Positive Difference. Leadership - Under The Demographic Characteristics Rupture Mechanism Of The Psychological Contract

Psychological contracts, made up of employees'beliefs about the reciprocal obligations between them and their organization, lay at the foundation of employment relationships. Yet a variety of trends——restructuring, downsizing, increased reliance on temporary workers, demographic diversity, and foreign competition——are having profound effects on employees'psychological contracts. First, these trends make it increasingly unclear what employees and organizations owe one another, because traditional assurance of job security and steady rewards in return for hard work and loyalty no longer exist in most cases.Second, the state of turbulence and uncertainty makes it difficult for organizations to fulfill all of the obligations that they make to employees. The result of these two factors is a perception on the part of many employees that the terms of their psychological contracts have not been adequately fulfilled. As trends of downsizing, restructuring, and turbulence continue, even more employees will perceive that their organizations have failed to adequately fulfill their psychological contracts. The term that has been used for this belief is psychological contract breach.The initial objective of this paper is to find out the factors that can cause the feeling of psychological contract breach and provide an understanding of psychological contract breach and how it develops. Although there is a growing body of theoretical and empirical research on psychological contracts, scholars have devoted limited attention to the development of contract breach. Yet this is an important issue to understand, because the experience of breach can have serious individual and organizational implications. Researchers have found that breach decreases employees' trust toward their employers, satisfaction with their jobs and organizations, perceived obligation to their organizations, and intentions to remain. Through the reviews on the literatures, this paper finds that although leaders are not directly party to psychological contracts, employees will view leaders as the agent of organization, and leaders'evaluations and decisions affect the distribution of resources and rewards to employees, thereby the shaping and fulfillment of employees' psychological contract are influenced by the interaction between leaders and employees, which is affected by the demographic differences between leaders and employees. A large number of empirical studies have found leader-member demographic differences have effect on communications, role ambiguity, role conflict, and performance evaluation. Based on the studies of demography and psychological contract breach, this paper pays attention on the effect mechanisms of leader-member positive demographic differences on psychological contract breach, and governance mechanisms during the effect process. This paper endeavors to answer the following two questions:The first question is through which mechanisms leader-member positive demographic differences affect the employees'psychological contract breach? This paper examines whether employees'performance evaluation and employees'role ambiguity jointly play full mediating roles in the relationship between leader-member positive demographic differences and psychological contract breach. The second question is how need for cognition moderates the positive, negative effects of leader-member positive demographic differences on psychological contract breach?Based on the reviews on the literatures about demography, psychological contract breach, and need for cognition, this paper conceives its major objectives and main contents. After that, this paper formulate several theoretical hypotheses and construct study models through the five lenses of similar-attraction theory, self category theory, status incongruence theory, social exchange theory, and social information processing theory. Then this paper adopts questionnaire method and test sthose hypothesis involving mediating and moderating effects. On the basis of empirical results, this paper finally analyses the results.Finally, this paper illustrates the conclusions, theoretical contributions, managerial implications, possible shortcomings and some future research directions.The main conclusions are listed as follows.1.Role ambiguity and employees'performance evaluation jointly play part mediating roles on the relationship between leader-member positive age differences and psychological contract breach. First, leader-member positive age difference has effect on psychological contract through its effect on employees' role ambiguity; Second, leader-member positive age difference has effect on psychological contract breach through its effect on employees' performance evaluation; Finally, leader-member positive age difference has direct effect on psychological contract breach. What's more, leader-member positive age difference has positive effect on role ambiguity and performance evaluation, and role ambiguity has positive effect on psychological contract breach, while performance evaluation has negative effect on psychological contract breach. 2.Role and employees' performance evaluation jointly play full mediating roles on the relationship between leader-member positive job tenure differences and psychological contract breach. First, leader-member positive job tenure difference has effect on psychological contract through its effect on employees' role ambiguity; Second, leader-member positive job tenure difference has effect on psychological contract breach through its effect on employees'performance evaluation. What's more, leader-member positive job tenure difference has positive effect on role ambiguity and performance evaluation, and role ambiguity has positive effect on psychological contract breach, while performance evaluation has negative effect on psychological contract breach.3.Need for cognition shows the moderating effect on the relationships between leader-member positive age, job tenure differences and role ambiguity, performance evaluation, and psychological contract breach. When need for cognition is high, the positive relationship between leader-member positive age, job tenure differences and role ambiguity becomes weak, the relationship between leader-member positive age, job tenure differences and performance evaluation is positive, the relationship between leader-member positive age difference and psychological contract breach is negative; When need for cognition is low, the relationship between leader-member positive age difference and performance evaluation is negative, the positive relationship between leader-member positive job tenure difference and performance evaluation becomes weak apparently, the relationship between leader-member positive job tenure difference and psychological contract breach is positive.