Balanced Psychological Contract Research Articles

Influence of mentoring on the proactive behavior of new employees: moderated mediation effect of agreeableness.

In recent years, faced with a complex economic development environment and the evolving dynamics of the Chinese workplace, talent has become a precious resource that is invaluable yet scarce for every enterprise. As Generation Z employees have gradually entered the labor market, they contribute new perspectives and energies to various enterprises and pose unique challenges. The traditional step-by-step approach no longer meets the needs of today's businesses. Companies require more proactive talents to drive superior performance. Individuals with proactive behavior can effectively plan their career paths and are better equipped to fulfill core organizational tasks. Therefore, it is crucial for organizations to effectively mitigate the perceived negative impacts of proactive behavior, encouraging individuals to exhibit more positive proactive actions. Based on the proactive motivation model, this study investigates the effects of mentoring, balanced psychological contract, proactive behavior, and agreeableness on the proactive behaviors of new employees. The research surveyed 417 new employees from Guangdong Province, China, who had graduated within the last three years, with a gender distribution of 49.4% male and 50.6% female. Structural Equation Modeling was used for data analysis, and the following results were obtained: First, mentoring positively affected the balanced psychological contract and new employees' proactive behavior. Second, mentoring positively affected the new employees' proactive behavior through the balanced psychological contract. Third, agreeableness played a moderating role in the relationship between mentoring and new employees' proactive behavior, and in the relationship between mentoring and the balanced psychological contracts. Finally, the positive indirect effect of mentoring through the balanced psychological contract on new employees' proactive behavior is positively moderated by agreeableness. The results of this study offer new insights into mentoring research for new employees and provide practical guidance for fostering the balanced psychological contract and proactive behavior among new employees. This research enriches the existing literature on mentoring for new employees by demonstrating the integral roles of agreeableness and a balanced psychological contract in fostering proactive behavior, offering valuable insights for organizational practices aimed at enhancing employee proactivity.

Fostering Employee Commitment: The Role of Psychological Contract

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between psychological contract and employee commitment from the perspective of employees. In this regard, four types of psychological contract have been selected as independent variables and employee commitment as dependent variable. The primary data have been collected from 340 private sectors’ employees in Bangladesh through floating a structured questionnaire designed with five-point Likert measurement scale. Descriptive statistics and bivariate correlation have been applied to know the interplay among independent and dependent variables. The linear regression result and hypothetical analysis reveal that relational and balanced psychological contract have significant relationship with employee commitment. On the contrary, transactional and transitional psychological contracts hypotheses are rejected due to the insignificance. Eventually the findings of the study imply that majority of the employees highly prefer enduring relational employment with loyalty, faith, commitment and job security rather than short term ambiguous employment with high contingent pay and training.

Relationship Between Psychological Contract Violation and Physicians' Destructive and Constructive Behaviors in Tertiary Public Hospitals: An Empirical Evidence in Beijing.

In China, physicians have long faced long working hours, high stress levels, and tensions between physicians and patients, which can lead to negative behaviors. Understanding physicians' expectations and requirements of the hospital and increasing satisfaction with their psychological contract can help improve physician motivation and stabilize the hospital team. The study aims to analyze the relationship between physicians' psychological contract violations and different behavioral choices, encourage hospitals to conclude a balanced psychological contract with physicians, and provide governance and intervention strategies for hospital human resource management. Stratified cluster sampling was used to select 321 physicians from four public hospitals in Beijing for questionnaire surveys. Descriptive statistical analysis, t-test, ANOVA, correlation analysis, and regression models were performed using Stata 15.0 and SPSS 26.0 to analyze the relationship between psychological contract violations, physicians' EVLN behaviors and organizational justice. Psychological contract violation had a positive effect on exit behavior and neglect behavior, and a negative effect on voice behavior and loyalty behavior. Organizational justice plays a mediating role between psychological contract violation and physicians' exit, voice and loyalty behaviors. Psychological contract violation can drive negative behavior among physicians, and organizational justice can play a mediating role in this. Public hospitals should establish a healthy psychological contract with physicians and place a premium on organizational justice to promote constructive behaviors and prevent destructive behaviors. This study constructs a more complete theoretical framework to explain physicians' behavior, and further dynamic tracking investigations are necessary because the evolution of physicians' behavior is a dynamic and long-term process.

The supervisor's paradox: Why different psychological contract types lead to varied supervisory mentoring

Abstract Supervisory mentoring represents a type of social dilemma called a delayed social fence. This study adopts a social dilemma perspective to examine how the three types of psychological contracts (balanced, relational, and transactional) perceived by supervisors differently influence their mentoring. Drawn on social dilemma perspective, we proposed that supervisory mentoring would be more likely to occur when supervisors perceived benefit return from their mentoring provision in a timely manner. The results obtained from a sample of 596 supervisor–subordinate matched data from the self-reported questionnaires completed by 225 sales agent teams in the insurance industry in Taiwan support our predictions. Consistent with the social dilemma perspective, supervisory mentoring is more likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived balanced psychological contract, while supervisory mentoring is less likely among subordinates whose supervisors perceived transactional psychological contract. Furthermore, we found that supervisory mentoring is positively related to subordinate performance. Our mentor-centric multilevel framework helps identify the social dilemma nature underlying mentoring provision, and verify the positive influence of mentoring on protégé performance.

A psychological contract perspective on how and when employees' promotive voice enhances promotability

AbstractWhile promotive voice is conventionally considered a favourable work behaviour to the organisation, whether engaging in promotive voice will help employees move up the career ladder is inconclusive across a handful of studies. Drawing on a psychological contract perspective, this study aims to understand why and when employees' promotive voice can contribute to supervisor‐rated employees' promotability. We propose that employees' engagement in promotive voice will strengthen supervisor‐sponsored balanced psychological contract with the employees and thus employees' promotability, and these effects will be stronger when the employees and supervisors have higher versus lower quality of leader‐member exchange (LMX) relationship. Results of a three‐wave field study with 281 employees and their 59 supervisors supported our hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the important implications of these findings for theory and practice.

A Psychological Contract Perspective of Employee Promotive Voice and Promotability

While promotive voice is conventionally considered a favorable work behavior to the organization, whether engaging in promotive voice will help employees move up the career ladder is inconclusive across a handful of studies. Drawing on a psychological contract perspective, this study aims to understand why and when employees’ promotive voice can contribute to supervisor-rated employee promotability. We propose that employees’ engagement in promotive voice will strengthen supervisors’ balanced psychological contract with the employees and increase their rating of employees’ promotability, and these effects will be stronger when the employees and supervisors have higher versus lower quality of leader-member exchange (LMX) relationship. Results of a three-wave field study with 281 employees and their 59 supervisors supported our hypotheses. In brief, we found that promotive voice was positively related to supervisors’ balanced psychological contract, especially when the quality of LMX was higher, which in turn, positively impacted supervisor-rated employee promotability. We conclude by discussing the important implications of these findings for theory and practice.

Balanced psychological contracts in the small business: The five factor model at work

A balanced psychological contract is an employer–employee relationship that features an expectation of career advancement in exchange for high performance on work assignments. The major purpose of this study was to establish an extended theoretical framework for this hybrid type of contract and quantitatively examine its nomological network. Specifically, the primary goal was to examine in a multilevel study the relationship between balanced contracts and managerial personality, using the Five Factor Model. A secondary goal was to examine whether the interaction between personality and balanced contracts predicts employees' satisfaction with their work. The sample data were collected from 48 small business leaders and 244 of their employees in Canada. Multilevel analysis showed that managers' conscientiousness and openness to experience were the strongest predictors of balanced contracts. In addition, the interaction between openness to experience and balanced contracts was significantly related to employee job satisfaction. We conclude by discussing potential limitations, possible future research avenues, and practical implications.

Personality and balanced psychological contracts: The mediating roles of epistemic curiosity and rule‐following behavior

AbstractThis study extends prior research on the relationships between personality constructs and types of psychological contracts by exploring how the Big Five traits predict balanced psychological contracts. Further, we determine whether epistemic curiosity and rule‐following behavior are key mediators of the proposed relationships. We tested our proposed hypotheses using three‐wave time‐lagged data from 469 respondents. The results indicated that openness to experience was positively associated and both conscientiousness and neuroticism were negatively associated with balanced contracts. Extraversion and agreeableness were not associated with balanced contracts. We also established the mediating role of epistemic curiosity in the relationships between personality traits and balanced contracts, but there was no support for the mediating role of rule‐following behavior in the present study. These findings have important implications for managers and organizations in terms of selecting the right person for a job (person‐job fit) and ensuring employee retention (person‐organization fit), hence having a bottom‐line effect on firm performance. Future research directions are also discussed.

Organizational citizenship behaviors in the era of changing employment patterns

PurposeThe increasing flexibility and discontinuity of labor relations have been associated with the development of new forms of psychological contracts as well as the development of more self-directed and mobile career attitudes. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the forms of psychological contract and protean/boundaryless career attitudes on the one hand and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) on the other.Design/methodology/approachIn total, 458 employees of three large Italian organizations were sampled through a self-report questionnaire. Zero-order correlations were carried out to examine the associations between study variables while dominance analysis, along with multiple linear regression, was used for evaluating their unique contribution with respect to OCB.FindingsOCB were positively predicted by relational and balanced psychological contracts, protean career attitude and boundaryless mindset.Practical implicationsOrganizations must pay particular attention to the content of the psychological contract and the career attitudes of their employees because they influence their willingness to carry out OCB.Originality/valueThe results add new evidence to the careers literature in terms of boundary conditions with regard to the effects of protean and boundaryless career attitudes as well as different forms of psychological contracts.

A Multilevel Examination of High-Performance Work Systems and Organizational Citizenship Behavior: A Social Exchange Theory Perspective

Drawing on social exchange theory, this study investigated the cross-level influence of high-performance work systems on organizational citizenship behavior, and verified the mediating role of psychological contract and the moderating effect of Chinese traditionality. With a sample of 51 enterprises and 1015 employees, results from cross-level analyses indicated that: (1) High-performance work systems had a significant positive impact on employees’ organizational citizenship behavior. (2) High-performance work systems enhanced organizational citizenship behavior through the improvement of relational psychological contract and balanced psychological contract, at the same time, the high-performance work system could improve the organizational citizenship behavior by reducing transactional psychological contract. (3) Balanced psychological contract and relational psychological contract had a significant positive impact on organizational citizenship behavior, and the relationship with employee’s organizational citizenship behavior was stronger for the balanced psychological contract, while transactional psychological contract had a significant negative impact on organizational citizenship behavior. (4) Chinese traditionality moderated the relationship between psychological contracts and employees’ organizational citizenship behavior.

Supervisors’ Psychological Contract, Informal Mentoring and Subordinate's Job Performance (WITHDRAWN)

Informal mentorship presents supervisors with a social dilemma involving both a social conflict (individual vs. collective interests) and a temporal conflict (short-term vs. long-term interests) as costs to producing the collectively beneficial goods resulting from mentorship. This study adopted a psychological contract theory to examine the relationships among three types of psychological contract fulfillment, informal mentoring, and subordinate job performance. We propose that three types of psychological contract–balanced, relational, and transactional–determine the extent to which supervisors perceive social dilemmas, which then impacts those supervisors’ willingness to devote themselves to informal mentorship. Using a sample of 225 sale managers and 596 sale representatives insurance industry across Taiwan, our findings, as we predicted, showed that fulfillment of three types of psychological contract affected the degree of mentoring provided. Balanced psychological contract across the three types has the largest effect on more mentoring benefit-cost balance and through informal mentoring provided, affecting subordinate job performance. These findings suggest that organization may provide long-term and incentive employment relationship to encourage supervisors involving mentoring subordinate, then ultimately beneficial for both subordinate performance and organizations.

Rethinking Psychological Contracts in the Context of Organizational Change

The employee–employer relationship is said to be affected by extensive workplace transitions, and yet little is known about how employees make sense of these changes while deciding on their responses to them. Our study investigated two factors, social comparison and the nature of the exchanges, as moderators of the effects of psychological contract (i.e., employee beliefs regarding the terms of exchange between the employee and the organization) and psychological contract fulfillment (i.e., employee beliefs regarding the extent to which the employer is fulfilling these terms of exchange) on employee performance. Analysis of data before and after organizational change showed that unfavorable social comparison is associated with lower employee performance for transactional, relational, and balanced psychological contracts. Employees’ perception of the social nature of exchange was associated with lower performance in response to relational and balanced psychological contract fulfillments.

Psychological contract framework on the linkage between developmental human resource configuration and role behavior

The purpose of this study was to examine the role of psychological contract on the linkage between developmental human resource (HR) configurations and role behavior relationships. Multilevel analysis of dyad data revealed that developmental HR configurations could strengthen employees' organizational behaviors that benefit the organization (OCBO) in general by simultaneously shaping their relational and balanced psychological contracts. Further, developmental HR configurations would also improve employees' organizational behaviors that benefit specific individuals (OCBI) and indirectly contribute to the organization by fostering their relational psychological contracts. These findings have implications for research on HR management and psychological contracts as well as for managers seeking to enhance or maintain a firm's competitive advantages.

Training opportunities and employee exhaustion in call centres: mediation by psychological contract fulfilment

The aim of this study is to analyse psychological contract fulfilment as a mechanism through which training affects stress in call centres. The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 412 call centre operators, using structural equation modelling to analyse their survey responses. Our results demonstrated that training is negatively related to workers' exhaustion and that the relationship is fully mediated by the fulfilment of socio‐emotional obligations. We found that it was the fulfilment of balanced obligations, and not relational obligations, which mediated the relationship between training and exhaustion. Hence, we verified that training was related to lower levels of employee exhaustion through fulfilment of the balanced psychological contract. Our findings highlight the centrality of psychological contract fulfilment to call centre workers, and the importance of training in constructing positive employment relationships with workers. We discuss implications for human resource management in call centres.

Antecedents and consequences of idiosyncratic deals: A frame of resource exchange

This study examines the antecedents and consequences of both timing and content of idiosyncratic deals (i-deals) for attracting and retaining valuable employees. A resource exchange frame theorizes the influence pattern of personal individualism value, social skill, and perceived insider status on i-deals timing. Individualism and social skill are expected to relate to both ex ante and ex post i-deals; perceived insider status is anticipated to relate only to ex post i-deals. The frame also suggests that i-deals’ content and personal development relate primarily to relational and balanced psychological contracts; the other ex post i-deals, flexibility and workload reduction relate to transactional psychological contracts. The frame was tested with data collected from 289 Chinese employees in the telecommunication industry.

The Social Dilemma Perspective on Psychological Contract Fulfilment and Organizational Citizenship Behaviour

Recent research suggests that employees perceive organizational citizenship behaviour (OCB) as costly while OCB in the aggregate benefits organizations. Employees thus face an OCB dilemma. This study adopts the social dilemma perspective, proposing that employee OCB varies with the three types of psychological contracts (e.g., relational, balanced, and transactional) due to different degrees of perceived social dilemma and explains why employees engage in OCB in the context of varying levels of social dilemmas. We used moderated structural equation modelling to test the mediating and moderating hypotheses using data from 485 supervisor-subordinate dyads from 58 companies in a variety of industries in Taiwan. As predicted, results suggest that employee OCB has the strongest relationship with balanced psychological contract. Results also confirm the mediating role of felt obligations in both relational and balanced psychological contracts and the moderating role of empathie concerns in transactional psychological contract. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results.

A Longitudinal Study of the Impact of Organizational Change on Transactional, Relational, and Balanced Psychological Contracts

Workplace transitions are thought to result in a fundamental shift in the employment relationship. This study used sensemaking theory to examine when and how organizational change affects employees’ psychological contracts (PCs). The authors suggest that employees interpret organizational change through contextual and cognitive factors related to the change. These factors, in turn, influence whether employees revise their PCs. Results of our longitudinal study suggest that the extent to which contextual and cognitive factors affect employees’ PCs depends on the type of PC. Transactional and balanced PCs were unaffected by the contextual and cognitive factors related to the change, while changes occurred in relational PCs.