No abstract

There is growing attention in the academic literature and popular press regarding workplace transitions. Change is frequently mentioned as a defining quality of the new workplace and, in turn, employment relationships. A framework is presented that describes employee evaluation of the employment relationship in the context of change. Specifically, the authors apply psychological contract and sensemaking theories to address two questions: What contextual factors shape employee perceptions of change in psychological contract fulfillment? and What cognitive factors shape employee responses to perceptions of deficiency in psychological contract fulfillment? The authors’ aim is to enhance understanding of employment relationships in the context of organizational change and stimulate empirical research that treats change context as a substantive variable. The authors discuss theoretical and practical implications of the framework. Recommendations for practitioners engaged in organizational change are offered.

The authors extend i-deals theory to an individual-within-a-team context. Drawing upon social comparison theory, they contend that individuals will react to their own i-deals within the context of group members' i-deals. Therefore, they examine the role of relative i-deals (an individual's i-deals relative to the team's average) in relation to employee performance. Furthermore, integrating social comparison theory with social identity theory the authors assert that the behavioral outcomes of relative i-deals are influenced by the team's social and structural attributes of team orientation and task interdependence. Finally, they contend that the perceptions of one's relative standing with the leader, or leader-member exchange social comparison (LMXSC), mediate the i-deals-outcome relationship in groups with low team orientation and task interdependence. Results of multilevel modeling using time-lagged data from 321 employees nested in 46 teams demonstrated that the positive relationship between relative i-deals and employee performance was stronger in groups with low team orientation and task interdependence, and the mediation effect of LMXSC was stronger in teams with low rather than high team orientation. (PsycINFO Database Record

Workplace transitions are thought to result in a fundamental shift in the employment relationship. This study used sensemaking theory to examine when and how organizational change affects employees’ psychological contracts (PCs). The authors suggest that employees interpret organizational change through contextual and cognitive factors related to the change. These factors, in turn, influence whether employees revise their PCs. Results of our longitudinal study suggest that the extent to which contextual and cognitive factors affect employees’ PCs depends on the type of PC. Transactional and balanced PCs were unaffected by the contextual and cognitive factors related to the change, while changes occurred in relational PCs.

In this study, we develop and test a model that extends leader-member exchange (LMX) theory to a dual leadership context. Drawing upon relative deprivation theory, we assert that when employees work for 2 leaders, each relationship exists within the context of the other relationship. Thus, the level of alignment or misalignment between the 2 relationships has implications for employees' job satisfaction and voluntary turnover. Employing polynomial regression on time-lagged data gathered from 159 information technology consultants nested in 26 client projects, we found that employee outcomes are affected by the quality of the relationship with both agency and client leaders, such that the degree of alignment between the 2 LMXs explained variance in outcomes beyond that explained by both LMXs. Results also revealed that a lack of alignment in the 2 LMXs led to asymmetric effects on outcomes, such that the relationship with agency leader mattered more than the relationship with one's client leader. Finally, frequency of communication with the agency leader determined the degree to which agency LMX affected job satisfaction in the low client LMX condition.