Thursday, 12 December 2019
The Origins of the Psychological Contract Literature
There were early references on the psychological contract when describing the forms of employment relationships by Argyris (1960) and Levinson et al. (1962). Argyris (1960) discussed the concept of the power of perception and the values held by the involving parties to the employment relationship using the term "psychological work contract". Levinson et al. (1962) developed this further by describing the psychological contract as "a series of mutual expectations of which the parties to the relationship may not themselves be dimly aware but which nonetheless govern their relationship to each other". Even though these early considerations were highlighted mostly on needs and expectations as the primary concepts describing the psychological contract, Rousseau (1989) manage to bring back scholarly attention to the psychological contract by redefining the concept.
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Hi Achintha in addition to above you have mentioned,Anderson and Schalk, (1998)make it evident by interacting with the employees that the psychological contract is an explanatory notion. It has impressively high face validity and everyone agrees that it exists as most employees are able to describe their contract and its content. More over when an individual perceive that he or she makes obligate the organization to reciprocity, a psychological contract emerges. (Rousseau, 1989)
ReplyDeleteHi Rukshan, but later, she explained her first definition further by stating that psychological contract in “an individual's beliefs regarding reciprocal obligations” (Rousseau, 1990) and suggesting that the parties in the relationship does not necessarily need to agree on the content of the contract. Therefore with or without the consent of the involving parties there can be a psychological contract in effect and understand the term in it will help the organisations to have a productive relationship with the employees.
DeleteAs you said, psychological contract has to further develop in order to use it to understand the industrial and social interactions between both employer and employee for that proper training has to provide by organization. Human resource factor is the most dynamic resource therefore human resource needs to be given the attention from the management to obtain the full potential to the work carried out (Cole, 2004).
ReplyDeleteHi Aravindth, yes it is shown that flexible methods have been contemplated with high-commitment human resource practices such as a reduction of status barriers between managers and subordinates and thereby developing employee skills. Therefore, expense in developing employee skills in an organisation also contributes to ‘psychological contract of reciprocal commitment’ (Armstrong, 2008).
DeleteHi Achintha,in addition to the above would like to bring to your notice that beliefs that employees hold with regard to the terms and conditions between the organization and employees as per the exchange contract is a part of physiological contract (Robinson,Kraatz & Rousseau, 1994; Rousseau, 1989).
ReplyDeleteHi Mark, I agreed on your comment. Rousseau's (1990) simplified definition of a psychological contract, "an individual's beliefs regarding reciprocal obligations", tries to see the contract from the individual's perspective. Which depicts the idea of all the understandings can be listed under psychological contract. Therefore even though the involved parties are legally bound by the terms and conditions of the exchanged contracts, it gets instated based on a belief that the involving parties will honour the contract.
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