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Psychological Contract Rupture Impact On Employee Behavior Mechanism

Posted on:2011-04-23Degree:DoctorType:Dissertation
Country:ChinaCandidate:Y L BaiFull Text:PDF
GTID:1119330335992154Subject:Business management
Abstract/Summary:PDF Full Text Request
Nowadays, because of the knowledge-based economic system and the accelerating economical globalization, organizational changes have become the normality within organizations, which leads to the profound transformation of employment relationship between organizations and employees. The traditional employment relationship in which employees devote themselves as well as their loyalty to organizations in order to acquire long-term job security and promotions is giving its way to a brand new category of employment relationship that is short-term, flexible and self-reliant. This change in the employment relationship is highlighted in the economic transition period of China. Different from those in Western countries, the employment relations in China rely more on the psychological mechanism of both parties involved to be maintained as the legal mechanism is relatively static.This research adopts psychological contract (a compelling analytical framework of employment relationship among contemporary researchers) as the primary theoretical perspective, aiming to explore how employees perceive the balance of reciprocal transaction relationship, in other words, the mechanism between perceived psychological contract breach and employees' behavior. Specifically, the researcher utilises EVLN as variances to analyse employees' behavior and utilises organizational cynicism and the specific career stage that employees are going through as significant mediators between psychological contract breach and employees'behavior.The theoretical model of this research is based on systematical review of substantial literature involved theories of psychological contract and psychological contract breach, career stage, organizational cynicism and EVLN. Before the formal survey with 463 samples, a pretest with a smaller sample (N=107) has been conducted. With the help of SPSS 15.0 and AMOS7.0, the model is empirically verified, and leads to the following conclusions:(1) Via exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis, it is confirmed that psychological contract contains two different dimensions named as transactional contract and developmental contract in this research and that organizational cynicism is made up of perceived cynicism and emotional cynicism.(2) The level of breach is higher in the developmental psychological contract than in the transactional contract.(3) There exist notable differences in the level of perceived psychological contract breach between employees in different career stages. The ANOVA shows that employees in exploratory, followed by those who in the establishment stage, perceive the highest degree of transactional and developmental psychological contract breach even though the difference in transactional contract is not significant between employees in exploratory and establishment stage. Employees experiencing the maintenance perceive least breach in both transactional and developmental contract levels.(4) Psychological contract breach has a direct and remarkable impact on the employees'behavior. Path analysis operated by AMOS7.0 proves that transactional psychological contract breach is positively related to employees'exit (β=0.225, p< 0.001); negatively related to the loyalty (β=-0.312, p<0.001) and neglect (β=0.230, p<0.001). However, the breach's influence on voice is not significant. By contrast, developmental psychological contract breach is only positive related to the exit behavior (β=0.164, p<0.001). Compared to developmental psychological contract breach, the transactional one imposes more immediate influence on the behavior of employees.(5) Organizational cynicism observably mediates psychological contract breach and EVLN behavior. Path analysis operated by AMOS7.0 testifies that transactional and developmental psychological contract influence employees'EVLN behavior via perceived organizational cynicism as well as emotional organizational cynicism. Organizational cynicism enhance transactional psychological contract breach's influence on exit, loyalty and neglect behavior, which means organizational cynicism is a partial mediator in this relationship. Additionally, organizational cynicism enables the negative effect of transactional psychological contract on voice behavior rise to significant level, meaning that organizational cynicism is a full mediator. As for developmental contract, organizational cynicism plays a more significant role in moderating effect, being a fully mediator to voice, loyalty neglect and a partial mediator to exit.
Keywords/Search Tags:Psychological contract, Psychological contract breach, Organizational cynicism, Career stage
PDF Full Text Request
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