An Example and the conclution of the Psychological Contract

Example of the Psychological Contract

One of the organisations which I worked, had several development teams formed to handle different projects. When I was initially promoted to the capacity of Operations Manager among them, I found that some of the team leads are a bit uncomfortable to work with me as earlier we were working in the same roles. To resolve this issue, for each development sprint, I selected one team and asked the team leaders to assign me a small task of development and worked under that team lead's direction. This action helped me to communicate them the message that unless if the situation requires me to exercise the authority, I am still one of them. This understanding gave me two significant advantages.  The team leaders were easily got on with my management style. Since I worked with the other team members directly, I always had a good knowledge of the organisation's current situation. This could never have been done with rules and regulations if initiated formally.

Conclusion

Since the introduction by Argyris (1960), the psychological contract has been used to understand the relationship outside of the legal agreement, which affects the productivity of an organisation. With the contribution of latest researches done by Rousseau (1989, 1990, 1995), the concept got developed into a tool, and now this is used throughout the industry to identify and address the implications and consequences of unmet and undefined responsibilities and expectations. However, with the complexity of human relationships, the concept of the psychological contract has to further develop to use it to understand the industrial and social interactions between both employer and employee.