Psychological Contract Breach

Abstract

Psychological contracts have become one of the most researched constructs in organizational behavior and industrial psychology. The literature on psychological contracts has contributed significantly to our understanding of the exchange relationship between employees and their employers (Thomas, Au, & Ravlin, 2003). One reason for the interest in this construct is the changes in employment relationships in the Western world. Psychological contracts seem to have become a substitute for obsolete organized union relationships. From a research point of view, disappointment with the relatively low predictive power of established attitudes such as organizational commitment for explaining workplace behaviors has led scholars to look for other constructs that are better predictors of how employees behave in the workplace (Cohen, 2013). Psychological contracts constitute one of these constructs.