FIFTY YEARS OF PSYCHOLOGICAL CONTRACT RESEARCH: WHAT DO WE KNOW AND WHAT ARE THE MAIN CHALLENGES?

摘要

Since its inception, the psychological contract concept has been viewed as an important idea for understanding the employment relationship and, more gen?erally, workplace behavior (Conway and Briner, 2005; Guest, 2004a; Levinson et al., 1962; Rousseau, 1995; Schein, 1965, 1980). Over the past 20 years, how?ever, it has particularly captured researchers' attention as shown by the rapid increase in the number of journal articles, now several hundred, published on the subject. It has also over the same period had considerable appeal to man?agers and practitioners. A popular definition of the psychological contract is `individual beliefs, shaped by the organization, regarding terms of an exchange agreement between the individual and their organization' (Rousseau, 1995, p. 9) where beliefs refer to an employee's interpretation of explicit and implicit promises. The psychological contract is used to explain employee behavior in two ways: By exploring how reciprocal promises oblige employees to do things for their employer (e.g. Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler, 2002c; Rousseau, 1990), and considering how employees react when they believe promises made to them are broken (Conway and Briner, 2002a; Robinson, 1996; Robinson and Rousseau, 1994).