Relationships between psychological contract violation, stress and well-being in firefighters
International Journal of Workplace Health Management
ISSN: 1753-8351
Article publication date: 26 April 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Negative emotions resulting from the broken promises by the organisation or employers, as perceived by an employee are called psychological contract (PC) violation. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationships between perceived feelings of violation, work-related stress, anxiety and depression. Fairness and self-efficacy are used as mediators to understand the underlying mechanism of associations.
Design/methodology/approach
In total, 97 firefighters completed an online-survey and structural equation modelling was used to examine the multiple mediation models.
Findings
PC violation was positively associated with occupational stress and job-related well-being. Together, fairness and self-efficacy mediated the relationship between feelings of violation and job-related depression. Therefore, the results partially supported the hypotheses.
Originality/value
As the first quantitative study of its kind, this study makes an important contribution to the firefighters literature by investigating the potential influence of PC violation on their work-related stress and well-being. Also, previous studies have failed to identify fairness and self-efficacy as potential mediators of the PC violation.
Keywords
Citation
Duran, F., Bishopp, D. and Woodhams, J. (2019), "Relationships between psychological contract violation, stress and well-being in firefighters", International Journal of Workplace Health Management, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 120-133. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJWHM-09-2018-0114
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited