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Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

This paper theorizes the role of shared responsibility in the development of affective group attachments, interweaving ideas from social exchange and social identity theories. The main arguments are that (1) people engaged in task interaction experience positive or negative emotions from those interactions; (2) tasks that promote more sense of shared responsibility across members lead people to attribute their individual emotions to groups or organizations; and (3) group attributions of own emotions are the basis for stronger or weaker group attachments. The paper suggests that social categorization and structural interdependence promote group attachments by producing task interactions that have positive emotional effects on those involved.

This chapter analyzes the ways that individuals develop person-to-group ties. The chapter reviews the development and evidentiary basis of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments.

We survey twenty-five years of published literature on these theories, and review unpublished theoretical tests and extensions that are currently in progress.

The research program has grown substantially over the past twenty-five years to encompass more varied and diverse phenomena. The findings indicate that structural interdependencies, repeated exchanges, and a sense of shared responsibility are key conditions for people to develop affective ties to groups, organizations, and even nation-states.

The research implies that if people are engaged in joint tasks, they attribute positive or negative feelings from those tasks to their local groups (teams, departments) and/or to larger organizations (companies, communities). To date, empirical tests have focused on microlevel processes.

Our work has practical implications for how managers or supervisors organize tasks and work routines in a way to maximize group or organizational commitment.

This research helps to understand problems of fragmentation that are faced by decentralized organizations and also how these can be overcome.

The chapter represents the most complete and comprehensive review of the theory of relational cohesion, the affect theory of social exchange, and the theory of social commitments to date.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of exchange modes – negotiated, reciprocal, generalized, and productive – on inter-employee knowledge sharing.

Based on the affect theory of social exchange, a theoretical model was developed and empirically tested using a survey of 691 employees from 15 North American credit unions.

The negotiated mode of knowledge exchange, i.e. when a knowledge contributor explicitly establishes reciprocation conditions with a recipient, develops negative knowledge sharing attitude. The reciprocal mode, i.e. when a knowledge donor assumes that a receiver will reciprocate, has no effect on knowledge sharing attitude. The generalized exchange form, i.e. when a knowledge contributor believes that other organizational members may reciprocate, is weakly related to knowledge sharing attitude. The productive exchange mode, i.e. when a knowledge provider assumes he or she is a responsible citizen within a cooperative enterprise, strongly facilitates the development of knowledge sharing attitude, which, in turn, leads to knowledge sharing intentions.

To facilitate inter-employee knowledge sharing, managers should focus on the development of positive knowledge sharing culture when all employees believe they contribute to a common good instead of expecting reciprocal benefits.

This is one of the first studies to apply the affect theory of social exchange to study knowledge sharing.

Allyn Young′s lectures, as recorded by the young Nicholas Kaldor, survey the historical roots of the subject from Aristotle through to the modern neo‐classical writers. The focus throughout is on the conditions making for economic progress, with stress on the institutional developments that extend and are extended by the size of the market. Organisational changes that promote the division of labour and specialisation within and between firms and industries, and which promote competition and mobility, are seen as the vital factors in growth. In the absence of new markets, inventions as such play only a minor role. The economic system is an inter‐related whole, or a living “organon”. It is from this perspective that micro‐economic relations are analysed, and this helps expose certain fallacies of composition associated with the marginal productivity theory of production and distribution. Factors are paid not because they are productive but because they are scarce. Likewise he shows why Marshallian supply and demand schedules, based on the “one thing at a time” approach, cannot adequately describe the dynamic growth properties of the system. Supply and demand cannot be simply integrated to arrive at a picture of the whole economy. These notes are complemented by eleven articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica which were published shortly after Young′s sudden death in 1929.

An ongoing debate in social exchange theory centers on the benefits and drawbacks of reciprocal versus negotiated exchange for dyadic relationships. Lawler's affect theory of social exchange argues that the interdependent nature of negotiated exchange enhances commitment to exchange relations, whereas Molm's reciprocity theory suggests that reciprocal exchange fosters more integrative bonds than the bilateral agreements of negotiation. In this chapter, we use data from in-depth, semi-structured interviews with poor and working-class couples to explore the effects of both types of exchange on relationship satisfaction. Consistent with reciprocity theory, we find that couples who engage in reciprocal exchange are happier and more satisfied with their relationship than those who explicitly negotiate the division of labor in their households and that the expressive value of these exchanges play an important role in this outcome. However, reciprocity is not enough. As predicted by the affect theory, the couples with the best outcomes also perceive supporting a family as a highly interdependent task, regardless of their family structure. Our results point to the complementary nature of these two theories in a natural social setting.

This paper seeks to reconcile two very different views existing in the literature concerning how exchange and demand affect the magnitude of commodity values. Traditionally, value is considered to be created in production and subsequently realized in exchange. An alternative monetary approach posits that exchange itself contributes to the determination of commodity values. Proponents of each view claim that significant parts of Marx’s theory of value are compromised if their interpretation of the role of exchange is not adopted. Drawing on the work of Rosdolsky and Roberts, I argue that it is necessary to distinguish between the effects of exchange and demand. Exchange acts to reduce concrete, private labor to abstract social labor, while demand affects the magnitude of labor considered “socially necessary” in the sense of being expended in accordance with existing social need. I identify a new category of exchange value – the market-price of production – and use it to explain how changes in demand act to redistribute value across industries by affecting the magnitude of abstract labor considered to be socially necessary. In this way the major claim of the two approaches to exchange are reconciled. The magnitude of value is fully determined in production. At the same time monetary exchange effects, or brings about, a social division of labor by reducing concrete, private labor to abstract social labor and by distributing value according to social need as expressed by effective demand.

Relationships are socially constructed by companies in interaction. This study explains the dynamic character of business-to-business relationships with the aid of rules theory, a theory borrowed from the communications field. Two forms of rules are identified: constitutive rules guide the interpretation of the other's acts, and regulative rules guide the appropriate response to the interpreted act. Rules theory asserts that companies act as if applying these rules. Relationships provide not only the context in which the parties’ acts are performed but are also the result of such acts. Thus, relationships are potentially reshaped each time one party performs an act and the other party gives meaning to that act and reacts.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Accumulating evidence suggests that Team-member exchange (TMX) influences employee work attitudes and behaviours separately from the effects of leader-member exchange (LMX). In particular, little is known of the effect of LMX differentiation (in-group versus out-group) as a process of social exchange that can, in turn, affect TMX quality. To explore this phenomenon, this chapter presents a multi-level model of TMX in organizations, which incorporates LMX differentiation, team identification, team member affect at the individual level, and fairness of LMX differentiation and affective climate at the group-level. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our model for theory, research, and practice.