Expanding upon the current work on psychological breaches of contract (Morrison & Robinson, 1997; Robinson, 1996; Robinson, Kraatz, & Rousseau, 1994; Robinson & Morrison, 1995) I developed a model depicting the relationships between layoffs, perceived breach of contract, and an ideology of employee self-reliance. Layoffs directly influence the development of the psychological contract between the employee and employer (Morrison & Robinson, 1997). The changing nature of beliefs about employer support from an ideology of employer reliance to an ideology of employee self-reliance moderates the effect that layoffs have on the perceived breach of contract. Employees subscribing to an ideology of employee self-reliance are less likely to perceive downsizing as a breach of their psychological contract than those subscribing to an ideology of employer reliance. The purpose of this study is to empirically test the significance of the moderating effect on the relationship between layoffs and perceived breach of contract. Subjects were 224 undergraduate business students who volunteered to participate in the study that manipulated subscriptions to beliefs about employer support by stating the advantages of an ideology of employer reliance or an ideology of employee self-reliance within either a layoff or no-layoff condition. ANOVA results indicate that a layoff creates a perceived breach of contract, and that relationship is smaller when subjects subscribe to an ideology of employee self-reliance. These results suggest that subjects in the ideology of employee self-reliance manipulation perceived less of a breach of psychological contract following the layoff manipulation than did those in the ideology of employer reliance manipulation. The implications for future research and managers are discussed.
展开▼
