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This paper aims to discuss the important and changing role of personal networks for transformation in Russia, and the related challenges for management. Formal institutions supporting the transformation to a market economy have been weak and Russian managers still tend to rely on personal networks. While these networks are important in all economies, they play a different role in full‐fledged market economies than in planned economies.

The paper is conceptual and is based on literature on the nature of markets, the Soviet planned economy, and the transformation process in Russia. A business network approach is used to understand markets and focus on the dynamics of overlapping business and personal networks.

Overlapping between business networks involving non‐Russian networks and between personal and business networks are important drivers of transformation. The challenges for management in Russia are both organizational and strategic, and transformation implies substantial changes in the network structures.

The authors recommend further empirical analysis of the role that the overlapping of business and personal networks plays in transformation, as well as its managerial implications.

This paper shows why firms must build business relationships during transformation that are integrated in nature and in which personal relations support the technical, logistical, financial, and knowledge exchange dimensions.

This paper challenges the dominating view of transformation, which says that market exchange is transactional, impersonal, and competition‐driven. The paper analyzes transformation in Russia as a network overlapping process in which the role of personal relations changes.

Trust is a binding force in most buyer‐supplier transactions. It is critical when uncertainty and asymmetric product information are present in the transaction of a supply chain. One of the important characteristics in developing trust among trading partners of an e‐enabled supply chain is stage‐wise trust development among partners. In the present work, alternatives for trust development among buyer and supplier have been identified. In order to evaluate the alternatives to evolve trust in an e‐enabled supply chain, a framework involving analytic networked process is proposed. It helps in synthesizing various characteristics of trust in the e‐enabled supply chain. For the illustrative example, the result indicates superiority of a community responsibility system for building on‐line trust along the e‐enabled supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how ethical leadership and empowering leadership are related to leader‐member exchange relations (LMX), affective commitment, and leader effectiveness.

Data were collected using questionnaires filled out by 259 subordinates of public and private sector managers. Relationships among variables were analyzed using structural equation modeling.

The results indicated that ethical leadership and empowering leadership have positive associations with LMX, subordinate affective commitment, and perception of leader effectiveness.

This study is the first to examine the independent and joint relationships of empowering leadership and ethical leadership with leadership effectiveness and the mediating role of LMX.

The purpose of this paper is to report on one high school English‐language‐learner's (ELL) breadth and depth of vocabulary as he communicated with his teacher through e‐mail across geographic boundaries for over 18 months.

The authors began by separating 358 e‐mails into three time periods (first beginning, second middle, and third end) to calculate breadth using lexical density (type‐token ratios). Then, we sampled e‐mails based on personal and impersonal topics within these time periods and linguistically analyzed them for lexical cohesion, semantic usage, and derivational morphology. Interviews with participants before and after the analysis served as member checks.

The quantitative results showed a steady improvement in the breadth of the student's vocabulary over time. Qualitative analyses revealed four major uses of vocabulary within the context of e‐mail and the teacher‐student relationship.

Given our findings, we offer educators insights into ELL strategies and vocabulary assessment, not only with e‐mail but in all written communication.

A social writing tool like e‐mail can be useful for learning English in a safe, non‐threatening environment. Moreover, a trusting social relationship between communicators that develops over time can expedite the language learning process.

Very few studies have looked at the strategic ways ELL students use vocabulary to learn English through e‐mailing.

Although social exchange theory has long been used to explain employees’ positive work attitudes in response to perceived investment in employee development (PIED), few studies have examined this theoretical mechanism by introducing a direct measure of social exchange between employees and their personified organization. Furthermore, most studies have focused solely on one type of exchange (i.e. social exchange) and have ignored another type of exchange characterized as economic exchange. The purpose of this paper is therefore to uncover the process by which PIED affects employees’ attitudes, including affective organizational commitment and job satisfaction, by examining the mediating roles of both social and economic exchanges.

To test the hypothesized mediating model, this study conducted a three-phase, time-lagged questionnaire survey and collected data from 545 full-time employees. The model was tested based on structural equation modeling with a bootstrap test of indirect effects.

In line with social exchange theory, the findings showed that social exchange perceptions positively mediated the relationships between PIED and affective commitment/job satisfaction, whereas economic exchange perceptions negatively mediated them. Additionally, social and economic exchange perceptions were found to partially mediate the relationship between PIED and affective commitment but fully mediate the relationship between PIED and job satisfaction.

These results suggest that employers would benefit from investing in employee development, provided workers see the training investment as the employer’s side of social exchange, which in turn leads to increased affective commitment and job satisfaction. When employers do not achieve the expected returns from the training investment, they should check not only hard data (e.g. training attendance rate, hours of training, etc.) but also soft data (e.g. employees’ perceptions of training investment, social exchange, etc.) by conducting employee surveys and communicating with line managers.

The main contribution of this study is that it provides important empirical support for social exchange theory in the context of organizational training investment and employees’ attitudinal outcomes, by directly testing the positive mediating role of social exchange and the negative role of economic exchange.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Investing in training and development HRM practices enables companies to show their employees that they are valued. Employee response is likelier to be positive when the investment is perceived in terms of social exchange reflecting a long-term relationship based on mutual trust rather than more impersonal economic exchange where concern for the employee is minimal.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.

This paper examines the relationships that social and economic exchanges, two elements of the employee‐organization relationship (EOR), had with affective commitment, turnover intentions, employer trust, and altruism. The paper also aims to determine whether reciprocation wariness, reflecting fear of exploitation in reciprocation, moderated relationships that exchange elements had with outcomes.

A total of 453 employees of a large Korean electronics organization completed a survey on their work attitudes, behaviors, and demographic characteristics.

Results showed that reciprocation wariness moderated relations that social exchange had with commitment, turnover intentions, and trust, and that economic exchange had with turnover intentions.

The significance of examining social and economic exchange and of developing conceptualizations of the EOR that incorporate individual differences is discussed.

Organizational leaders need to consider how individuals may differ in responses to exchange elements of the EOR. Common assumptions about the EOR that social exchange is universally beneficial and that the necessity of economic exchange is accepted by all employees may not be accurate.

New theorizing and testing of the role of reciprocation wariness in the EOR contributes to an emerging literature on social and economic exchanges and how individuals may respond to these elements of the EOR.

This study aims to try and understand under what cultural conditions entrepreneurship will thrive and prosper, whether under shame or guilt cultures.

The authors use basic game theory to model the conditions under which entrepreneurship will thrive. The authors anticipate that guilt cultures allow for the development of a rules-based culture that allows for the development of impersonal exchange, whereas shame cultures, which are relationship-oriented, focus on strong ties and hence lack the means to expand firms from small and medium family/clan-based businesses.

Empirical results are completed to see whether guilt-dominating cultures are more conducive to having larger firms and whether guilt-dominating cultures have less informality. The authors find support for the latter but lack the right data to test the former.

The authors use a new measure of culture to see how it impacts entrepreneurship.

Using social relations theory, we argue that entrepreneurship ecosystems must also include relationships such as market pricing, equality matching, authority ranking and communal sharing to be successful and thrive.

We theorize using Fiske’s typology that a successful entrepreneurial system must have certain characteristics to be successful.

In doing so, we suggest an alternative perspective of the role of exchange relationships in ecosystems which considers both the geographic context and social relationships as equally important ecosystem components. Our contributions include (1) exposing social processes as the explanatory mechanism for exchanges instead of solely market forces, (2) illustrating the role of regional cultural differences in exchanges and (3) emphasizing how entrepreneurs can better realize ecosystem benefits through understanding the methods of exchange in these ecosystems.

Social relationships include a wide variety of different types of resources and exchange mechanisms, so by their inclusion into the entrepreneurship ecosystem literature, a more complete view of ecosystems is possible.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether leader self-efficacy and leader role ambiguity are related to follower leader-member exchange (LMX). In addition, the authors examine whether the relationship between follower LMX and turnover intention will be mediated by need satisfaction.

Data were collected using an electronic survey tool filled out by 109 leaders and 696 followers.

Leader role ambiguity was positively related to an economic LMX relationship and negatively related to a social LMX relationship. Furthermore, the links between social and economic LMX relationships and turnover intention were mediated by satisfaction of the needs for autonomy and relatedness.

The main limitation of the study is the cross-sectional nature of the data from the followers.

Provided that the findings are generalizable organizations should provide role clarification initiatives to leaders with high role ambiguity.

Despite the centrality of role theory in the development of LMX theory, prior research has not investigated whether the extent to which leaders perceive that they meet the expectations of their leadership roles affects followers’ perception of LMX relationships.