The Spillover Effects Of Psychological Contract Breach On Coworkers And Partner:A Conservation Of Resources Perspective

With the development of flexible and short-term employment relationship,psychological contract breach(PCB)has become a common phenomenon.A large number of studies also show that psychological contract breach has a wide range of negative effects on employees' attitudes and behaviors.PCB has become an important factor hindering the operation and development of organizations.The researches on the spillover effect of PCB on the internal third parties(eg.coworkers)and external third parties(eg.partner)are very limited.It is necessary to continue to identify the possible spillover effects of PCB on coworkers and partner.Therefore,this study will try to explore the impacts of perceived PCB on two types of variables of coworkers(organizational citizenship behavior-OCB,counterproductive work behavior-CWB)and partner(romantic love,partner undermining),and test the mediating role of resource depletion in the above relationships from a conservation of resources(COR)perspective.In this study,longitudinal study design and questionnaire survey were used,and data was collected at three time points with an interval of one month.The data of partners mutual evaluation was matched.Structural equation model method was used to test the research hypotheses.The results of data analysis show that: there is a significant positive relationship between the perceived PCB and resource depletion;Resource depletion is positively related to CWB-coworker and partner undermining;Resource depletion plays a meditation role between the PCB and CWB-coworker,partner undermining;However,there is no significant relationship between resources depletion and OCB-coworker,romantic love.Meanwhile,resource depletion can't mediate above relationship.From the perspective of COR,this study finds that the spillover effects of PCB through resources depletion are mainly manifested in increasing the negative behaviors(CWB,partner undermining)towards coworkers and partner,but has no significant effect on positive relationships and interactions(OCB-coworker,romantic love).The research expands the content and object(partner)of spillover effects of PCB,and provides new empirical evidences and theoretical perspective for relevant studies.At the same time,the results of this study also enlighten managers to pay more attention to fulfil employees' psychological contract,reducing the negative impact of PCB by supplementing and improving employees' psychological resources.