Inducements,contributions, and fulfillment in new employee psychological contracts

This longitudinal study of newly hired Chinese college graduates (N = 143) investigates the effects of contract fulfillment, employee reports of company inducements (organizational support and job rewards), and supervisory reports of individual contributions (job performance and extra‐role citizenship behavior) upon changes in the graduates' psychological contracts. Three survey waves were administered a year apart, starting with the recruits' job offer acceptance. Analyses revealed that employee fulfillment and perceived contributions predicted particular changes in employer psychological contract obligations, whereas employer fulfillment and perceived inducements predicted changes in employee obligations. The effects of inducements on employee obligation changes and contributions on employer obligation changes were mediated by their respective fulfillment measures. Changes in obligations were greater in the first year of employment than in the second. This study yields implications for managing newcomers and researching the initial phase of employment. ©2011 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Human resource practices: Administrative contract makers

Practices used in recruiting, training, performance review, and compensation all contribute to employee beliefs in a psychological contract with their employer. This article presents the basic features of contract-making which human resource practices must manage. Organizations with multiple contract makers must align the messages they send to create a contract that works and can be kept. Recommendations are made for managing the psychological contract more effectively.     

Ideological currency in psychological contracts: the role of team relationships in a reciprocity perspective

This study focused on the role of ideology in psychological contracts, which has been a neglected theme in psychological contract research. A study among Dutch middle managers in education revealed that ideological psychological contract fulfillment explained additional variance in relation to employee obligations toward the organization. Moreover, it was found that team relationships moderated the relations between some aspects of employer contract fulfillment and employee obligations, but no significant interactions were found between employer ideological fulfillment and team relationships in relation to employee obligations.     

Balancing psychological contracts: Validation of a typology

In this study, a psychological contract typology based on both content and exchange balance was developed. Content was defined along the transactional-relational dimension. Balance was assessed by comparing employees' perceptions on the number of employees' obligations relative to employer's obligations. Furthermore, the typology was related to type of employment contract (temporary versus permanent) as perhaps the most important antecedent of psychological contracts, and to various psychological consequences (job satisfaction, life satisfaction, organizational commitment, and psychological contract violation). Results were based on Belgian and German data (N = 1267). Latent Class Analyses suggested four psychological contract types which are clearly distinct with regard to content terms and exchange balance: mutual high obligations, employee over-obligation, employee under-obligation and mutual low obligations. Temporary workers were more likely to hold psychological contracts with few employer obligations, such as the mutual low obligations and the employee over-obligation type. Finally, the mutual high obligations type was most beneficial in terms of psychological outcomes. Implications for future research are discussed.     

Psychological contracts and reciprocity: a study in a Finnish context

Existing research has demonstrated how the norm of reciprocity operates as a general principle in exchange relationships. However, limited explicit theoretical and empirical attention has been paid to its role in the functioning of the psychological contract. Using a sample of Finnish public sector employees, this study investigated the impact of perceived employer fulfilment of psychological contract on employee perceptions of the form of reciprocity underlying the exchange relationship. The potential mediating role of the reciprocity perceptions between perceived contract fulfilment and its outcomes (affective commitment, continuance commitment and intention to leave) was also examined. The results show that perceived employer fulfilment is positively associated with employee perceptions of the generalized form of reciprocity, and negatively with perceptions of the balanced form of reciprocity. Further, perceptions of generalized reciprocity were found to mediate the relationship between perceived contract fulfilment and affective commitment and intentions to leave the organization. Results and implications are discussed.     

Changing Organizational Forms and the Employment Relationship

This paper draws upon new research in the UK into the relationship between changing organizational forms and the reshaping of work in order to consider the changing nature of the employment relationship. The development of more complex organizational forms – such as cross organization networking, partnerships, alliances, use of external agencies for core as well as peripheral activities, multi‐employer sites and the blurring of public/private sector divide – has implications for both the legal and the socially constituted nature of the employment relationship. The notion of a clearly defined employer–employee relationship becomes difficult to uphold under conditions where employees are working in project teams or on‐site beside employees from other organizations, where responsibilities for performance and for health and safety are not clearly defined, or involve more than one organization. This blurring of the relationship affects not only legal responsibilities, grievance and disciplinary issues and the extent of transparency and equity in employment conditions, but also the definition, constitution and implementation of the employment contract defined in psychological and social terms. Do employees perceive their responsibilities at work to lie with the direct employer or with the wider enterprise or network organization? And do these perceptions affect, for example, how work is managed and carried out and how far learning and incremental knowledge at work is integrated in the development of the production or service process? So far the investigation of both conflicts and complementarities in the workplace have focused primarily on the dynamic interactions between the single employer and that organization’s employees. The development of simultaneously more fragmented and more networked organizational forms raises new issues of how to understand potential conflicts and contradictions around the ‘employer’ dimension to the employment relationship in addition to more widely recognized conflicts located on the employer–employee axis.     

The nature of employee engagement: rethinking the employee–organization relationship

Research interest in the new concept of employee engagement has grown dramatically in recent years. Employee engagement represents a work-related state of mind characterized by feelings of vigor, fulfillment, enthusiasm, absorption and dedication. However, scholars are still ambivalent about its theoretical contribution to explaining the employee–organization relationship. The goal of the study is to strengthen the theoretical foundation of the employee engagement concept in light of this relationship. We first compared employee engagement to other close concepts such as psychological empowerment and psychological contract. We then examined its contribution to the explanation of work centrality over and above psychological empowerment and psychological contract. Our study is based on an interactive sample of 593 employees from both private and public organizations in Israel. Our findings demonstrate that employee engagement is distinct from psychological empowerment and psychological contract and has an incremental value for work centrality over and above psychological empowerment and psychological contract. Implications of our findings are discussed the light of the employee–organization relationship.     

Causes and consequences of psychological contracts among knowledge workers in the high technology and financial services industries

As organizations shift the central focus of their competitive strategy away from value appropriation towards value creation it is to knowledge workers that they will look to provide the innovation to fuel their continued development. The state of the relationship between the knowledge worker and the employer - the psychological contract - will determine whether this source of innovation and creativity is released. In this study, we developed and tested a causal model of the causes and consequences of psychological contract. Over four hundred participants who were knowledge employees drawn from eleven leading edge companies in the high-technology software, manufacturing and financial services sector participated in the study. We found support for the hypothesis that the psychological contract and those organizational processes relating to procedural justice would have a direct effect on two critical organizational outcomes, namely, employee commitment and intention to remain with the organization. We also found support for the hypothesis that psychological contract variables mediated the relationship between organizational processes and employee commitment and intention to stay with the organization.     

基于消费者心理契约违背的品牌危机产生机理研究

心理契约概念是建立在社会交换理论基础上,用来描述雇员与雇主关系的理念。构建在企业和消费者共同信任和互惠基础上的消费者品牌关系也是一种心理契约关系。大量研究证明消费者心理契约的违背将导致消费者品牌关系的扭曲甚至断裂,最终导致品牌遭受危机。只有深入研究和探讨品牌危机的产生机理,正确地认识品牌危机,才能有效地防范和化解危机。     

Consequences Of The Psychological Contract For The Employment Relationship: A Large Scale Survey*

The renewed interest in the concept of the psychological contract has come to the fore in attempts to describe, understand and predict the consequences of changes occurring in the employment relationship. Recognizing that the employment relationship includes two parties to the exchange process, we set out to examine the content and state of the psychological contract from both the employee and employer perspective. The two perspectives permit an examination of the mutuality of obligations, which has not received much empirical attention to date. The research methodology consists of two surveys conducted in a large local authority directly responsible and accountable for a range of public services including education, environmental health and social care to the local population. The key findings suggest that the majority of employees have experienced contract breach. This view is also supported by managers, as representatives of the employer, who further indicate that the organization, given its external pressures, is not fulfilling its obligations to employees to the extent that it could. Overall, the results indicate that employees are redressing the balance in the relationship through reducing their commitment and their willingness to engage in organizational citizenship behaviour when they perceive their employer as not having fulfilled its part in the exchange process.     

HR practices and commitment to change: an employee‐level analysis

This article explores the relationship between HR practices and commitment to change in three health service organisations in Ireland. The research focuses on employee views of HR practices and resulting employee‐level consequences including commitment to change, perceptions of the industrial relations climate and the psychological contract, and work–life balance. The findings indicate that the HR practices valued by employees, and which are related to a range of employee‐related consequences, are very different from the lists of sophisticated HR practices that appear in the high performance literature. The research suggests that organisations need to ensure that attention is still paid to the basics of the employment relationship and that these are not lost in the rush to introduce more sophisticated approaches to managing employees.     

One job,one deal…or not: do generations respond differently to psychological contract fulfillment?

This paper investigates generational differences in the relations between psychological contract fulfillment and work attitudes. Data were collected from a sample of 909 employees in the Dutch service sector. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to test the moderating effects of generational differences on the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on affective commitment and turnover intention. The relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and these work outcomes was moderated by generational differences. Furthermore, results indicate that different generations respond differently to different aspects of psychological contract fulfillment, such as career development, job content, organizational policies, social atmosphere and rewards. The study provides evidence that generational differences impact the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee. Results from this study suggest that Baby Boomers and Generation X may be more motivated by social atmosphere, whereas Generation Y may be more motivated by job content and career development. Fair organizational policies are particularly motivating to Generation X, and providing rewards, though more important to Generation Y, seem mostly unrelated to work outcomes. This article is the first to study the moderation of generational differences in the relationships between psychological contract fulfillment and work outcomes.     

How Do Developmental and Accommodative HRM Enhance Employee Engagement and Commitment? The Role of Psychological Contract and SOC Strategies

In the context of the changing workforce, this study introduced two perspectives on HRM and distinguished universalistic developmental HRM from contingent accommodative HRM. We predicted two separate pathways for the effects on two employee outcomes: work engagement and affective commitment. We expected that developmental HRM would universally relate to employee outcomes by rebalancing the psychological contract between the employee and organization into a less transactional to a more relational contract. We also predicted that accommodative HRM would relate to outcomes only when fulfilling specific needs of employees, associated with their selecting, optimizing, and compensating strategies. Results of a multilevel study among 1058 employees in 17 healthcare units fully supported our expectations regarding the role of the psychological contract. Additionally, we found support for the expected roles of selection and compensation, but not for optimization strategy. This study contributes to the literature by demonstrating that HRM relates to employee outcomes through multiple pathways, which can be either universal or contingent.     

员工心理契约契合度及其评价

作为维系员工与组织关系的心理纽带,员工心理契约的主观期望与实际感知的吻合程度直接影响到员工对于组织的态度与行为。以往文献中对员工心理契约主观期望与实际感知吻合程度的研究缺乏系统性。本文引入心理契约契合度概念,对员工心理契约主观期望与实际感知吻合程度进行测量,提出了构建心理契约契合度评价指标体系的思路及测量方法,最后结合某军工研究所某研发团队的实际情况,对成员心理契约契合度进行了评价。该研究为组织衡量员工心理契约主观期望与实际感知一致性的度量提供了科学依据,增强了心理契约在实际管理工作中的应用性。     

Organization‐Based Self‐Esteem,Psychological Contract Fulfillment,and Perceived Employment Opportunities: A Test of Self‐Regulatory Theory

This study addresses organization‐based self‐esteem (OBSE) development by examining the role of perceptions of employer psychological contract fulfillment, and the self‐regulatory processes by which OBSE evolves and produces its effects. Self‐regulatory theory helps reveal why psychological contract fulfillment relates to OBSE, how OBSE mediates its effects, and the ways in which OBSE might interact with perceived employment opportunities to affect job satisfaction, performance, and turnover intentions. The results show that OBSE is related to and mediates the relationships between relational contract fulfillment and employee job satisfaction and performance, but OBSE is not related to transactional contract fulfillment. Nor does OBSE mediate the relationships between transactional contract fulfillment and the dependent variables. Perceived employment opportunities moderate the relationships of OBSE with job satisfaction and turnover intentions. This study concludes with recommendations of ways managers can increase their sensitivity to the types of messages they communicate to employees. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Layoff victim's employment relationship with a new employer in Korea: effects of unmet tenure expectations on trust and psychological contract

Existing studies of psychological contract have largely focused on the effects of contract breach on employees' attitudes and the contract itself involving the same employer. Given that both workforce mobility and downsizing activities are increasing, it is important to understand how individuals' past employment experiences shape their relationships with their employers. The present study focuses on the effect of prior layoffs on relationships with new employers. We posit that furloughed workers experience layoff as a breach of the psychological contract of job security they have entered into with their employer. Longitudinal data collected from individuals who were re-employed following a layoff revealed that unmet tenure expectations in an employment relationship result in reduced trust in a new employer, which in turn negatively impacts the quality of psychological contracts with the new employer. The results also show that the relationship between unmet tenure expectations and trust was moderated by individual attributions regarding the cause of the layoff. The present findings suggest that the negative impact of contract breach experienced with one organization may carry over to subsequent organizational contexts.     

心理契约与员工满意度关系的实证研究

文章通过问卷调查收集相关数据,采用定量分析方法,分析心理契约和员工满意度之间的关系。研究发现心理契约与员工满意度之间存在高度正相关的关系,心理契约的各构面中个人发展因子、工作本身因子、人与人之间关系因子与员工满意度显著相关。最后本研究提出一些基于心理契约提高员工满意度的建议。     

Linking strategy and human resource practices: How employee and customer contracts are created

Organizations implement their business strategies through the human resource (HR) practices they use. These practices are major determinants of employees' psychological contracts. How employees interpret the terms of their employment impacts motivation, innovation, and customer service. This article describes four common types of psychological contracts in US firms and the HR practices that create them. It develops a framework for understanding how each contract shapes employee performance, retention, cooperation with fellow employees and customer responsiveness. It presents recommendations for more effectively managing the link between business strategy and the psychological contract of employees. © 1994 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

“Good Cause Beliefs” in an “At-Will World”? A Focused Investigation of Psychological Versus Legal Contracts

This study assesses the psychological contracts of a group of at-will employees and compares their relevant psychological contract beliefs with the terms of the controlling legal employment contract. In addition, we test specific hypotheses regarding the relationship between employers formal job security policy (employment at-will vs. good cause protection, and employee personal characteristics; equity sensitivity, organizational tenure) to 2 focal psychological contract beliefs (the employers obligation to have a good reason to discharge the employee, and the employees reciprocal obligation to have a good reason to leave his/her employer). These issues are investigated using survey data sampled from 15 diverse U.S. organizations, and independently collected information regarding organizations job security policies. The results provide evidence of a widely shared psychological contract belief that, despite explicit at-will policies, U.S. employers are highly obligated to have a good reason to discharge employees. Further, personal characteristics are more strongly related to the focal psychological contract beliefs than employer job security policies. The theoretical contribution of the study and its practical implications are discussed.     

Psychological contract breach,high-performance work system and engagement: the mediated effect of person-organization fit

Based on social exchange theory, we developed and tested a mediated moderation model to investigate the effects of psychological contract breach (PCB), person–organization fit (P–O fit) and high-performance work system (HPWS) on employee engagement. Using a sample of 255 employees in China, our results revealed that PCB has significant negative effect on employee engagement, and P–O fit partially mediates this relationship. We further found that high levels of perceived HPWS aggravate not buffer the negative effect of PCB on employee engagement and P–O fit. In addition, the interaction of HPWS and PCB on employee engagement is mediated by P–O fit. Implications for the research and practices, limitations and directions for future research are discussed.