Title: The Impact of Psychological Contract Breach on Organizational Outcomes: The Moderating Role of Personal Beliefs
Abstract: INTRODUCTION Employees are important assets for organizations. Much of the success of organizations depends upon the healthy relation between the employer and the employee. Drucker (2001) claimed that if the most valuable assets of 20th century companies were their production equipment, the most valuable assets of 21st century institutions, whether business or non-business, would be their knowledge workers and their productivity. Yet, so many workplaces are still dominated by old management practices and the inability of managers to inspire their people to volunteer their highest talents and contributions. In fact, this has a direct connection with peoples' attitudes and behaviors. At the core, there is a reason why so many people are dissatisfied in their work and why most organizations fail to benefit from the best of their workers. People make choices--either consciously or unconsciously--about how much of themselves they will give to their organizations depending on how they are treated (Covey, 2004). In today's world, organizations are confronted with many changes in their environment, due to growing competition, globalization of markets, the introduction of new technologies, changing governmental regulations, etc. In times of organizational change, the nature of the employment relationship changes in the business environment (Jafri, 2011). Accordingly, companies are being told to pay more attention to managing change, leading and motivating people and creating alignments under the right conditions (Collins, 2001). One of the critical challenges facing leaders and managers in the workplace is how to develop and enhance relationships with their people in ways that take into account changes in customer needs, the organization's goals and strategies, as well as people's changing needs, wants and ambitions (Wellin, 2007). Recently, the psychological has become a central concept in literature on employment relationships (Syed, 2010).While written labor contracts include all kinds of explicit monetary and nonmonetary employment conditions, such as wages, required hours and holiday entitlement, the psychological focuses on implicit and largely unspoken promises between an employer and an employee (Wellin, 2007; Rousseau, 2000). The importance of a psychological is further manifested through its breach. Within a dynamic environment organizations may become less willing and/or less able to fulfill all of their promises to employees. Non-fulfillment of promises is referred to as of contract and evidence has been found that the majority of employees believe that their employer has breached some aspect of their employment agreement (Wellin, 2007; Chen, 2004; Rousseau & Greller, 1994). In the past two decades, there have been many empirical studies that succeed in showing that a psychological breach plays a crucial role in the field of employment relations and that it exerts a negative influence on employees' attitudes and behaviors (Agarwal & Bhargava, 2013; Syed, 2010; Cantisano et al., 2008; Zhao et al., 2007). For instance, a recent meta-analytic examination of the literature found that psychological breach affects a wide range of organizational outcomes including: job satisfaction, organizational commitment, organizational citizenship behavior (OCB), in-role performance, turnover intentions and actual turnover (Zhao et al., 2007). Most of the research in the psychological field has been conducted in western environments like the United States and Europe. There is, therefore, a scarcity of studies in the field in the Arab world in general and Jordan in particular. The research conducted in western countries might not produce the same results when conducted in Arab countries, due to differences in culture, nature of the work force, economic and socio-political conditions, etc. The current study extends the literature by examining the psychological breach in a new geographical context. …
Publication Year: 2015
Publication Date: 2015-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 4
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