Paper: arXiv 2402.18764

Abstract

Investigating the optimal nature of social interactions among actors (e.g., people or firms), who seek to achieve certain mutually-agreed objectives, has been the subject of extensive academic research. Using the relational models theory (describing all social interactions as combinations of four basic sociality ingredients: Communal Sharing, Authority Ranking, Equality Matching, and Market Pricing), the common approach revolves around qualitative arguments for determining sociality configurations most effective in realizing specific purposes, at times supplemented by empirical data. In the current treatment, we formulate this question as a mathematical optimization problem, in order to quantitatively derive the most suitable combination of sociality forms for dyadic actors, which optimizes their mutually-agreed objective. For this purpose, we develop an analytical framework of the (meta)relational models theory, and demonstrate that combining the four sociality forms to define a specific meaningful social situation inevitably prompts an inherent tension among them, codified by a single elementary and universal metarelation. In analogy with financial portfolio management, we subsequently introduce the concept of Social Relations Portfolio (SRP) management, and propose a generalizable methodology capable of quantitatively identifying the efficient SRP, which, in turn, enables effective stakeholder and change management initiatives. As an important illustration, the methodology is applied to the Triple Bottom Line (Profit, People, Planet) paradigm to derive its efficient SRP. This serves as a guide to practitioners for precisely measuring, monitoring, reporting and steering stakeholder and change management efforts concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) within and / or across organizations.

Complexity vs Empirical Score

  • Math Complexity: 6.5/10
  • Empirical Rigor: 1.5/10
  • Quadrant: Lab Rats — theoretically deep, empirically untested

Why this score: The paper introduces a novel mathematical optimization framework with analytical derivations for relational models, but lacks any data, backtests, or implementation details, relying entirely on theoretical modeling.

Research Flowchart

  flowchart TD
  A["Research Goal:<br>Derive optimal sociality configurations<br>for specific objectives"] --> B["Develop Analytical Framework:<br>(Meta)relational Models Theory"]
  B --> C["Define Core Components:<br>4 Basic Sociality Forms (CS, AR, EM, MP)<br>+ 1 Universal Metarelation"]
  C --> D["Formulate Optimization Problem:<br>Maximize Mutually-Agreed Objective<br>Subject to Inherent Tension Constraints"]
  D --> E["Compute Efficient Social Relations Portfolio<br>(SRP) for Dyadic Actors"]
  E --> F["Apply to Triple Bottom Line:<br>Profit, People, Planet"]
  F --> G["Key Outcomes:<br>1. Quantitative SRP Methodology<br>2. Efficient SRP for TBL<br>3. Guide for CSR/ESG Management"]

Cited References (113)

  1. Being on the same page about social rules and norms: Effects of shared relational models on cooperation in work teams (2022) — link
  2. Future trends and guidance for the triple bottom line and sustainability: a data driven bibliometric analysis (2020) — link
  3. Tough Love and Creativity: How Authoritarian Leadership Tempered by Benevolence or Morality Influences Employee Creativity (2020) — link
  4. Authoritarian leadership, organizational citizenship behavior, and organizational deviance (2019) — link
  5. A Relational‐Models View to Explain Peer‐to‐Peer Sharing (2019) — link
  6. When do Followers Perceive Their Leaders as Ethical? A Relational Models Perspective of Normatively Appropriate Conduct (2018) — link
  7. Directive versus participative leadership: Dispositional antecedents and team consequences (2017) — link
  8. Initiating structure leadership and employee behaviors: The role of perceived organizational support, affective commitment and leader-member exchange (2017) — link
and 105 more
  1. The Impact of Transformational Leadership on Employee Sustainable Performance: The Mediating Role of Organizational Citizenship Behavior (2017) — link
  2. Workplace resources to improve both employee well-being and performance: A systematic review and meta-analysis (2017) — link
  3. Leadership and stress: A meta-analytic review (2017) — link
  4. Never Too Much? The Curvilinear Relationship Between Empowering Leadership and Task Performance (2017) — link
  5. Stakeholder Relationships and Social Welfare: A Behavioral Theory of Contributions to Joint Value Creation (2016) — link
  6. Corporate Governance and Sustainability Performance: Analysis of Triple Bottom Line Performance (2016) — link
  7. Review of 30 Years of Longitudinal Studies on the Association Between Job Insecurity and Health and Well‐Being: Is There Causal Evidence? (2016) — link
  8. Wrongness in different relationships: Relational context effects on moral judgment (2016) — link
  9. The longitudinal development of employee well-being: a systematic review (2016) — link
  10. Seeking sustainability leadership (2015) — link
  11. Diabolical dictators or capable commanders? An investigation of the differential effects of autocratic leadership on team performance (2015) — link
  12. National cultural values, sustainability beliefs, and organizational initiatives (2015) — link
  13. Triple Bottom Line and Sustainability: A Literature Review (2015) — link
  14. Reciprocity and Profit Sharing: Is There an Inverse U-shaped Relationship? (2014) — link
  15. A Generic Model of Dyadic Social Relationships (2013) — link
  16. Categorization of exchange fluxes explains the four relational models (2013) — link
  17. Linking environmental management practices and organizational citizenship behaviour for the environment: a social exchange perspective (2013) — link
  18. Effects of leadership consideration and structure on employee perceptions of justice and counterproductive work behavior (2013) — link
  19. Exploring the dark side of organizational citizenship behavior (2013) — link
  20. Probing into commitment’s nonlinear relationships to work outcomes (2013) — link
  21. Volunteering and well-being: is pleasure-based rather than pressure-based prosocial motivation that which is related to positive effects? (2013) — link
  22. Business models for people, planet (& profits): exploring the phenomena of social business, a market-based approach to social value creation (2013) — link
  23. Perceived reciprocity and well-being at work in non-professional employees: fairness or self-interest? (2013) — link
  24. Relational Bureaucracy: Structuring Reciprocal Relationships into Roles (2012) — link
  25. Forgotten but not gone: an examination of fit between leader consideration and initiating structure needed and received. (2012) — link
  26. Metarelational models: Configurations of social relationships (2012) — link
  27. Propensity to Support Sustainability Initiatives: A Cross-National Model (2012) — link
  28. Relational models for knowledge sharing behavior (2011) — link
  29. Does serving the community also serve the company? Using organizational identification and social exchange theories to understand employee responses to a volunteerism programme (2010) — link
  30. Optimism and the Nonlinear Citizenship Behavior—Job Satisfaction Relationship in Three Studies (2010) — link
  31. Using a Relational Models Perspective to Understand Normatively Appropriate Conduct in Ethical Leadership (2010) — link
  32. Rationales for indirect speech: the theory of the strategic speaker. (2010) — link
  33. Leadership Styles and CSR Practice: An Examination of Sensemaking, Institutional Drivers and CSR Leadership (2010) — link
  34. STRATEGIC HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT IN SERVICE CONTEXT: TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS BY TAKING CARE OF EMPLOYEES AND CUSTOMERS (2010) — link
  35. Neuroticism and locus of control as moderators of the relationships of charismatic and autocratic leadership with burnout. (2009) — link
  36. Leading for sustainability: implementing the tasks of leadership (2009) — link
  37. A framework of sustainable supply chain management: moving toward new theory (2008) — link
  38. The job demands-resources model : state of the art (2007) — link
  39. Relational Job Design and the Motivation to Make a Prosocial Difference (2007) — link
  40. Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation (2006) — link
  41. Affective and motivational consequences of leader self-sacrifice: The moderating effect of autocratic leadership (2006) — link
  42. Too Much of a Good Thing: The Curvilinear Effect of Leader-Member Exchange on Stress (2006) — link
  43. SOCIAL IDENTITY IN INDUSTRIAL AND ORGANIZATIONAL PSYCHOLOGY: CONCEPTS, CONTROVERSIES AND CONTRIBUTIONS (2006) — link
  44. Social reciprocity and health: new scientific evidence and policy implications. (2005) — link
  45. High-Performance Work Systems and Organizational Performance: The Mediating Role of Internal Social Structure (2005) — link
  46. Shopping for Sustainability: Can Sustainable Consumption Promote Ecological Citizenship? (2005) — link
  47. A review of empirical studies on the model of effort-reward imbalance at work: reducing occupational stress by implementing a new theory. (2004) — link
  48. Considering rational self-interest as a disposition: organizational implications of other orientation. (2004) — link
  49. Relational Models Theory 2.0. (2004) — link
  50. The Seven Principles of Sustainable Leadership. (2004)
  51. The forgotten ones? The validity of consideration and initiating structure in leadership research. (2004) — link
  52. Sustainable development and sustainability metrics (2003) — link
  53. Subjective Well-Being Across Cultures (2002) — link
  54. Individualism/Collectivism and Cultures of Happiness: A Theoretical Conjecture on the Relationship between Consumption, Culture and Subjective Well-Being at the National Level (2002) — link
  55. Altruistic punishment in humans (2002) — link
  56. Leadership and innovation: relations between leadership, individual characteristics and the functioning of R&D teams (2001) — link
  57. Partnerships from cannibals with forks: The triple bottom line of 21st‐century business (1998) — link
  58. Factors predicting the subjective well-being of nations. (1995) — link
  59. Why do people like competition? The motivation for winning, putting forth effort, improving one’s performance, performing well, being instrumental, and expressing forceful/aggressive behavior (1995) — link
  60. INSTRUMENTAL STAKEHOLDER THEORY: A SYNTHESIS OF ETHICS AND ECONOMICS (1995) — link
  61. Structures of Social Life: The Four Elementary Forms of Human Relations. ALAN PAGE FISKE (1993) — link
  62. The four elementary forms of sociality: framework for a unified theory of social relations. (1992) — link
  63. Supervisory Leadership and Subordinate Burnout (1988) — link
  64. Understanding, prediction, and control as moderators of the relationships between perceived stress, satisfaction, and psychological well-being. (1987) — link
  65. Equity, Equality, and Need: What Determines Which Value Will Be Used as the Basis of Distributive Justice? (1975) — link
  66. Portfolio Selection (1971) — link
  67. The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism (1971) — link
  68. Justice in Social Exchange (1964) — link
  69. Towards an understanding of inequity (1963) — link
  70. Liquidity Preference as Behavior towards Risk (1958) — link
  71. Wolfram Research, Inc. (2022)
  72. Relational Models Theory & UN Sustainable Development Goals. Master of Business Administration Thesis (2019)
  73. 25 Years Ago I Coined the Phrase “Triple Bottom Line.” Here’s Why It’s Time to Rethink It (2018)
  74. Global Death Sentences and Executions: Report, Death Sentences and Executions 2018 (2018)
  75. Leadership for Sustainability: Theoretical Foundations and Pedagogical Practices that Foster Change (2015)
  76. Digital social mind (2015)
  77. The silver lining of a dark cloud : Using social innovation to make the supply chain a crisis buster (2013)
  78. World happiness report (2012)
  79. Human Resource Systems and Helping in Organizations: A Relational Perspective (2011) — link
  80. Moral psychology is relationship regulation: moral motives for unity, hierarchy, equality, and proportionality. (2011) — link
  81. The Triple Bottom Line: What Is It and How Does It Work? (2011)
  82. Triple Bottom Line Reporting: An Analytical Approach for Corporate Sustainability (2010)
  83. Individual- and organizational-level consequences of organizational citizenship behaviors: A meta-analysis. (2009) — link
  84. Increasing the rate of sustainable change: a call for a redefinition of the concept and the model for its implementation (2007) — link
  85. What Breaks a Leader : The Curvilinear Relation Between Assertiveness and Leadership (2007)
  86. Ethical Theory and Stakeholder-Related Decisions: The Role of Stakeholder Culture (2007) — link
  87. Relationships among organizational family support, job autonomy, perceived control, and employee well-being. (2006) — link
  88. Psychological perspectives on legitimacy and legitimation. (2006) — link
  89. The Four Basic Social Bonds: Structures for Coordinating Interaction. (2005)
  90. On characterizing the 4 C’s in supply chain management (2005) — link
  91. Altruism, happiness, and health: it’s good to be good (2005) — link
  92. MOTIVATING INDIVIDUALS AND GROUPS AT WORK : A SOCIAL IDENTITY PERSPECTIVE ON LEADERSHIP AND GROUP PERFORMANCE (2004) — link
  93. An Almost Practical Step Toward Sustainability (1998) — link
  94. An organizational psychology meta-model of occupational stress (1998)
  95. Interfirm relationships: A grammar of pairs (1996)
  96. Citizenship behavior and social exchange. (1994) — link
  97. Capitalism against capitalism (Vol. 1) (1993)
  98. The Rhine model of capitalism: an investigation (1992)
  99. Centre De Referència En Economia Analítica Barcelona Economics Working Paper Series Competition and Well-being Competition and Well-being
  100. Determine the (graphical) behavior of objective / proxy as a function of each sociality form
  101. a) Identify the (set of) aligned objective(s) between actors, facilitated by their dyadic social interaction (see Section 2 for some examples studied within the literature; e.g.,
  102. Cast the obtained (graphical) behaviors in mathematical representations as functions of the four sociality parameters (3.1). These functions formally serve as input for the optimization analysis
  103. determining this optimal metarelational configuration is equivalent to constructing the efficient SRP
  104. maximum or minimum, depending on the objective / proxy). The corresponding values of sociality parameters
  105. interaction (i.e., γ = α = ϵ = µ = 1 in (3.2)), due to the models being inequivalent. 19 In a similar fashion, the

0 of 113 cited works are in the corpus; resolved via arXiv source bundles, Semantic Scholar and OpenAlex. Corpus-wide: 2518 linked papers.