Aim and objective

In this study, we explore how personal and situational factors relate to the provision of person-centred care (PCC) in nursing homes. Specifically, we focus on the relationship between the care staff's personality traits and provision of PCC and to what extent perceptions of the working environment influences this relationship.

Background

The ultimate goal of elderly care is to meet the older person's needs and individual preferences (PCC). Interpersonal aspects of care and the quality of relationship between the care staff and the older person are therefore central in PCC.

Design and methods

A cross-sectional Swedish sample of elderly care staff (N = 322) completed an electronic survey including measures of personality (Mini-IPIP) and person-centred care (Individualized Care Inventory, ICI). A principal component analysis was conducted on the ICI-data to separate the user orientation (process quality) of PCC from the preconditions (structure quality) of PCC.

Results

Among the five factors of personality, neuroticism was the strongest predictor of ICI user orientation. ICI preconditions significantly mediated this relationship, indicating the importance of a supportive working environment. In addition, stress was introduced as a potential explanation and was shown to mediate the impact of neuroticism on ICI preconditions.

Conclusions

Personality traits have a significant impact on user orientation, and the perception of a supportive and stress free working environment is an important prerequisite for achieving high-quality person-centred elderly care.

Implications for practice

Understanding how personality is linked to the way care staff interacts with the older person adds a new perspective on provision of person-centred elderly care.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to describe three different approaches to work in elderly care (i.e. professional, market-oriented and person-centred) and examine whether these theoretically derived approaches can be confirmed empirically. Additional aims were to examine the endorsement of these approaches and whether there were differences in the endorsement of these approaches in nursing home vs home care and municipality vs privately run care units. Design/methodology/approach Data were collected using a cross-sectional survey study of frontline care staff (n=1,342). Exploratory factor analysis was used to investigate the empirical validity of the proposed approaches to work in elderly care. A series of paired and independent samples t-tests were conducted to analyse mean differences between the proposed approaches to work. Findings A principal axis factoring analysis yielded three theoretically meaningful factors as proposed. These results indicated that the respondents were able to differentiate between three distinct but related approaches to work with older persons. The results also showed that the professional care approach was the highest endorsed and the market-oriented the lowest endorsed approach. No notable differences in approaches to work were observed in nursing home vs home care and municipality vs privately run care units. Originality/value This is the first study to examine multiple approaches to work in elderly care as previous research studies mainly have investigated the person-centred care approach. Current findings indicate that these approaches to work often coexist in various combinations and that the care staff adopts all these approaches but to varying degrees. The approaches differ in several important respects (e.g. legitimacy and view of the older person) and most likely affect the way care staff treats the older person and how the older person perceives their relationship with the care staff. Knowledge about these differences facilitates management of the care staff’s work situation and helps to improve the quality of care.

Background: Person-centred care is widely endorsed as a promising approach for delivering high-quality care to older people. However, the multitude of existing definitions and measurement tools, coupled with the continuous emergence of new tools, can create confusion and hinder precision in assessing this concept. This review was undertaken with a recognition of the crucial role that assessment quality plays in evaluations and improvements, particularly within the context of person-centred care for older people.

Objectives: This study aimed to systematically review staff-based measures of person-centredness in settings of care for older people. More specifically, the objectives were to provide description, methodological evaluation and synthesis of diverse conceptual understandings of person-centredness encapsulated in these measurement tools. Methods: We systematically searched the Cinahl, PsycInfo, PubMed, Scopus and Web of Science databases for English peer-reviewed journal articles between 2000 and 2021. These articles discussed the creation of staff-based questionnaires designed to assess the extent of person-centred care. We excluded questionnaires meant for clients, patients or families, as well as non-questionnaire scales. The measures were described, and their interpretations of person-centred care were synthesised through a critical interpretive synthesis method. We evaluated methodological quality using a condensed COSMIN risk of bias checklist and adhered to PRISMA guidelines.

Results: The review identified a total of 14 staff-based measures. These measures exhibited varying levels of comprehensiveness, encompassing anywhere between 2 and 17 components. Furthermore, the number of items within the measures ranged from 11 to 62, and the sample sizes exhibited significant diversity, spanning from 58 to 1428. In terms of the components scrutinised by the scales regarding person-centred care, our synthesis revealed the emergence of four distinct conceptual categories: care process, supportive care environment, relations and communication, and knowledge and attitudes. As for the methodological quality of the scales, it exhibited a notable degree of variation (i.e. from inadequate to very good).

Conclusions: Diverse measures of person-centredness vary in terms of comprehensiveness, aspects covered and methodological quality. Synthesising the concept through staff-based measures offers a novel approach for researchers and practitioners, illuminating nuanced perspectives in person-centred care.

Implications for practice: The synthesis enriches academic discussions and practical applications by dissecting components, ultimately enhancing care quality assessment and improvement. Further, this review is a valuable resource for unit managers and quality coordinators working in settings of care for older people, empowering them to make informed decisions tailored to their specific needs from a diverse array of available person-centred care measures. 

Purpose – Care process quality (i.e., how care is enacted by a care worker toward a client at the interpersonal level) is a strong predictor of satisfaction in a wide range of health care services. The present research aims at describing the basic elements of care process quality as user-oriented care. Specifically, the questions of how and why quality in user-oriented care varies were investigated in the context of elderly care.

Design – Two municipalities were selected for in-depth field studies. First, in each municipality, we interviewed and observed care workers’ interactions with the older persons in both home care and nursing homes during two weeks (Study 1). Second, in an attempt to gain a deeper understanding of why process quality in terms of user-oriented care varies, we conducted interviews with care workers and care unit managers (Study 2).

Findings – A new taxonomy for categorising process quality variation, the Big Five of user-oriented care (Task-focus, Person-focus, Affect, Cooperation, and Time-use), is proposed. In addition, the perceived reasons for process quality variation are reported in our own developed Quality Agents Model, suggesting that variations in care process evaluations may be explained from different perspectives at multiple levels (i.e., older person, care worker-, unit-, department-, and municipality-level).

Value – The proposed taxonomy and model are useful for describing user-oriented care quality and the reasons for its variations. These findings are of relevance for future quality developments of elderly care services, but also may be adapted to applications in any other enterprise employing a user-oriented approach.

There is a widespread belief among the public and policy makers that quality of care in terms of user satisfaction can beimproved with increased spending. However, recent research indicates that structural resources (e.g., budget per elderly)in elderly home care do not predict quality of care in terms of older persons’ satisfaction with care. In the present study,we analyzed the longitudinal trends in costs and perceived quality of care across 3 years using nationwide data in Swedishelderly home care. The results showed that although costs have been steadily increasing, perceived quality of interpersonaltreatment in care has remained at the same level. An important implication is that future research and policy efforts toimprove quality should more directly target the mechanisms generating satisfaction.

As the proportion of older people in coming years is increasing, and as the organizations of home care and nursing homes grow to manage the expectations from the population, the debate on the quality of elderly care has gained a new momentum. Today, most decision-makers within elderly care in Sweden base their actions on the nation-wide annual quality report on elderly care from the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare, Open Comparisons. This research presents findings from this national survey conducted in 2012, including a wide variety of indicators for elderly care services in all Swedish municipalities (N = 324) based on the responses from over 95,000 older persons. Study I presents that structural variables (i.e., budget resources and personnel training) overall did not correlate with older persons’ perceived quality of care, while processual variables (i.e., influence, respect, and access to information) showed moderate to strong correlations. Study II presents that overall satisfaction with care was strongly correlated with evaluation of relationship with care personnel and feelings of safeness. Study III presents an overall municipality quality-index with which comparisons between municipalities can be made, showing that the highest and the lowest ranked municipalities did not differ strongly on indicators of quality (d < 0.6). The conclusion is that there currently exists no reliable and valid measure which manages to tap quality of municipal elderly care, and that developing a new client-care centered climate scale should prove to be fruitful. Seeing how a person-centered theoretical approach is receiving support from this large national sample, implications for extending the theoretical frame of person-centeredness into psychological climate research in organizations is proposed. 

Med den ökande andelen äldre personer i Sverige har diskussionen om kvalitet i äldreomsorgen tagit ny fart. Idag är äldreomsorgsbeslut baserat på den omfattande årsrapporten, Öppna jämförelser, som rankar alla Sveriges kommuner utifrån ett antal kvalitetsindikatorer. Relevant för området sociala studier och hälsa, visar sekundäranalyser av dessa data att Öppna jämförelser gör en missvisande rankning som inte tar hänsyn till hur de äldre har svarat, och inte heller påtalar hur små skillnaderna mellan högst och lägst rankade kommuner är. Genom att använda effektstorleksmått presenteras i artikeln ett nytt och mer korrekt sätt att ranka kommuner. Vidare föreslås i denna artikel att Öppna jämförelser i sina framtida mätningar inkluderar reliabla och valida mått på brukarorienterad omsorg då detta har visat sig ha positiva effekter på äldres upplevelse av omsorgskvalitet.

Maximizing satisfaction among the older persons is the goal of modern individualized elderly care and how to best achieve this is of relevance for anyone planning and providing for elderly care services. Purpose of the study: What predicts satisfaction with care among older persons can be conceived as a function of process (how care is performed), and the older person. Inspired by the long-standing person versus situation debate, the present research investigated the interplay between person- and process aspects in predicting satisfaction with elderly care. Design and method: A representative nationwide sample was analyzed, based on a questionnaire sent out to 95,000 individuals using elderly care services. Results: The results showed that person-related factors (i.e., anxiety, health, and loneliness) were significant predictors of satisfaction with care, although less strongly than process-related factors (i.e., treatment, safeness, and perceived staff- and time availability). Among the person-related factors, loneliness was the strongest predictor of satisfaction among older persons in nursing homes. Interestingly, a path analysis revealed that safeness and treatment function as mediators in linking loneliness to satisfaction. Implications: The results based on a large national sample demonstrate that the individual aging condition to a significant degree can be countered by a well-functioning care process, resulting in higher satisfaction with care among older persons. 

The structure versus process approach to quality of care presented by Donabedian is one of the most cited ever. However, there has been a paucity of research into the empirical validity of this framework, specifically concerning the relative effects of structure and process on satisfaction with elderly care as perceived by the older persons themselves. The current research presents findings from a national survey, including a wide range of quality indicators for elderly care services, conducted in 2012 at the request of the Swedish National Board of Health and Welfare in which responses from 95,000 elderly people living in 324 municipalities and districts were obtained. The results revealed that the only structural variable which significantly predicted quality of care was staffing, measured in terms of the number of caregivers per older resident. More interestingly, process variables (e.g. respect and access to information) explained 40% and 48% of the variance in satisfaction with care, over and above the structural variables, in home care and nursing homes respectively. The findings from this large nationwide sample examining Donabedian's model suggest that quality in elderly care is primarily determined by factors pertaining to process, that is, how caregivers behave towards the older persons. This encourages a continued quality improvement in elderly care with a particular focus on process variables.

Purpose – Previous research has shown that user-oriented care predicts older persons’ satisfaction with care. What is yet to be researched is how senior management facilitates the implementation of user-oriented care. The present study set out to investigate the organizing principles and management climate characterizing successful elderly care organizations.

Design – The care organization in one highly ranked municipality was selected and compared with a more average municipality. On-site semi-structured in-depth interviews with managers as well as participatory observations at managers’ meetings were conducted in both municipalities.

Findings – The results revealed three key principles for successful elderly care: 1) organizing care from the viewpoint of the older service user, 2) recruiting and training competent and autonomous employees, 3) instilling a vision for the mission which guides operations at all levels in the organization. Furthermore, using climate theory to interpret the material, in the highly successful municipality the management climate was characterized by affective support and cognitive autonomy, in contrast to a more instrumental work climate primarily focusing on organizational structure and doing things right characterizing the more average municipality.

Value – We suggest that guiding organizing principles are intertwined with management climate and that there are multiple perspectives that must be considered by the upper management, i.e., the views of the older persons, the co-workers, and the mission. The results can guide future care quality developments and increase the understanding of the importance of organizational climate at the senior management level.

Föreläsningen kommer att ta upp vad som karaktäriserar psykologiska studier av rättvisa i en organisatorisk kontext. Organisatorisk rättvisa beskrivs utifrån fyra huvudsakliga typer av rättvisa, nämligen distributiv rättvisa, procedural rättvisa, interpersonell rättvisa och informationsrättvisa. Förutom att kort nämna några viktiga modeller, teorier och empiriska forskningsfynd kommer jag att göra en del nedslag i egen rättviseforskning som bland annat handlar om rättvist ledarskap, fördelning av sociala resurser och konflikter som kan uppstå i samband med tillämpningen av olika rättvisenormer.

Leader–member exchange (LMX) is the foremost relational approach to leadership. Building upon the LMX theory, this study aimed to examine the associations between three types of relationship appraisals in the workplace: leader–member (leader LMX), member–leader (member LMX), and member–member relationships (collegial climate), and their impact on employee work attitudes (i.e., employee job satisfaction and commitment). Questionnaire data were obtained from a sample of retail managers (n = 113) and retail workers (n = 555) in the Swedish retail sector. Mediation analyses confirmed the novel hypotheses that member LMX and collegial climate fully mediate the association between leader LMX and employee job satisfaction. However, in predicting employee commitment, the only significant mediator was member LMX. This study not only contributes to the existing LMX theory and research but also adds to the expanding body of knowledge in the field of positive organizational scholarship exploring the significance of positive workplace relationships in shaping employee attitudes. 

PURPOSE: As marketization has gained ground in elderly care, satisfaction with care has come to play a crucial role in designing for high-quality care. Inspired by the service-profit chain (SPC) model, the authors aimed to gain a deeper understanding of the intricate interplay between supportive leadership practices, organizational climate, job satisfaction and service quality by predicting satisfaction with care. DESIGN/METHODOLOGY/APPROACH: A Swedish sample of frontline elderly care staff (n = 1,342) participated in a cross-sectional questionnaire study. Mediation analyses were conducted to test the proposed model. FINDINGS: As predicted, engaging in supportive leadership practices was directly and positively associated with satisfaction with care. In addition, as predicted, this relationship was partially mediated by organizational climate and job satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction predicted satisfaction with care with service quality explaining a statistically significant part of this relationship. PRACTICAL IMPLICATIONS: Managers in elderly care services may improve satisfaction with care in multiple ways but primarily by showing that they care about the staff and ensuring that they are satisfied with their working conditions. Employee job satisfaction seems to be particularly crucial for satisfaction with care, beyond what can be accounted for by care service quality. ORIGINALITY/VALUE: The authors proposed a novel service-outcome model. Adding to the original SPC model, the model in this study suggested and validated previously unexplored relationships including a direct path between leadership practices and satisfaction with service and a multiple-mediator model explaining this relationship. Also, new measures of organizational climate and supportive leadership were developed for which satisfactory reliability estimates were obtained.  

Purpose 

Drawing on the organizational psychology literature and social resource theory, this research aimed to investigate how attitude toward the employer (i.e. loyalty) and attitude toward the client (i.e. approach to work: professional, market-oriented and person-centered) relate to the perceived importance of socio-emotional resources in providing care to older people.

Design/methodology/approach

Swedish frontline care staff members participated in an electronic survey using a cross-sectional design. Mediation analyses were conducted to examine proposed direct and indirect effects of loyalty on the perceived importance of socio-emotional resources in care through three different approaches to work in care settings.

Findings

In general, the results confirmed the hypotheses. Thus, the analyses showed a positive association between employee loyalty and the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care, which was partially mediated by the person-centered and professional approaches to work. Moreover, the analyses showed that the person-centered approach was more strongly related to the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care than the other two approaches, lending support to the superiority of the person-centered approach in this context.

Originality/value 

The study highlights that there exist multiple approaches to work in care settings. Also, the insights about how loyalty toward the employer relates to approach to work in care settings and the perceived value of socio-emotional resources in care are novel and of crucial importance to practitioners and the outcomes of care.

BACKGROUND AND OBJECTIVES: Given recent advances in psychometric assessment, there is a need for assessment studies using modern test theory in the field of person-centred care, mainly due to the dominant use of analytical strategies based on classical test theory. The main objective of the present study was thus to examine whether selected items from commonly used instruments of person-centred care were able to differentiate between respondents with a reasonably even level of measurement precision across different regions of the construct range using item response theory (IRT).

RESEARCH DESIGN AND METHODS: A Swedish sample of care staff in elderly care (N = 1342) completed a survey including a selection of items from three previously validated measures of person-centred care.

RESULTS: All questionnaire items were submitted to IRT analyses to examine the extent to which the items produced information on the underlying construct. The items exhibited different levels of information. However, in general, for those items exhibiting some information, the pattern of information across the trait range was similar for most of them, that is, the items discriminated better in the lower levels of person-centredness.

DISCUSSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Item response theory analyses are instrumental in creating shorter measurement instruments that may perform nearly as well as the original longer instruments. Given time and other resource constraints in questionnaire administration, there is a gain in only including the most informative items which efficiently and evenly tap the underlying construct along its entire range and in the context of person-centred care assessment this study was an initial step towards this goal. Thus, a set of ten items with satisfactory levels of psychometric quality, that is relatively high information levels across a relatively broad range of the underlying construct, is proposed.

Social resource theory suggests that social interaction can be conceived as resource transaction or exchange with behaviours falling within six fundamental resource categories (i.e. love, status, information, money, goods, and services) organised along two underlying dimensions: particularism–universalism and concreteness–abstractness. With the purpose of extending knowledge about quality of care, this study adopts a novel approach in that it describes and categorises care behaviours using social resource theory instead of using single instances of care behaviour. The categorisation is further used to predict client satisfaction in care services targeting older people. Daily interactions between care staff and older persons were observed in two different residential care facilities using a structured non-participant observation design. The data were analysed using principal component analysis, correlation, and regression analysis. The results confirmed the hypothesis that satisfaction with care services is predicted by resource transactions that are high on the underlying dimensions of particularism and abstractness. Thus, the resource categories of love and status (resource categories high on particularism and abstractness) were shown to be strong predictors of client satisfaction. The use of social resource theory is a novel and appropriate approach to examine person-centred care and satisfaction with care. Also, in addition to addressing potential problems in previous self-report studies on care staff behaviour, the observational technique was highly practical to this service area where dealing with clients not always able to provide feedback directly. 

Purpose– User-oriented care, defined as individualized assisting behaviors, is the dominant approach within elderly care today. Yet, there is little known about its conceptual structure. This paper proposes that user-oriented care has a bi-partite structure which may be decomposed into the two dimensions of task and relation.Design/methodology/approach– Care workers were “shadowed” (i.e. observed) at their work (n=391 rated interactions). User-oriented care was assessed along ten process quality indicators targeting the acts of caregiving (i.e. task focus, relation focus, involvement, time-use, body language, autonomy, respect, warmth, encouragement, and information) in two elderly care settings, i.e. home care and nursing home. Observations added up to 45 hours.Findings– Principal component analyses confirmed the proposed two-factor structure of user-oriented care. Specifically, the user-oriented care indicators loaded on two distinct factors, i.e. task and relation. The underlying structure of user-oriented care revealed to be invariant across the two settings. However, the results revealed interesting structural differences in terms of explained variance and the magnitude of factor loadings in the home care and nursing home settings. Differences also emerged specifically pertaining to the indicators of autonomy and time-use. These findings suggest that user-oriented behavior may to some extent denote different acts of caregiving and what may be called task- and relation-orientation may be loaded with different meanings in these two care settings.Originality/value– This is the first study investigating user-oriented behavior in the context of elderly care using a quantitative observational approach. The authors propose that the observed differences between the two care settings are primarily not due to better elderly care work in home care, but due to some inherent differences between these two contexts of care (e.g. better health and living at home).

Purpose – National Board of Health and Welfare claims that the quality of elderly care services differ considerably between municipalities in Sweden. This study aims to analyze to what extent these variations can be accounted for by the older person's municipality affiliation (i.e. receiving elderly care in a certain municipality). Design/methodology/approach – Addressing this issue, national survey data from 78,538 older respondents receiving elderly care services in Sweden were analyzed using multilevel modeling (MLM). Findings – The results showed that municipality affiliation only marginally explained the variance in satisfaction with care, i.e. its variations were larger within than between municipalities. Instead, user-oriented care accounted for the variation in satisfaction with care. Specifically, the way the care workers behave toward the older person proved to be much more crucial for satisfaction with care than municipality affiliation. Moreover, random effects analyses revealed that the effects of user-oriented care on satisfaction with care varied across municipalities. Care setting (i.e. home care or nursing home) only marginally accounted for its variance.Practical implications – Developing care quality should start and primarily be discussed at the interpersonal care level, and not, as is customary, at the municipality level. Originality/value – The present research is the first in its kind to quantitatively investigate the sources of variation in perceived quality of Swedish elderly care using MLM.

In this special issue titled “Veteran Refections,” renowned social justice scholars assess the current state of justice research and provide valuable guidance to the younger generation of researchers. Their responses unveil a rich tapestry of diverse perspectives, with a recurring theme emphasizing the urgent need to apply scientifc knowledge to real-world contexts and expand theoretical frameworks to address evolving societal challenges. These collective refections hold immense value for justice scholars, ofering indispensable guidance on making impactful contributions to the feld. They emphasize the importance of embracing interdisciplinary approaches, engaging wider audiences, and fostering an authentic curiosity in research. As the feld of social justice research evolves, these profound insights will undoubtedly play a pivotal role in shaping its trajectory and advancing the wellbeing of individuals and communities. Inspired by the veteran responses, we, as Editors-in-Chief of SJR, share our refections on the vital aspect of scientifc work—contribution. We introduce the concept of “scientifc littering,” enumerating ten categories of non-contribution. Highlighting the pivotal role of research questions, we challenge the notion of novelty as the sole component of contribution. Ultimately, we assert that understanding and acknowledging contribution as the foundation of scientifc progress, while honoring the legacy of giants in our feld, foster impactful research and pave the way for groundbreaking discoveries in social justice research.

Har den psykopatiska chefen spelat ut sin roll? Svenska psykologiforskare presenterar en ledarteori som bygger på etik, omtanke och medlidande i stället för narcissism och machiavellism.

Over the last two decades, numerous organisational scholars have emphasised the importance of enhancing ethics and workplace diversity within organisations. The aim of the present article is to present a workplace diversity perspective on human resource management by advancing the notion of mindful human resource management that builds upon Buddhism's notions of wisdom, ethical conduct, and concentration, thus facilitating a steady form of attention and a non-judgmental state of mind. We propose that combining the three characteristics of the Buddhist path can help human resource managers to be more ethically minded, diversity conscious, compassionate, and caring in their decisions and actions.

In this article, we draw on Buddhist psychology to consider the three attributesof high-quality social connections in the context of work, which are ethicalmindedness, loving kindness, and compassion, referred to here as the brighttriad of mindful leadership (BTML). These components constitute the positivecounterparts of the dark triad components of mindless leadership (i.e.,Machiavellianism, narcissism, psychopathy). The research on the dark triadof leadership appears to “glorify” these qualities, through suggesting thathigh-scoring leaders are more successful in achieving business goals. Weargue that this represents a too limited perspective and is one which poorlyresonates with the increased focus on sustainable work and work conditionsmarked by well-being, fairness, security, and trust. BTML, however, taps intothe call of the positive organizational scholarship field to focus on positive andvirtuous practices, and to foster high-quality relationships and positive outcomes in the workplace. We, in conceptualizing BTML, furthermore use theconcepts of cultivation, attention, and awareness to facilitate the leader’spresence in the moment, and we argue that these cumulatively are necessaryconditions for the triad of ethical mindedness, loving kindness, and compassionto permeate all activities that leaders engage in.

Using a large representative sample of the Swedish population, the present study aimed to explore the relationship between the Five Factor Model (FFM) of personality and frequency of online shopping. On three different occasions, surveys were sent out to 9,000 Swedish residents using a systematic random sampling procedure. In total, 5,238 individuals responded to the survey which, inter alia, included measures of the FFM of personality (i.e., HP5i, 15 items) and online shopping. A confirmatory factor analysis confirmed the construct validity of the HP5i. To examine whether and to what extent the FFM predicted self-reported frequency of online shopping, a hierarchical regression analysis was conducted in which gender and age were used as control variables. Our findings indicated that online shopping was positively associated with Openness to experience (i.e., openness to feelings) and Extraversion (i.e., hedonic capacity), and negatively associated with Conscientiousness (i.e., a high degree of impulsiveness). These results suggest that online shoppers are affective, hedonic, and impulsive; that is, characteristics that contrast with the classical view of online shoppers as cognitive, utilitarian, and goal-directed. We argue that these results, alongside the use of a large representative sample and frequency of online purchase, are a needed addition to previous research as previous research studies mainly have focused on the intention or motivation to online shopping using smaller non-representative samples. Implications for online retailers and society as well as directions for future research are discussed.

This book takes the reader on an exciting journey presenting the development of resource theory of social exchange originated from Uriel G. Foa and Edna B. Foa. This groundbreaking theory has inspired and generated a tremendous amount of basic and applied research in various disciplines of psychology, sociology, management, economics, marketing, and political science. This book, edited by Kjell Törnblom and Ali Kazemi, two prominent and leading scholars in this field, complements and deepens the Foas' pioneering work from 1974. Within these covers the reader will find an abbreviated version of the Foas' out-of-print original, which is increasingly referred to by current researchers, alongside new chapters on current issues, developments, and applications written by eleven scholars. The book has a simple and clear-cut message: resource theory is not an exercise in academic hair-splitting but has far-reaching societal implications in that it can provide interesting solutions to a wide range of social issues.