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Keywords Psychological contracts, Employees attitudes, Employees behaviour, Case studies
Abstract Psychological contract violation has gained the attention of both practitioners and academics in recent years. Critical commentaries have questioned whether breaching such a contract has implications for employee attitude and behaviour, and ultimately organisational performance. This paper addresses the question "To what extent does psychological contract breach impact on employee attitude and behaviour?". The study is based on an industrial textiles company and draws on quantitative and qualitative data. The findings suggested that triggers of violation impinged on employee attitudes but not on behaviour, trends substantiated by analysis of the organisation's absenteeism records. The qualitative data helped explain this trend and have highlighted two contextual issues. The first of these is labour market conditions and perceptions of job insecurity and second of these is a sense of collegiality and pride in the job.
Introduction
With the current turbulent business environment, arguably the traditional psychological contract, long-term job security in return for hard work and loyalty, has come under pressure (Sims, 1994). The psychological contract has been used to analyse the changing employment relationship and has been defined as "an individuals' beliefs regarding the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement ... key issues here include the belief that a promise is been made and a consideration offered in exchange for it" (Rousseau, 1989, p. 125). In an uncertain context, organisational changes often make it unclear as to what both parties, the employee and employer, actually owe each other, thus making fulfilling obligations more difficult (McLean Parks and Kidder, 1994). As a result there is an increased likelihood of misinterpretation and violation of the psychological contract (Robinson, 1996; Braun, 1997). Prior research indicates that psychological contract breach is relatively common (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994) and content analysis has shown that violation frequently relates to training and development, compensation and promotion (Robinson and Rousseau, 1994) where employees feel that the organisation has reneged on its promises.
The psychological contract literature is dominated by the process of contract formation (Rousseau and Greller, 1994; McFarlane Shore and Tetrick, 1994) and there is little attention given to the violation of such a contract (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). Three themes have emerged in the psychological contract violation that...