Psychological Contract Violation and Motivational Strategies as Predictors of Employees’ Job Performance

Abstract

This study investigated how psychological contract violation and motivational strategies predict job performance of employees. Two hundred and thirty-two non-teaching staff (118 males and 114 females) of the University of Ibadan participated in the study. Seventy seven (33.2%) of the participants were aged between 31 and 40,99 (42.7%) had worked for less than 5 years in the university while 83 (35.8%) of the respondents had spent 10 years or more working in the same institution. Three standardized instruments were used for data collection. Robinson & Rousseau’s (1994) psychological contract violation scale measured psychological contract violation. The scale has 12-items and an alpha reliability of 0.92. Motivational factor scale (Kovach, 1995; Wong, Siu & Tsang, 1999) measured motivational strategies. It is also 12- items. A revalidation of this scale produced an alpha reliability of 0.80. Job performance was measured using health and work performance scale developed by Attridge (2003). It is a 7 item scale with a Cronbach alpha of 0.89. Three hypotheses were tested for this research. The intercorrelations of the demographic variables showed that gender and age of the respondents were not significantly related to job performance. There was also no significant relationship between marital status and job performance. The inter-correlations of the main variables of the research showed that there was significant positive relationship between psychological contract violation and job performance (r = 0.157; P<.05); motivational strategies did not significantly correlate with job performance. A 2 x 2 ANOVA (used to test hypothesis one) revealed that psychological contract violation had significant main effect on the respondents’ job performance (F (1,231) = 5.34; P<.05). Findings further revealed that respondents who scored high (X =13.81) on psychological contract violation put up better job performance than their counterparts that scored low (X = 12.47) on psychological contract violation. Results of independent t-test revealed that motivational strategies did not have significant influence on the participants’ job performance- However, independent t-test results revealed that psychological contract violation had a significant influence on the respondents’ job performance (t (230) ,~ 2.44; P<.05). Furthermore, mean scores revealed that participants who scored high (X ~ 14.56) on psychological contract violation recorded better job performance than their counterparts that scored low (X = 13.06) 0n psychological contract violation. Results provided insight into the way, manner, and times that psychological contract violation and lack of motivational strategies are most experienced. Suggestions were made in line with the findings of the study while implications for future research for organisational practice were highlighted.