The effect of demographics on the psychological contract of employees

Abstract

The psychological contract provides a framework for understanding employee-employer relationships within an organisation. This paper is based on research on Canadian academics and aims to determine the effect demographic characteristics, such as the age, gender and educational background, have on the psychological contract of academics working in higher education institutions. The research contributes to the literature by investigating the psychological contract from the perspectives of the relational, transactional and balanced contract types. The research also combines two existing tools – psychological contract inventory and the HR practice scale – to gather data on the types of psychological contract developed by academics and the perception academics have on the HR practices of their employers. The study was based on quantitative analysis of a cross-sectional survey in addition to a literature review. Overall the findings suggest that, while gender and age had a positive impact on the transactional psychological contract of academics, there was no predictive relationship between education and type of psychological contract.