Trust, conflict and cooperative behaviour: considering reciprocity within organisations

Purpose: In this introduction of the special issue “Trust, conflict and cooperative behaviour” the focus of the special issue is introduced: because al lot of attitudinal and behavioural employees' outcomes are based on reciprocity, they should be examined as a characteristic of relationships instead of a characteristic of employees.

Design/methodology approach: On a theoretical level reciprocity within organizations is considered by means of the social embeddedness approach and by means of leader member exchange.

Findings: Although reciprocity in relationships is well recognised in the academic literature seemingly little empirical work has been conducted on reciprocity in manager‐subordinate and subordinate‐subordinate relationships.

Originality/value: In this special issue, we try to fill in this gap and focus on the reciprocity within relationships to explain trust, conflict and cooperative behaviour within organisations.