Does an employer "owe" its staff for their efforts, or is the relationship one of a shared give and take? The way that question is answered can affect an employee's performance, and it's not only their own answer that matters. If their coworkers fall in the former camp, then that, too, can have a negative effect on the employee.

Riki Takeuchi and Kin Fai Ellick Wong of HKUST and Seokhwa Yun investigate the extent to which an employee feels their efforts should depend on their treatment by their employer - called exchange ideology - and find those with a strong exchange ideology hold negative views and feel they are receiving less than they deserve. They can have a strong influence on their colleagues, particularly those with a weaker, more conciliatory exchange ideology, and they tend to push their colleagues' views of the organization downwards.

The effects are seen in a study of 374 triads of employee-coworker-manager in a variety of industries in Hong Kong.

"When examining social exchange quality, scholars typically focus on the exchange quality between the employee and the organization, or the employee and the manager. But our results show organizations need to recognize that a coworker can shape the employee's perceptions, attitudes and behavior, especially considering that an increasing number of organizations have adopted flatter organizational and team-based structures," they say.

Their study looks both at the quality of social exchange in the workplace and its consequences. It confirms that people with a strong exchange ideology feel less obligation to their organization and are less likely to appreciate the value of long-term relationships. They are also more likely to have a negative relationship with their supervisors.

The authors also find that a strong exchange ideology affects task performance, such that people with a strong ideology are, for instance, less likely to invest more efforts into work to improve their task performance.

Coworkers' attitudes overshadow the effects in all these situations, particularly because of their tendency towards negativity. Negative feelings and events have been shown to be more salient, dominant, potent and generally more efficacious than positive ones, say the authors.

"A coworker with a strong exchange ideology weakens the relationship between the focal employee's exchange ideology and the quality of his/her social exchanges due to negativity bias and social judgment effects. Furthermore, we show that the coworker weakens the positive relationships between felt obligation and task performance, and the relationship with their supervisor and task performance," they say.

The impacts on performance are an obvious concern for organizations. The authors say it may be beneficial for firms to include social exchange ideology in selection assessment and aim to appoint individuals who possess a weaker exchange ideology if all other qualifications are equal. They can also survey their workforce and if they find a strong exchange ideology is present, they can seek to manage it, for instance by promoting and communicating internally the favorable working conditions at the firm as compared to those of competitors.

However, "it might be difficult to change an individual's belief or exchange ideology. There could be other ways such as empowerment, organizational justice or a positive culture/climate to increase such things as felt obligation and minimize the negative impact of an individual's strong exchange ideology," they add.