the other party responds by doing favor, then social exchange relationships are established (Blau, 1964). In this respect, social exchange theory designates the basis for the subject of this chapter which is investigating the effects of perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange on contextual performance of employees. It is because social exchange theory explains attitudes and behaviors of employees towards their organizations, supervisors and coworkers (Cropanzano and Mitchell, 2005).

In the organizational support, one party is the organization and the other one is employee (Eisenberger, Armeli, Rexwinkel, Lynch and Rhoades, 2001) whereas, in leader-member exchange one party is the leader and the other one is employee (Stinglhamber and Vandenberghe, 2003). On this basis, in organizational support, social exchanges are established between the employee and the organization. In leader-member exchange, social exchanges occur between the employee and his/her leader or supervisor.

According to literature review, although organizational support and leader-member exchange are different constructs, they have similar consequences. Among them the most striking ones are; organizational commitment (DeConnick and Johnson, 2009), job satisfaction (Shore and Tetrick, 1991), organizational citizenship behavior (Randall, Cropanzano, Bormann and Birjulin, 1999) and employees’ job performance (Chen, Eisenberger, Johnson, Sucharski and Aselage, 2009). There has been a little interest among scholars especially on employees’ task performance, even less interest on contextual performance. So, the aim of this study is to put forth the effects of social exchange relationships on contextual performance which is a relatively new concept in management literature and needs to be enlightened from many perspectives. In this chapter it will be figured out if there are significant effects of the social exchange relationship sources of the organization and the leader or supervisor on the contextual performance of employees which is a key component of job performance that in turn leads to organizational effectiveness.