| Psychological contracts are employee's perceptions about the implicit and explicit reciprocal obligations they and their employer share. Employees may perceive that their psychological contracts have been violated when obligations are not fulfilled, and previous work has found that employees may react negatively to such violations. The purpose of this research was to extend previous work on psychological contract violation and to investigate some proposed underlying dimensions of psychological contracts. This research was unique in the way psychological contract violation was operationalized. Following the model proposed by Morrison and Robinson (1997), contract violation was measured using the magnitude of violation, or the size of the relative discrepancy between the employee and employer levels of obligation fulfillment. Survey data collected from 350 employees of a nonprofit organization indicated that these employees were much more likely to indicate that they had fulfilled more of their obligations to their employer than their employer had fulfilled to them. The current research used the exit, voice, loyalty and neglect typology (Hirschman, 1970) as employee response outcomes and similar to previous research, found magnitude of contract violation to be negatively correlated with loyalty and helpful voice behaviors, and positively correlated with exit. It was predicted that in addition to the direct effects of psychological contract violation on employee outcomes, there would also be situational variables that would moderate these relationships. Trust, the perceived adequacy of justifications provided by the organization, and procedural justice were tested as moderators. Although each had direct effects on most of the employee response variables, the only relationship that was consistently moderated by all three situational variables was that between magnitude of violation and exit. In conditions of high perceived magnitude of violation, exit was less likely to occur when employees had high levels of trust, when they perceived adequate justifications, or when they perceived high procedural justice. Finally, measures were developed in this study for two underlying dimensions of psychological contracts proposed by McLean Parks, Gallagher, and Kidder (1998): particularism, the extent to which an employee feels that his arrangement is non-substitutable, and volition, the extent to which an employee feels that he had some control in defining the terms of his employment arrangement. These constructs were measured with mixed success. The results and limitations of the study are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered. |
