Organizational Theories

Homan Theory: Fairness in Social Exchange

According to this theory, the reaction is a reflection of an action. The manners and performance of an individual is a reflection of performance that his fellow colleague has towards him. The culture that has been prevailing in the organization is formed by combining the behavior of each individual respectively. Hence, if any single individual is not performing his job efficiently and is getting biased and unfair treatment irrespective of his performance than it would eventually cause a negative effect on other employees performance. This would de-motivate other individuals immensely. Today the world is based on the exchange that takes place among individuals but these exchanges involve some cost that could be because of the loss of opportunity (Cook & Rice, 2006). This loss of opportunity is a benefit of another individual hence, in order to compensate this loss that an employee is facing due to other employer had to develop some motivational factors to boost the self-esteem of their employees.

Blau’s Theory: The Role of Expectations

This theory of expectation is based on the theory of exchange presented by Homan. Human expectations determine the satisfaction level of an employee. However, according to the theory, this expectation level of an individual along with being depended on social ties also relies heavily on the expectation that one individual has on his own. Each individual has his own way of perceiving justice and fairness. However, this issue arises when a comparison is done in this expectation. As every individual has his own expectation, therefore, organizations might not be able to satisfy the expectation of every employee. Every individual has own reference group through which he compares his expectation.

Expectations of an individual can be divided into different categories. Some expectations are of the general level while some expectations are particular and some of them fall into the category of comparative expectation. When the expectations are related to normal day to day needs to be emerged due to some societal wants or for an employee the expectation he has with his organization and the culture prevailing as its working environment is known as the general expectation of an employee. This type of expectation also includes the anticipation of appreciation that the employee holds from this employers. Any type of non-monetary benefits and recognitions are known as general expectations of an employee. When the expectations are viewed from the context of a relationship that one individual has with another than it is known as the particular expectation of an individual. Particular expectations are further divided into two categories that are the expectation of an employee must not be higher than the acceptable level of normal expectation and the second condition is that the expected outcome or benefit that an individual expect must not be unrealistic.