The 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 havetypically 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. Thisvolume 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, governanceand cultural differences across nations. The conceptual and empirical foundations for understanding the employment relationship from these different theoretical perspectives facilitates the establishment of the convergent and discriminant validity of the psychological contract and theinvestments-contributions models of the employment relationship in relation to related exchange constructs such as perceived organizational support and leader-member exchange. The interdisciplinary and international nature of the employment relationship literature reviewed and integrated in thisvolume 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 volumeis designed to promote the thinking of scholars on the employment relationship area. It will also have relevance to practitioners primarily through the implications of this multi-disciplinary perspective.

This volume draws on social exchange, economics, industrial relations, legal, and justice theories to explore and extend our understanding of the employment relationship. Bringing together these different perspectives provides greater clarity, synthesis and understanding of the employment relationship.

The Nature of the Employment Relationship from Social Exchange, Justice, Industrial Relations, Legal, and Economic Literatures