Sociological notions of social exchange have outstanding influence on the interpreted relations between employee and organization, being of relevance the role performed by the norm of reciprocity. The present study was developed with the objective of extending the psychological understanding of three concepts: perception of organizational support, perception of organizational reciprocity, and normative organizational commitment. Hypotheses were presented about their integration to a mental reciprocity scheme and about their influence on two affective criterions: job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment. 483 employees of private and public companies of the Great São Paulo took part in the study. The results certified the relevance of the three concepts considered as components of the mental reciprocity scheme, and demonstrated the capacity of this scheme to explain significant proportions of the variance of two affective criterions. Perception of organizational support turned out to be the cognitive component with the strongest power of influence on job satisfaction and affective organizational commitment.
mental reciprocity scheme; perception of organizational support; job satisfaction; affective organizational commitment; social exchange
