Building on conservation of resources theory, we cast resource depletion as a novel explanatory mechanism to explain why employees' experience of psychological contract violation results in harm to ...third parties outside the employee-organization exchange dyad. This resource-based perspective extends and complements the dominant social exchange perspective which views employee reactions to psychological contract violation as targeting the source of the violation-the organization. The present article reports on 3 studies. Study 1 conducted an experiment with 109 participants and established the main effect of psychological contract violation on resource depletion. Study 2, using survey data from 315 medical employees and their immediate supervisors, found that after controlling for the social exchange mechanism (i.e., revenge cognitions toward the organization), resource depletion mediated the indirect effects of psychological contract violation on supervisory reports of employees' interpersonal harming toward coworkers and decision-making vigilance for clients. Further, we found that organizational and professional identification played opposing moderating roles in the effects of violation on resource depletion and consequently behavioral outcomes, such that these mediated relationships were stronger when organizational identification was high, and weaker when professional identification was high. Study 3 replicated all the results obtained in Studies 1 and 2 with time-lagged data from 229 medical employees across 3 measurement points. The findings confirm that resource depletion is a more effective explanation of the consequences of violation on third parties than revenge cognitions, although both are useful in predicting organization-directed outcomes (i.e., civic virtue and organizational rule compliance).
Drawing on recent research highlighting the dynamic and social properties of psychological contracts, we propose a framework that examines socially embedded triggers and their impact on psychological ...contract change. Our model accounts for the social context in which individuals’ sensemaking process about their employment relationship occurs. The model specifies how individuals make sense of coworkers’ psychological contract violation and integrate that information into the creation of a plausible convergent or divergent account. These accounts have the potential to reinforce or initiate a review of the terms of the individual’s psychological contract schema, or they may leave the schema intact. Research and practical implications of this conceptual framework are discussed.
The authors develop and test a moderated mediation model that accounts for employee emotions (psychological contract violation), employee motivation (revenge cognitions), employee personality ...(self-control), and context (perceived aggressive culture) in the relationship between psychological contract breach and workplace deviance. In Sample 1, involving 146 hospitality workers and their peers, the authors found support for a conditional indirect effect of psychological contract violation in predicting workplace deviance via revenge cognitions for those employees who perceive a high as opposed to low aggressive work culture. In addition, they found that at high levels of perceived aggressive work culture, the conditional indirect effects of psychological contract violation in predicting workplace deviance via revenge cognitions were statistically significant for those employees with low as opposed to high self-control. These results were replicated in Sample 2 using an independent sample of 168 hospitality workers in a different cultural context. Overall, the results suggest that self-control and perceived aggressive culture, taken together, influence the enactment of deviant acts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
We used psychological contract theory as a framework to meta-analytically review subjective and objective predictors of employees' perceived job insecurity. Seventy-six samples from 68 studies were ...included in our review. Results revealed that lower levels of job insecurity are associated with having an internal locus of control, lower amounts of role ambiguity and role conflict, greater amounts of organizational communication, less organizational change, younger employees, and white-collar and permanent work. Moderator analyses further revealed that relations between job insecurity and age, gender, education, and formal contracts are moderated by unemployment rates, countries of origin, and type of job insecurity measure. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for psychological contract theory and occupational health, and offer directions for future research.
The knowledge contribution of members is essential and beneficial to both the business and users of online health communities (OHCs). This study explores and tests the effects of OHC users' ...psychological contracts on their community identification and knowledge-sharing behavior. A total of 367 valid responses from several well-known OHCs in China are used in the data analysis. The results of the path analysis with structural equation modeling show that users' transactional psychological contracts have a negative effect on their knowledge contribution both directly and indirectly by weakening their community identification. In contrast, users' relational psychological contracts can lead to increased active knowledge contributions both directly and indirectly by enhancing their community identification. Knowledge sharing self-efficacy can strengthen the relationship between relational psychological contracts and knowledge contributions, and the relationship between community identification and knowledge contributions. However, it has no significant impact on the path from transactional psychological contracts to knowledge contribution. The implications and direction of future works are presented on the basis of the results of the empirical analysis.
In the context of international assignments, this study investigates the psychological contract breach–violation relationship from a multiparty employment perspective. Multiparty employment refers to ...arrangements where employees have concurrent psychological contracts with more than one party. Drawing on two waves of survey data from 221 expatriates, we find both direct relationships and asymmetric spillover effects of psychological contract breach on violation. Psychological contract breach by either the home or host organization is directly linked to psychological contract violation by the breaching party. Additionally, spillover effects occur such that a breach by the host predicts psychological contract violation by the home organization, though not the reverse. These relationships are shaped by the expatriates' organizational identification. Identification with the host buffers the direct effect between breach and violation by the host, while dual organizational identification mitigates the direct effect between breach and violation by the home organization. Identification with the home organization diminishes the spillover effect from host breach to home organization violation. The opposite, identification with the host, amplifies the spillover effect of host breach to home organization violation. By examining the distinct dynamics of home and host organization contract breach and violation, we develop theoretical implications for understanding PCs in multiparty work arrangements.
This study examines the psychological contracts held by expatriates with low socioeconomic status. We develop and test a moderated mediation model that examines the direct relationship between ...organisational support and intention to leave via the mediating role of psychological contract fulfilment. We also examine the moderating role of transactional psychological contracts on this indirect relationship in a sample of 108 low-status expatriates in the United Arab Emirates. Our results validate the assumptions made in psychological contract theory on the direct effect of organisational support and contract fulfilment. However, contrary to our expectations, the findings revealed a positive relationship between contract fulfilment and intention to leave. We discuss the implications of these mixed results for theory and practice.
A growing body of research has suggested that the experience of injustice, psychological contract breach, or unfairness can adversely impact an employee's health. We conducted a meta-analysis to ...examine the effects of unfairness perceptions on health, examining types of fairness and methodological characteristics as moderators. Results suggested that perceptions of unfairness were associated with indicators of physical and mental health. Furthermore, psychological contract breach contributed to the prediction of strain-related indicators of health above and beyond that accounted for by injustice alone.
In formulating a dynamic model of psychological contract (PC) phases, this paper offers new insights by incorporating a temporal perspective into the study of the PC. Although conceptualized as a ...dynamic construct, little empirical attention has been directed at how PCs evolve and change over time. Moreover, conceptualization of the PC and its processes has undergone limited revision since the 1990s despite challenges to some of its tenets and advances in related fields that suggest the importance of time to such processes. In this article, we address limitations in existing theory, clarify the conceptualization of the PC, and bring dynamism to the forefront of PC theory building by emphasizing dynamic processes. We propose a phase-based model of PC processes (intraphase and interphase) wherein the functions of key variables (e.g., promises, inducements, contributions, and obligations) change over time and context. These phases include creation, maintenance, renegotiation, and repair. This model directs attention to the dynamic nature of the PC, drawing on contemporary evidence regarding self-regulatory mechanisms. Finally, we present the implications of this dynamic phase model for theory and research.
Psychological contracts have been theorized to occur at different levels of analysis and with different exchange parties. In this article, we develop the concept of team-client psychological contract ...fulfillment (team-client PCF) as a team-level social exchange indicator, reflecting the team members’ perceptions of the degree of fulfillment of the commitments a client promised to a team. Using the multilevel group-process framework (Lang et al., 2019) and a sample of newly formed self-managed teams consisting of 838 observations, nested in 244 individuals, 56 teams, and in four waves of data, we tested the claim that team-client PCF may determine the type of collective states that emerge within the team. When team-client PCF is higher, it should create conditions for the emergence of team states related to team maintenance (i.e., team identification), whereas when team-client PCF is lower, it is more likely that teams develop states related to the regulation of team performance (i.e., team-member exchange TMX). Our results support our hypotheses. We discuss implications for both the psychological contract literature as well as the team dynamics literature (especially team dynamics of team identification and TMX). (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved) (Source: journal abstract)
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