This
school is located in Panadura, Sri Lanka, It has 10 branches, with a student
population nearly about two thousand. There are 97 teachers in the school. The teacher has been hired by the school management and positions, promotions,
transfers and disciplinary actions are decided through school management.
The school has a high employee turnover rate that is above 25% annually.
The
psychological contract between the teachers and their employer which when
fulfilled represent acts of reciprocation and influence the subsequent behaviour
of the teachers. The teachers mostly derive their psychological contract from
the treatment of employees by the school, from co-workers and supervisors in
the organization, during recruitment in the organization, from formal
compensation and benefits in the school and from the behaviour of co-workers and
supervisors. The respondents noted that contract violation would result in
reduced commitment, reduced satisfaction, frustration, disappointment, reduced
trust, increased cynicism, distress and lower level of citizenship. Contract
violation is more than the failure of the organization to meet expectations;
responses are more intense because respect and codes of conduct are called into
question since essentially a promise has been broken and it is more
personalized.
psychological
contract plays a critical role in the teachers’ commitment at the school as it
influences the pay and job security in the employment contract, strong family
ties, social impact, employment history, extended family relationship, legal
systems in the employment contract, practices that foster employee commitment,
internal career development mechanisms, consistent and complementary set of
human resource practices, long term employment, changes on role and tasks
of employee and introduction of new
obligations. The practices influence the teachers' job-related decisions thus
employee commitment.
School
management shift their attention from increasing school participation in
improving the quality of education, the need for evidence on what affects
education quality becomes crucial. There exist a psychological contract between
the teachers and employer and therefore each party have to maintain its part in
order to ensure that there is a mutual relationship between the two parties. The
consequences of satisfaction, frustration, disappointment, reduced trust,
increased cynicism, distress and lower level of citizenship. The effect of these
would be strikes and reduced commitment which affects the school performance.
Psychological contract plays a major role in the teachers’ commitment and these
needs connecting by the management and psychological contract fulfilment so
that it makes the teachers to be committed to their work through job
satisfaction, motivation, and performance.
The
violation of psychological contract leads to reduced commitment, reduced
satisfaction, disappointment, reduced trust, increased, cynicism, distress and a lower level of citizenship. It is recommended that the school management should
ensure that they fulfil the psychological contracts of the teachers so that at
all times they are committed to their work and thus improved school
performance.
Psychological
contract plays a critical role in the teachers’ commitment. It is recommended
that the school management implement an appropriate human resource management
measures in relation to motivation to meet the teacher’s expectations for
fulfilment of their psychological contracts on overseas assignments. The
teachers’ expectations include better pay for outstanding performance, greater
likelihood of promotion, brighter career opportunities, and greater employment
security.
Hi Chamari, an informative post on the workings of psychological contract at schools. As Jones (2017) states, it is easier to maintain the contract rather than mending it following a breach. Hence, fairness and equity must be shown from both parties. Proactively managing employee's expectations will always be a continuous challenging process.
ReplyDeleteYes Jehan, Taken together, the psychological contract and the employment contract define the employer-employee relationship. Fairness is a significant part of the psychological contract, bound up in equity theory – employees need to perceive that they're being treated fairly to sustain a healthy psychological contract.
ReplyDeleteHi Chamari, Agree with you.
ReplyDeleteIn an environment of rapid organizational change, where the ideas of satisfaction and motivation are potentially meaningless, the psychological contract appears to provide a useful integrative concept around which to converge the concerns of the contemporary workplace (Marks, 2010). Lecturers and students approach their courses with a variety of implicit and explicit expectations at the commencement of the teaching cycle (Fisher & Miller, 2008).