Integrating Psychological Contracts and Psychological Ownership: The Role of Employee Ideologies, Organisational Culture and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour

Abstract

Several decades of psychological contract (PC) theorising and research have provided us with a well-developed and well-supported framework to understand the employee-employer relationship. Most of the research has focused on the negative emotional, attitudinal, and behavioural consequences following perceptions of PC breach or the perceived discrepancy between employer inducements and actual delivered inducements. In contrast, far less is known about the influence of individual differences and differences in organisational cultural values in relation to the PC. Moreover, less is known about the role of PCs in relation to the development of psychological ownership (PO). Consequently, we integrate the literature on PC and PO. By doing so, the aims of this chapter are threefold. First, we propose that differences in employee exchange and creditor ideology at the individual level and differences in cultural values at the organisational level relate differently to the formation of relational and transactional PCs. Second, we propose that these relational and transactional PCs relate differently to the emergence of PO in the workplace. Third, we propose that the development of PO relates differently to ‘good soldier’ versus ‘good actor’ organisational behaviours. In this chapter we limited ourselves to propose and discuss the effects of dispositional (i.e., creditor and exchange ideology) and cultural (i.e., individualism and collectivism) differences at the level of the individual and the organisation because the PC concerns an individual’s mental schema that serves to help to understand one’s current and future exchange relationship with the employer. We end this chapter by discussing the practical implications and future avenues of the proposed conceptual model.