Working From Home Then Forced to Return: Employing Resource Theory and Social and Economic Exchange to Address Impact on Employee Organizational Commitment and Turnover Intentions

Throughout the documented history of business, there have been ongoing efforts by both employees and employers to influence the balance of social and economic exchanges. Each major shift in process, technology, environment, climate, or leadership creates an opportunity to revisit existing research. Revisiting research helps academic scholars understand its impact on social and economic balance as well as conduct innovative studies. These events allow researchers in the field to examine how employees and employers are adapting and reacting to reset the balance in social and economic exchange. It also allows us to develop ways to provide options for employers and employees to practically navigate these changes successfully. The global Covid-19 pandemic outbreak was one such shift, specifically the need for employees to work from home to protect the health and well-being of all employees. It was also a mandatory requirement for a majority of local, state, and federal agencies to ensure the health of the overall communities, in The United States. During the Covid-19 pandemic, a two-fold symbiotic relationship began to emerge between employers and employees. The first being that, working from home increased the positive perception of employees with added flexibility and increased social and economic benefits. Secondly, employers perceived that there was balance regarding production and culture. However, that swiftly changed and became a perceived imbalance once it was clear that the Covid-19 pandemic was long lasting. Because of this perceived imbalance several large organizations leaders led major initiatives to begin forcing employees to return to the office to work once the Covid-19 pandemic was reduced to endemic. By requiring employees to return to an in-person office working location or face grave penalties, such as job loss, reduced hours, or a hostile work environment was viewed negatively by employees. In turn, this negative viewpoint impacted employee sentiment, commitment, and drove turnover intent up, thus creating a struggle for social and economic exchange. After surveying eight thousand employees, Flex Job survey found that 56% either have or know someone who has or plans to quit a job because of a return-to-work mandate (Battle, 2024). Based on the social and economic exchange theory (Homans, 1958) and (Shore, 2006), as well as resource theory (Thao, 1974,1980), I hypothesize that the collected data will have the potential to assist in creating and developing a collective of resources that can positively impact employ social and economic exchange, drive up commitment, and drive down turnover intent. These resources would be used to help employers offset the negative impacts employees felt when faced with returning to a physical office space. I will better understand employee commitment, turnover, and perceptions when forced to return to the workplace. Using a mixed-method study using qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys, I have attempted to better understand the impacts that the return to the physical office space has on employees and employers. I utilized well developed, valid and reliable surveys to measure organizational commitment, turnover intent, and perceptions of employees by utilizing established prior research and qualitative employee surveying to develop defined resources to measure. The main contribution of this study is the development of insights and applications regarding the positive influence of six known categories of resources to offset the negative impact return to work has had on the social and economic exchange. The research surveyed U.S. based individuals who worked at home 50% of the time or greater during COVID-19 and were forced back to the office. These findings will help business leaders, managers, and executives make better decisions and establish resource-based programs to keep the social and economic exchange between employee and employer positive when forcing them to return to work. In addition, this research will help scholars continue to evolve social and economic exchange theory and advance our understand of resource usage to maintain positive social and economic exchange