Psychological Contract Breach

Psychological Contract Breach

Psychological contract breach is when the employer fails to meet the promises that was made with the employee formally or informally (Morrison and Robinson, 1997).In other words, Psychological contract breach is when the employee has not received what has been promised by the employer and vice versa. It is said that an employee maintains a healthy connection with the employer as long as the psychological contract is sufficiently fulfilled by the employer (Ahmed et al., 2016).

In the psychological contract breach, the employee undergoes distrust and builds an undesirable connection with the employer. It will directly impact the performance of the employee as well as the behavior and attitudes regarding the organization. This may result in high absenteeism, employee’s intention to leave the job, job dissatisfaction, abandoning job duties and changes in employee commitment and behavior (Ahmed et al., 2016).

The organization creates a negative emotion when it fails to fulfill its obligation to its employee (Tomprou and Nikolaou, 2011). Further, it will impact the employee involvement in the organization through three main forms. Such as, the day to day performance, organizational citizenship behaviors and intentions to retain in the organization (Robinson, 1996). As per Ahmed et al., (2016) a violation in psychological contract will negatively impact the employees’ organizational citizenship behaviors towards the organization, will cause employees to quit the job and causes a negative attitude towards the organization and the employee may neglect the job performance as a result.

Most importantly, a breach in psychological contract will damage the employee’s future expectation from the organization. As a result employees will be urged to look for other job opportunities in order to gain valued benefits in the long run. In short, Employees will indent to quit the job ( Turnley and Feldman  2000; Robinson et al.,1994) when he psychological contract is violated. 

References

Ahmed,E., D’Netto,B., Chelliah,J and Fein,E. (2016) Psychological contract breach: consequences of unkept promises of permanent employment. Contemporary Management research, 12(2), pp. 183- 212.

Morrison, E, W and Robinson, S, L. (1997) when employees feel betrayed: a model of how psychological contract violation develops. The Academy of Management Review, 22(1), pp.226-256.

Robinson, S. (1996) Trust and breach of the psychological contract. Administrative Science Quarterly, 41(4), pp. 574-599.

Robinson, S.,  Kraatz, M and Rousseau, D. (1994) Changing obligations and the psychological contract: a longitudinal study. The Academy of Management Journal, 37(1), pp.137-152.

Tomprou,M and Nikolaou,L. (2011) A model of psychological contract creation upon organizational entry. Career Development International, 16(4), pp. 343-357.

Turnley, W and Feldman, D. (2000) Re-examining the effects of psychological contract violations: unmet expectations and job dissatisfaction as mediators. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21(1), pp.25-42.