The Study Of Psychological Contracts In Firm Growth

Items in contracts between employees and organizations are limited. Psychological contracts(PC) as an individual's perception of what he/she owes the organizations and the inducements the individual believes that he/she is owed in return influence employee's attitudes and behaviors as well. So we should not only know responsibilities in contracts, but also be acquainted with the commitment basing upon his/her own understanding of the reciprocal obligations in the employment relation.This paper discusses PC's concept and level and presents a model for employees' reactions to psychological contract violation. Then we analyze PC's characteristics of employees based upon Chinese culture. The earliest work on PC defined this topic as the shared perceptions between employees and employers regarding what each party owed the other in the employment relationship, more recent work has defined PC as an individual's perception of what he/she owes the employer and the inducements the individual believes that he/she is owed in return. We don't think two views are incompatible. Depending on sale rise rate, institutions and corporate culture, we divide the firm growth into five stages: surviving, transition, normalizing, prosperity, declining. We analyze different parties of PC in every stage. In surviving the main parties are founder and employees. From transition to declining, then, PC is an inherently subjective perception: each organizational citizen in organizations possesses a unique PC based upon his/her own understanding of the reciprocal obligations in the employment relationship between the individual and the organization. Citing the conception of "organizational citizenship behaviors", we call all leaguers in firm "organizational citizen". Organizational citizen has different means in every firm growth's stage. At last we discuss how to fulfill PC in every stage.