Psychological Contract Theory Research Articles

Volunteer Reliability in Nonprofit Organizations: A Theoretical Model

The reliability of volunteers is a major concern for many nonprofit organizations. To address this problem in more detail, we develop a theoretical model of volunteer reliability based on psychological contract theory. By taking this perspective as a starting point, we explore how individual volunteer characteristics, organizational factors, and sociological developments shape the exchange of inducements and contributions between volunteers and nonprofit organizations. We discuss how these factors can create tensions in the psychological contract and determine the extent to which volunteers behave reliably. As such, we develop a theoretical framework for addressing the reliability problem in volunteer management.

Attracting future health workforces in geographically remote regions: Perspectives from current remote health professionals

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify what has previously attracted health professionals to work in geographically remote regions, to identify the incentives that managers are currently using to attract health professionals to remote regions, and to determine whether they are comparable. Design: This article examines the data from two separate, yet complementary, research studies. The first study used qualitative methods to investigate why health professionals choose to work in geographically remote regions through current remote health workforces. The second study investigated whether information communicated through recruitment advertising, contained information congruent with the themes that attracted the current remote health professionals through a content analysis of recruitment advertisements. The findings from these two studies are then compared and contrasted and Psychological Contract Theory is used to examine the implications for health service managers. Setting: This study was conducted in northern Australia, a remote tropical setting with geographically challenging working conditions. Results: The findings revealed that recruitment advertisements contained information comparable with the themes that had attracted health professionals to work in remote regions. Most importantly, they highlight opportunities to better align recruitment practices, and provide insight into how unrealistic expectations lead to psychological contract breaches. Conclusions: This study found that while recruitment advertisements are using appropriate content to attract health professionals to remote regions, there is considerable scope for improvement so that attraction translates into improved retention.

Attracting Future Health Workforces in Geographically Remote Regions: perspectives from current remote health professionals

Objective: The aim of this study was to identify what has previously attracted health professionals to work in geographically remote regions, to identify the incentives that managers are currently using to attract health professionals to remote regions, and to determine whether they are comparable.
 Design: This article examines the data from two separate, yet complementary, research studies. The first study used qualitative methods to investigate why health professionals choose to work in geographically remote regions through current remote health workforces. The second study investigated whether information communicated through recruitment advertising contained information congruent with the themes that attracted the current remote health professionals through a content analysis of recruitment advertisements. The findings from these two studies are then compared and contrasted and Psychological Contract Theory is used to examine the implications for health service managers.
 Setting: This study was conducted in northern Australia, a remote tropical setting with geographically challenging working conditions.
 Results: The findings revealed that recruitment advertisements contained information comparable with the themes that had attracted health professionals to work in remote regions. Most importantly, they highlight opportunities to better align recruitment practices, and provide insight into how unrealistic expectations lead to psychological contract breaches.
 Conclusions: This study found that while recruitment advertisements are using appropriate content to attract health professionals to remote regions, there is considerable scope for improvement so that attraction translates into improved retention.

Outcomes of Bridge Employment: A Psychological Contract Theory Perspective

A disproportionate rise in the aging population worldwide has resulted in widespread concern about stagnant economic growth and unstable social support systems. Academics and policy makers alike suggest that a solution to this challenge is prolonging the working life of older people. Bridge employment, or employment after retirement, is one way to extend working life. Although research on bridge employment has gained momentum in recent years, most studies use archival data, very few studies look at modalities and outcomes of bridge employment engagement, and even fewer studies utilize a theoretical framework to examine the bridge employment phenomenon. We collected survey data from 195 bridge employees, and found that psychological contract fulfillment was a significant predictor of work and well-being outcomes, including life satisfaction, marital adjustment quality, job satisfaction, commitment, organizational citizenship behavior, co- worker intimacy, and intention to continue working for the employing organization. These results suggest that psychological contract theory is important to understanding how bridge employees perceive and react to their employment arrangements.

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.

Making Performance Pay Work: The Impact of Transparency, Participation, and Fairness on Controlling Perception and Intrinsic Motivation

Performance pay has been one of the main trends in public sector reform over the last decade and aims to increase employees’ motivation. However, positive results are sparse. In a majority of cases, pay scheme designers neglect that intrinsic motivation may be distorted by the introduction of extrinsic rewards (crowding out). Nevertheless, under certain conditions, performance pay schemes may also enhance intrinsic motivation (crowding-in). The perception of rewards has proven to be an especially crucial factor for the outcome of performance pay. Based on psychological contract theory, this paper analyzes the relationships between intrinsic motivation, public service motivation (PSM), personality characteristics, and the design of the performance- appraisal scheme. The empirical analysis relies on a structural equation modeling (SEM) approach. Model findings reveal that a fair, participatory, and transparent design reduces the controlling perception while fostering the intrinsic motivation of employees. In addition, participants who score high on neuroticism perceive performance pay schemes to be more controlling and have lower values of intrinsic motivation.

Cause Analysis and Coping Approaches towards Job Burnout of College Counselors Based on Psychological Contract Theory

College counselor is one of the hit groups for job burnout, which directly harms psychological health and the college education quality. Based on localized psychological contract theory, the author analyzes four aspects: normative obligation: ambiguity in duty boundaries and non-identity in financial return; interpersonal obligation: lack of necessary interpersonal support and humanistic care; developmental obligation: obscurity in career development and limit of promotion; lack of effective interaction and humanistic care. It comes to a conclusion that psychological contract violation is the main cause to job burnout of college counselors. Therefore, colleges must take certain intervening measures to relieve job burnout of college counselors, such as making duty boundaries explicit and improving the performance evaluation; providing effective and on-going coaching and development, standardizing the career planning and affording honor motivation; creating the atmosphere of respect, opening communication channels and affording emotional stimulus.

Small but attractive: Dimensions of new venture employer attractiveness and the moderating role of applicants' entrepreneurial behaviors

Operating under high levels of uncertainty and limited public recognition, one of the most significant challenges for new ventures is attracting qualified employees. Building on the concept of legitimate distinctiveness, our study investigates how recruitment-related heterogeneous and homogeneous entrepreneurial identity claims influence applicants' judgments of new ventures' employer attractiveness. We combine anticipatory psychological contract theory and legitimacy theory to build theory about the way applicants evaluate new venture employer attractiveness. Using a metric conjoint experiment, we study 9,824 employer attractiveness judgments made by 307 job seekers. Our multi-level approach also yields cross-level interaction effects of job applicants' innovative behavior, which offer novel insights into which new venture employment dimensions specifically attract entrepreneurially-minded potential employees. We derive implications for new venture recruitment theory and offer practical implications for startup staffing.

The Relationship Between Responsible Leadership and Organisational Commitment and the Mediating Effect of Employee Turnover Intentions: An Empirical Study with Australian Employees

Contemporary leaders are increasingly challenged to execute their leadership roles with a higher sense of responsibility. However, only a handful of studies have empirically examined the influence of responsible leadership on employee and organisational outcomes. Using Social Identity Theory and Psychological Contract Theory, this paper reports the findings of the relationship between responsible leadership and organisational commitment through the mediating role of employee turnover intentions. A web-based online survey was administered to collect data targeting a sample of 200 Australian employees working full time. Structural equation modelling was used to analyse the data. The results reveal that perceived responsible leadership significantly influences employees’ organisational commitment and their turnover intentions. Moreover, the direct relationship between responsible leadership and organisational commitment was found to be partially mediated by employees’ turnover intentions.

The impacts of organisational justice and psychological resilience on employee commitment to change in an M&A context

Many firms have carried out organisational change, such as mergers and acquisitions, to adapt to the rapidly changing business environment. During such changes, it is crucial for firms to provide an environment that will enhance employees’ psychological stability and commitment to change. Therefore, this study explores factors that increase employee commitment to change during mergers and acquisitions and identifies the process that forms commitment to change. To achieve the research goals, the study uses conservation of resources theory to extract factors that may influence employees’ commitment to change: three types of organisational justice are extracted as an organisational resource and psychological resilience (PR) is extracted as an individual resource. The study also applies psychological contract theory to extract mediators that link resources and employee commitment to change during the merger and acquisition process. The study empirically examines the research model using a structural equation model, based on 222 respondents who experienced mergers and acquisitions in South Korea. The three types of organisational justice and PR have positive relationships with affective commitment to change through the relational contract. Interactional justice, one type of organisational justice, and PR have negative relationships with continuance commitment to change through the transactional contract. This study may call human resource managers’ attention to the importance of employees’ psychological stability and may suggest possible ways to increase employees’ affective commitment to change in situations where there are frequent changes, such as mergers and acquisitions.

A Generational Change: An Empirical Exploration of the Gen Y’s Workplace Expectations

The study was designed to empirically capture expectations of new job seekers and their perceived obligations and expectations as they enter a multigenerational workforce. Specifically, we utilized psychological contract theory to study differences in transactional and relational elements among graduating college seniors entering their first jobs, and the extent to which careerism, expected tenure, and earning potentials influenced the contract formations. The sample (n= 405) were graduating seniors from a state university on the east coast of the United States and all belonged to Generation Y (also referred to as the Millennials). Contrary to existing theories, the results did not reveal that today's young job seekers exemplify selfish behaviors (i.e., expecting more from their future employer than they are willing to reciprocate). However, the data did suggest that individuals entering the workforce with an opportunistic mindset viewed their first job as a stepping stone for future employment and career opportunities, while those scoring lower on careerism endorsed greater loyalty and relational elements, which may not be that different from behaviors among other generations. Earning potential appeared to correlate with both types of psychological contracts (i.e., transactional and relational). However, we found that careerism did moderate and strengthen the relationship between earning potential and transactional contracts. A discussion of the results is included, in addition to limitations of the current study, and recommendations for future studies.

“Giving Something Back to Society”: A Study Exploring the Role of Reciprocity Norms in Public Service Motivation

Public service motivation (PSM) is often conceived as a predominantly other-concerned type of motivation. This study challenges this notion by investigating the role of reciprocity norms, which are rooted in self-concern, as a determinant of PSM. Taking up a debate on whether PSM may be a manifestation of reciprocity vis-à-vis society, I draw on a combination of psychological contract theory and social identity theory to substantiate previous theoretical linkages between these concepts. Using a sample of 205 Swiss police officers, I then empirically analyze the relationship between both positive and negative reciprocity norms and PSM. Thereby, I utilize societal identification, which is a prerequisite for the emergence of shared psychological contracts, as a moderator. Findings from moderated regression analyses support the theoretical arguments for the norm-based and affective but not the rational components of PSM. In sum, this study provides relevant insights into some of the self-concerned foundations of PSM.

One after the other: Effects of sequence patterns of breached and overfulfilled obligations

ABSTRACTTo date, the study of psychological contracts has primarily centred on the question how retrospective evaluations of the psychological contract impact employee attitudes and behaviours, and/or focus on individual coping processes in explaining responses to breached or overfulfilled obligations. In this study, we aim to assess the extent to which sequences of breached and overfulfilled obligations impact job satisfaction and citizenship behaviour intentions. By integrating psychological contract research and theories on cognitive information processing, we formulate competing hypotheses on how sequences of breached and/or overfulfilled obligations lead to patterns of job satisfaction and citizenship behaviour intentions. These competing hypotheses were tested using a vignette study and an experiment. A Bayesian approach was used to test these pattern hypotheses directly against each other. The results show that breached obligations have an immediate negative impact on our outcome variables. Moreover, sequentially breached obligations lead to a continuous decline of job satisfaction and citizenship behaviour intentions. Overfulfilled obligations do little to compensate this negative impact. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Research on the Relationship between Training and Knowledge Worker Retention

Knowledge workers are invaluable assets in the organization in the knowledge economy era today. Both training and employee retention are the two critical parts in human resource management. The report analyzes why training might influence knowledge worker retention based on human capital theory and psychological contract theory. Followed with the empirical evidence on the link between training and retention, the report finishes with conclusions and future research directions.

The flexpatriate psychological contract: a literature review and future research agenda

Since the 1980s, research on international assignments (IA) has principally focused on traditional long-term expatriates. However, due to pressures to reduce long-term expatriate assignments and the emergence of a portfolio of more flexible staffing options, there has recently been a growing focus on the deployment of alternative forms of IA. This paper focuses on one form of alternative IA, flexpatriation, where employees undertake frequent international business trips without relocating. More specifically, we critically examine the flexpatriate employment relationship by applying psychological contract theory to yield insight into both the employer and the employee perspectives, which has been neglected in previous research. The article also examines some of the key HR challenges in managing flexpatriates and contributes to both the IHRM and psychological contract literature by presenting an agenda for future research in this area.

Hospitality employees promotional attitude: Findings from graduates of a twelve-month management training program

Mentoring is considered an important human resources training program but is seldom discussed as an internal marketing tool in the hospitality management literature. This study, using a major hotel company’s formal mentoring program, empirically tested mentoring’s influence on employee’s promotional attitude. Employee psychological contract theory provided the theoretical foundation for the study. The proposed research model was tested using Partial Least Squares (PLS) SEM. The results showed that mentor functions (i.e., career development and psychosocial support) were antecedents of employee promotional attitude. In addition, employee’s psychological contract breach and employee’s affective organizational commitment were mediators between mentor functions and promotional attitude, with affective organizational commitment showing a full mediation effect. These results provide both theoretical and managerial implications and offer opportunities for future research.

Just the Right Amount of Ethics Inspires Creativity: A Cross-Level Investigation of Ethical Leadership, Intrinsic Motivation, and Employee Creativity

Based on ideology-infused psychological contract theory and cognitive evaluation theory, this study investigated the curvilinear relationship between ethical leadership and employee creativity. A curvilinear mediation model was proposed to explain the impact of ethical leadership on creativity, using employee intrinsic motivation as the mediator. Applying a two wave sampling design that consist 258 employees and their leaders, we found that employee creativity improved as ethical leadership increased from low to moderate levels. However, the employee creativity improvement was attenuated when ethical leadership increased from moderate to high levels. Furthermore, the study also revealed that employee intrinsic motivation partially mediated this curvilinear relationship. The theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.

Organizational citizenship behavior, identification, psychological contract and leadership frames

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) by combining two heterogeneous perspectives, integrating OCB-related factors at work using both personal and organizational perspectives, thus contributing to the knowledge of OCB.Design/methodology/approachTwo studies are conducted using surveys in Taiwan with a snowball sampling technique to enlarge participation. Study 1 analyzes the relationships between organizational identification (OID), expected psychological contract (PC), perceived PC (PPC) and OCB. Study 2 analyzes the relationship between OCB and principals’ (or head teachers’) leadership frames (LFs).FindingsStudy 1 finds that OID is an antecedent of OCB and that expected PC (EPC) moderates the OID-OCB relationship. Study 2 finds that the symbolic LF is the only antecedent of OCB and that different LFs influence each other in predicting OCB. EPC is found to moderate the OID-OCB relationship, indicating that primary school teachers’ (PSTs) with higher levels of EPC are more likely to demonstrate OCB at school. Interestingly, PPC did not demonstrate such a moderating effect.Originality/valueThe study makes three contributions. First, the authors analyze composite OCB via identity and PC theories (Study 1). Second, the authors scrutinize specific aspects of OCB via leader-member-exchange and LF theories. These aspects include assisting colleagues, job commitment, working morale and non-selfish behavior (Study 2). Third, the authors increase understanding of PSTs’ OCB, discussing important implications for school principals and human resource managers as well as perhaps others in similar sectors.

Psychological Contract Development, Distributive Justice, and Performance of Independent Contractors

In today’s “gig economy,” more and more jobs are offered to independent contractors. Independent contractors have a highly defined, narrow, finite set of obligations to their employing organizations. As such, independent contractors gain the benefit of flexibility, choosing who and when they work, and organizations gain the benefit of nimbleness, expanding, and contracting their workforce at will without taking on the robust obligations they must typically offer to a full-time employee. As this sector of the U.S. economy grows, how our existing theories of employee–employer relationships apply is of interest. The present study sought to explore how one such theory (psychological contract theory) manifests in the independent contractor–organization relationship. Drawing on this theory’s findings with respect to key antecedents of an employment relationship, we explore how particular types of negotiation behavior an organization uses with an independent contractor affect the resources allocated to the independent contractor, vis-à-vis obligations that the independent contractor feels that the focal organization should fulfill (psychological contract). These resources are hypothesized to directly relate to the independent contractor’s sense of distributive justice, as well as the contracting organization’s evaluation of the independent contractor’s performance. Overall, the mixed results suggest that psychological contract theory can be applied to the context of the independent contractor–organization relationship in order to uncover how unique features of the relationship (e.g., highly negotiated terms) affect how obligations are created and reciprocated between the parties. Psychological contract type appears to be a partial linchpin between an organization’s negotiation behaviors on independent contractor performance.

Contrato Psicológico y Cambio Organizacional: Evaluación del Impacto de M-As en los Sobrevivientes de Productos Farmacéuticos en Puerto Rico

Las fusiones y adquisiciones (F-A) afectan el contrato psicológico de los empleados. Este estudio evaluó el impacto de las F-A en el contrato psicológico, la satisfacción laboral, el compromiso organizacional, la intención de dejar la empresa, y si la explicación creíble moderó las reacciones de los empleados. Se realizaron análisis estadísticos de los datos de 196 encuestados de dos farmacéuticas en Puerto Rico. Los resultados revelaron una correlación inversa entre la percepción de violación del contrato psicológico (VCP) y las variables satisfacción laboral y compromiso organizacional. También confirmaron una relación directa entre la VCP y la variable intención de marcharse. Este estudio encontró un efecto de la variable moderadora explicación creíble sobre las variables satisfacción laboral y compromiso organizacional. La comprensión de la teoría del contrato psicológico puede reducir la violación percibida y su impacto en las actitudes de los empleados.