An Empirical Study On Employee Psychological Contract In State-owned And Private Enterprises

Psychological contract is employees'perceptions about employment relationship, which consists what employees contribute to organizations (employee obligation) and what organizations reward for employees (organization obligation). In Chinese management practices, great differences were found in empolyees'perceptions about employment relationship between state-owned and private enterprises, which have different effects on employees'work attiudes and behaviors.This thesis tried to resolve the'state-owned ideologies'which puzzled managers and researches through the research of the differences of employees'psychological contract between state-owned and private enterprises. To resolve this problem, we put focus on two questions.The first one is the differences of psychological contract contents between state-owned and private enterprises employees, namely, their different perceptions about employee obligations and organization obligations and different effects of employee's values (careerist vs norm of reciproacity) on psychological contract. The second one, the differences of psychological contract breach between state-owned and private enterprises. Whether there are differences in the level of contract breach in the two kinds of enterprises, and how managerial ideologies affect psychological contract breach and breach affects empolyees'attitudes and behaviors. Based on theoretical analysis, research hypothesis are put forward and validated through impirical studies. The main conclusions are as follows.Firstly, psychological contract is a tri-dimension configuration model consisting of developmental, transactional and relational contract. After having document reviews and theoretical analysis, this thesis presents a tri-dimension conceptual model, takes a deep inquiry from bottom to top, combines psychological contract scales of other scholars and adopts expert evaluations, gets a preliminary scale, and then analysis and filters items through explored factor analysis and gets a formal scale. The principal components and structural equation analysis confirm that the fit index of tri-dimension configuration is better than that of two-dimension or four-dimension configuration.Secondly, There's significant difference in organization's obligations between state-owned and rivate enterprises. Specifically, all the three dimensions of organization's obligation are higher in state-owned enterprises than in private enterprises. There's no difference in employee's obligations, but employee's developmental obligation and relational obligation are higher in state-owned enterprises. Thirdly, careerism and norm of reciprocity have different effects on psychological contracts. Carrerism only has positive effects on organization's developmental, transactional and relational contract in state-owned enterprises. But in private enterprises, carrerism has negative effects on developmental, transactional and relational contract of organization and employee obligations. Norm of reciprocity only has negative effects on employee's relational obligation in state-owned enterprises, but has negative effects on employee's developmental, transactional and relational contract of private enterprises.Fourthly, there are significant differences in psychological contract breach and its influence factors between state-owned enterprises and private enterprises. The level of employee's psychological contract breach is higher in state-owned enterprises. Employee managerial ideology has different effects on psychological contract breach. The ideology of market competition has significant negative influence on psychological contract breach, which is stronger in state-owned enterprises. While the ideology of employee worth has significant positive influence on psychological contract breach, which is stronger in private enterprises.Finally, psychological contract breach has different effects on employee's attitudes and behaviors. It has negative effects on job satisfaction, which is stronger in private enterprises. It has positive effects on organizational cynicism, which is stronger in state-owned enterprises. It has negative effects on career commitment, which is stronger in state-owned enterprises. It has negative effects on organizational commitment, which is stronger in private enterprises. It has positive effects on turnover intention, which is stronger in private enterprises.This thesis has a summarization and theoretical analysis on the research conclusions. And it also gives advices for future research.