Re-Shaping Post-COVID-19 Organizations: The Role of Relational Goods in Increasing Affective Commitment and Reducing Turnover Intention

Difficult times, such as the current COVID-19 Pandemic, require out-of-ordinary solutions. Indeed, retaining the best employees -or motivating them- has emerged as one of the greatest challenges of 2020. On the one hand, remote-working has disrupted existing routines. On the other hand, social distancing at work has reduced information exchange moments between employees. Monetary incentives are then not sufficient anymore to keep employees’ morale high. Thus, there is the need to focus on the importance of relational goods to maintain operations running even in the current situation. Building on this gap, the present research aims to observe how relational goods (which derives from existing social relationship in the workplace) could increase the willingness to share information with colleagues and reduce turnover intention during the COVID-19 Pandemic. Covariance-based structural equation modeling (CB-SEM) was used on a sample of Italian SMEs employees to empirically validate the Relational Goods construct and test the hypothesized relationships. Theoretical and managerial implications are provided to stress significant avenues for future research on organizational reflexive and intersubjective relationships.