Breaches and violations of the psychological contract: A conceptual exploration.

Abstract

The psychological contract is the set of unwritten assumptions employees and employers have about the content of the social exchange between them, or an individual's beliefs regarding reciprocal obligations. The notion of the psychological contract is now used to describe the contemporary employment relationship. Research has shown that employees' emotions and attitudes control their behaviour, and that these emotions can be triggered by the perception of a breach of the psychological contract, resulting in inferior performance, demotivation, lower commitment, absenteeism, and turnover. This paper offers an exploration of the literature to gain insight into when employees perceive a breach of the psychological contract, and how they react to these breaches. The paper uses these insights to speculate how managers could manage the psychological contract.

Keywords: Psychological contract, emotions, employment relations, employee expectations, business psychology