The Impact of Affect and Social Exchange on Outcomes of Psychological Contract Breach1

摘要

A psychological contract refers to the beliefs regarding the terms and conditions of the exchange relationship that exists between an employee and employer (Rousseau,1989,1995).A term that has been used to describe a situation where an employee believes that an employer has broken the psychological contract (i.e.,the employer has not delivered on a promise) is psychological contract breach (Rousseau,1989).Research on psychological contracts has found that psychological contract breach leads to a host of negative workplace outcomes,including low organizational commitment (e.g.,Johnson and O'Leary-Kelly,2003),job satisfaction (e.g.,Tekleab et al.,2005),and trust in the organization (e.g.,Robinson,1996).This body of research often uses the terms psychological contract breach and psychological contract violation interchangeably to describe the effects of broken psychological contracts on workplace outcomes.In contrast,Morrison and Robinson (1997) introduced the idea that although the terms are related,they describe distinctly different phenomena.Psychological contract breach (PCB) "refers to the cognition that one's organization has failed to meet one or more obligations within one's psychological contract in a manner commensurate with one's contributions" (Morrison and Robinson,1997: 230).Psychological contract violation (PCV) refers to "the emotional and affective state that may,under certain conditions,follow from the belief that one's organization has failed to adequately maintain the psychological contract" (Morrison and Robinson,1997: 230).These terms are used in this paper.