Employees
must be aware of the time when the breach occurred and how it affects the
people, in this way they should overcome the serious problems in the workplace.
Breach is probably is the important idea in the theory of psychological
contract, for it is the main way for the perception of the way psychological
contract affects the feeling, attitudes and the behavior of the employees. If the
employee is sure about employer’s violation of the condition of the
psychological contract, he or she shows an affective-psychological response
(Lee Hw and Lin MS 2014).
There
are two classic models of psychological contract breach. One is the model of the
formation of psychological contract breach which proposed by Morrison and
Robinson (1997), another one is discrepancy model proposed by Tunley and
Feldman (1999). Morrison and Robinson (1997) summarized research results in the
past and they thought there must be a complicated explanation, if cognitive
evaluation and emotional responses generated when the psychological contract
were not fulfilled. Morrison and Robinson proposed a development model of
psychological contract breach. Employees could not experience psychological
contract breach until they went through three stages: making promises but fail
to fulfill, contract breach and violation. Every stage was influenced by different
cognition process. Morrison and Robinson thought a breach and violation are two
totally different concepts. Cannot mix them up as it had in the past. The
breach we can experience means that employees find the organization doesn’t
fulfill its obligations as the psychological contract: while the violation
means that employees show their strong mood for the organization doesn’t
fulfill its obligations. Morrison and Robinson clarified the notation of
psychological contract breach which ended the chaos in breach research. It was
a great breakthrough in breach research which gained approved by the experts
(Morrison & Robinson, 1997).
The
second one is a discrepancy model proposed by Tunley and Feldman (1999). The
model gives us detailed descriptions of the three factors of promoting the
violation and breach. They are the source of employees’ expectations, the
specific reasons for the breach of psychological contract and the nature of the
discrepancy; and they also thought of employees’ behaviors were influenced by
individual difference, organizational practices and the feature of the labour
market. They considered that the reason for breach and violation of
psychological contract was quite complicated, and the time when employees show
their strong negative emotions was not certain, it depends on the situation
(Turnley & Feldman, 1999). It is a pity that when they discussing the
employee behaviours responded to violation and rupture of the psychological
contract, they didn’t distinguish violation from disagreement. They divided the
employees’ behavior after psychological contract into four types: quit,
lowering the performance of the duties, lowering the performance beyond the
duties and showing antisocial behavior on the basis of explanations of Morrison
and Robinson. The following example of four behaviours in the academic
environment, a psychological contract involves a set of expectations by a new
staff member about the promises made as part of the new job but not formally written
in the letter of offer and official contract. These might include a collegial
environment, formal mentorship, initial teaching load, staff support, office
and laboratory space, equipment, and time to develop an experiential site. When a staff member perceives that an organization
has failed to deliver on such promises, a breach of the psychological contract
may have occurred, resulting in one or some of the four behaviors stated by
Turnley & Feldman (1999) above.
References
Lee HW, Lin MC (2014)
A study of salary satisfaction and job enthusiasm mediating effects of
psychological contract. Applied Financial Economics.
Morrison, E. W.,
& Robinson, S. L. (1997). When employees Feel Betrayed: A Model of How
Psychological Contract Violation Develops. Academy
of management Review.
Turnley, W. H.,
& Feldman, D, C. (1999). A Discrepancy Model of Psychological Contract
Violations. Human Resource Management
Review.
