Psychological contracts, careerism, and goal orientations

Abstract

Psychological contracts are subjective perceptions about exchange agreements between employees and employers. Through surveys of 256 graduating college seniors with recently accepted job offers, beliefs regarding employment obligations were investigated. Consistent with findings by Rousseau (1990), new hires' perceptions of employee and employer obligations were interrelated and consistent with either transactional or relational contracts. Further, while expected tenure with the first employer was related to relational contracts, "careerism" was negatively related to new hires' beliefs in a relational contract and positively related to a transactional contract with an employer. The results also revealed that goal orientations moderate the relationship between relational contracts and careerism. Specifically, the results indicate that the relationship was more strongly negative in individuals with high mastery orientation. The findings in this study therefore indicate that new hires' attitudes are shaped by both explicit and implicit promises and by individual characteristics such as goal orientations.

A Generational Change: An Empirical Exploration of the Gen Y’s Workplace Expectations

“…Consistent with previous research (e.g. Braekkan and Tunheim, 2013;Rousseau, 1990) Previous literature suggests that employees with relational contracts are more willing to adjust to new and challenging performance requirements and embrace opportunities for career development provided by the employer such as training and development (Conway and Briner, 2005;Millward and Hopkins, 1998;Rousseau, 1995). Since they also tend to view work arrangements as open-ended, it would be natural to assume such employees would see the employment relationship as ongoing and dynamic as they are promised opportunities for professional and personal growth, in contrast to those with transactional expectations.…”

But they promised! How psychological contracts influence the impact of felt violations on job-related anxiety and performance

“…Moreover, it is argued that the mediating effect of job-related of anxiety might be influenced by the type of psychological contract that employees believe they have with their employer. In particular, the extent to which employees feel offended by a sense of organizational betrayal, as informed by the content of the obligations contained in their employment exchange, could be influential (Braekkan and Tunheim, 2013; Raja et al , 2004; Rousseau and Schalk, 2000). Extant research distinguishes two critical types of psychological contracts, relational and transactional, to reflect different expectations that employees have for their exchange relationships with employers (Raja et al , 2004).…”

Linking employee perceptions and employee attitudes through their levels of organizational identification: a field investigation in India

“…The organizational support theory (OST) (Kurtessis et al, 2017) suggests that in any organization, POS plays an active role in clarifying employer-employee concordance. As long as employees sense that their organization is providing them with adequate resources both physical as well as psychological, they feel obliged to repay the same with apposite attitudinal reciprocations (Braekkan and Tunheim, 2013;Rineer et al, 2017).…”