A progression of the employee-organization concept : an exploratory study on the employee-employee relationships at workplace

Abstract

This research paper explores a whole new concept, the Employee to Employee Relationship (EER) which is a further development from the Employee to Organization Relationship (EOR) concept. In this paper, we seek to identify specifically, the parties to the EERs, their expectations and their reactions to unmet expectations through a qualitative approach. The data from this study was collected from 7 participants from a focus group discussion and 25 individual interviewees from 3 different industries; namely Shipping, Banking and Defence. Our interview findings suggested that there are various organizational representatives in the minds of the employees, providing a perspective different to the conventional assumption of managers being the sole representative of the organization. Through our qualitative research, we also identified implicit, unwritten expectations of employees in the EERs, providing evidence that runs contrary to previous literature studies conducted on the psychological contract and the EOR. Our results suggest that by understanding the informal expectations of employees, organizations are able to better manage the EERs within, achieving meaningful organizational outcomes as a result. Lastly, the limitations of our study and suggestions for future research will also be discussed.