Alternative approaches to the employee-organization relationship: Does investment in employees pay off?

This article describes four approaches to the employee-organization relationship, as defined from the employer's perspective. An empirical study of employees from ten companies found support for the basic hypothesis that employee responses differ under the four types of relationship. In general, employees performed better on core tasks, demonstrated more citizenship behavior, and expressed a higher level of affective commitment to an employer when they worked in an overinvestment (by the employer) or mutual investment relationship than when they worked in a quasi-spot-contract or underinvestment relationship. These results were obtained even after we controlled for several other variables that could affect employee performance and attitudes.