Psychological contract under -fulfillment: Leader -member crossover

Rebecca A Bull, Purdue University

Abstract

When an employee perceives that his/her organization has failed to deliver on its promised obligations, the employee is likely to react negatively toward that organization. For example, research in the field of psychological contract under-fulfillment has found links between an employee's perceptions of un-fulfilled promises and obligations and levels of employee performance and turnover (Dabos & Rousseau, 2004; Lester, Turnley, Bloodgood, & Bolina, 2002), withdrawal behaviors and absenteeism (Deery, Iverson, & Walsh, 2006; Lester et al., 2002), and negative emotional reactions (Conway & Briner, 2002). With employment trends embracing organizational redesign, reliance on temporary workers, and downsizing, employees at all levels are becoming aware that expectations of job security, advancement opportunities, etc., are not being met, and therefore, employees perceive more psychological contract under-fulfillment (D'Art & Turner, 2006; Kissler, 1994; Morrison, 1994). This dissertation research responds to this phenomenon by exploring how leader reactions to psychological contract under-fulfillment may influence how a member evaluates his/her own psychological contract with the organization. Through the application of Equity and Crossover Theories and leadership research, I predict how unique under-fulfillment perceptions may transfer from employees operating at different organizational levels during leader-member interactions. Eighty-four pairs of supervisors and subordinates participated in this dyadic study exploring how unique evaluations of psychological contracts can crossover from leaders to members. Hypotheses focused on how leader psychological contract under-fulfillment, which consists of both cognitive and affective assessments, crosses-over to predict member vigilance. Moderators explored include affective-cognitive consistency and leader-member exchange. Results of hypothesis tests suggest first that psychological contract under-fulfillment may be conceptualized as a latent variable consisting of related cognitive and affective components. By combining perceptions of breach and violation, the cognitive appraisal of under-fulfillment was tested as a stimulus of a crossover process between leaders and members. Second, results indicate that while leaders do communicate their under-fulfillment through their cynicism toward their organizations, emotional displays used during discussions of their organizations' fulfillment of obligations, and their turnover exploration activities, these crossover mechanisms were not directly related to members' vigilance with regard to how much they monitor their own psychological contract with their organizations. Additionally, moderators explored had no significant predictive relationships. Post-hoc analysis revealed that instead of crossover mechanisms predicting member vigilance, these variables mediated the direct relationship between leader and member individual perceptions of psychological contract under-fulfillment. Additionally, when leaders reported more psychological contract under-fulfillment, members more frequently received the impression that their leaders felt that their organizations had failed to meet obligations toward leaders. This impression mediated the link between leader psychological contract under-fulfillment and crossover mechanisms. Next, crossover mechanisms mediated the link between member impression of leader under-fulfillment and member psychological contract under-fulfillment. When controlling for bias relationships of leader-member exchange, cynicism communicated by the leaders maintained a significant crossover relationship between leader and member psychological contract under-fulfillment. Research and practical implications are discussed.

Degree

Ph.D.

Advisors

Green, Purdue University.

Subject Area

Management|Occupational psychology

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