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Drawing on climate theory and social exchange theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether and how the strength of the expectation climate, defined as the degree of agreement among job incumbents on what is expected from them, affects their job performance. To explain this relationship, the authors utilize mediating trust-in-the organization effects as an explanatory avenue.

In a time-lagged data sample of 568 public service employees, whose job performance is rated by their 242 line managers, the authors apply multilevel modeling. The authors employed stratified random sampling techniques across 75 job categories in a large, public sector organization in Belgium.

The analysis provides support for the argument that expectation climate strength via mediating trust-in-the organization effects impacts positively on the relationship between employee expectations and performance. Specifically, the significant association of the expectation climate strength with trust suggests that the perceived consensus about the expectations among different job incumbents demonstrates an organization’s trustworthiness and reliability to pursue intentions that are deemed favorable for employees. The authors conjecture that expectation climate strength breeds trust which strengthens employees’ job performance.

HRM professionals in general, and line managers in particular, should heed the advice and carefully manage their tools and practices in an effort to signal compatible expectancies to different job incumbents in the same or similar roles.

The results shed new light on the mechanisms through which the strength of collective expectations impacts employee outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how company-provided smartphones and user-device attachment influence the psychological contract between employees and managers in terms of connectivity expectations and outcomes.

Data were collected using qualitative semi-structured interviews with 28 participants from four organizations.

The study showed that when organizations provide smartphones to their employees, the smartphones become a part of the manager-employee relationship through user-device attachment and this can change connectivity expectations for both employees and managers.

Due to participant numbers, these findings may not be generalizable to all employees and managers who receive company smartphones. However, the authors have important implications for theory. The smartphone influence on the psychological climate and its role as a signal for workplace expectations suggest that mobile information and communication technology devices must be considered in psychological contract formation, development, change and breach.

The perceived expectations can lead to hyper-connectivity which can have a number of negative performance and health outcomes such as technostress, burnout, absenteeism and work-life conflict.

Smartphone usage and user-device attachment have the potential to redefine human relations by encouraging and normalizing hyper-connected relationships.

This study makes an original contribution to psychological contract theory by showing that smartphones and attachment to these devices create perceived expectations to stay connected to work and create negative outcomes, especially for managers.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the moderating roles of future job expectations and efficacy beliefs in employees’ responses to unmet job expectations, i.e. emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. It also investigates whether and how work experience influences the interactive effects of unmet job expectations and efficacy beliefs on employees’ responses.

Data were collected from 227 employees from a wide range of sectors. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to test the hypotheses.

The results showed that the relationships between unmet job expectations and emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction were stronger for employees with more positive future job expectations. In addition, efficacy beliefs moderated the relationship between unmet job expectations and turnover intention. For employees with more work experience, efficacy beliefs had a stronger moderating role in the relationship between unmet job expectations and the employees’ responses.

The common method variance might have inflated main effects at the expense of interaction effects. This study contributes to the understanding about the job expectations literature by demonstrating how individual-level factors moderate employees’ responses to unmet expectations.

The results suggest that organizations need to manage their employees’ future job expectations, especially when these employees have higher levels of self-efficacy and work experience.

This study is one of the first attempts to empirically explore how employees differ in their responses to unmet job expectations.

The purpose of this paper is to identify talent segments within the millennial generation based on performance and intention to stay and differentiate them in terms of their expectations. Based on results, the paper proposes a customized approach to talent management.

The paper uses a mixed methodology, including 11 exploratory focus group discussions, followed by a survey involving 1,065 employees from nine information technology and business process management companies.

The paper creates a framework of talent segments (performing loyals, performing movers, developing loyals and developing movers) that have different values for the organization. Significant differences are observed in their PC expectations from the manager, PC expectations related to career growth and development and PC expectations related to job and work environment.

Researchers faced constraints in obtaining actual performance data from the organizations; therefore, a self-perception report of performance was used.

Organizations’ talent-management strategy must acknowledge and understand the differences in PC expectations of talent segments and offer tailored TM programs for maximum impact.

The paper challenges the old assumption of a uniform psychological contract (PC) that has guided the talent management strategy. Every talent segment has value and must be viewed on continuum rather than a binary construct of “Talent or no talent.”

This is one of the few studies which explores how the perception of PC expectations differs between talent segments. It contributes to literature on talent segments, PC and the millennial generation.

Much of the literature in organizational change has taken a single approach to explain employee expectation formation regarding the outcomes of a change event. A conceptual model is developed to integrate two existing streams of research (the information effects approach and the social effects approach) and to develop a comprehensive picture of outcome expectation formation. We propose that information and social effects function simultaneously to shape an employee's outcome expectations. The strength and content consistency of information and social effects jointly determine what people expect regarding change outcomes and how confident they feel about those expectations. Implications are discussed in terms of setting the boundaries for information and social effects as well as future research directions.

Skilled workers are crucial for an organization’s success, and managing, retaining and attracting them is vital in long-term. This study aims to explore talent management practices in the Finnish restaurant industry and to align workers' expectations with the real-world experiences of their work to reduce turnover and enhance job satisfaction.

The study adopts a mixed methods approach, including a survey and interviews with workers and managers to gain insights into their expectations and experiences of work. The study considers themes for designing and implementing effective talent management procedures.

This study highlights the importance of employees' experiences of their work conditions, leveraging positive emotions and fair utilization of temporary agency work (TAW). Understanding the different work preferences of generational cohorts and addressing the challenges associated with owner disengagement and TAW can also contribute to attracting and retaining talent in the restaurant industry.

Skilled workers have often been portrayed as targets that need to be managed, with insufficient consideration given to their preferences, needs and expectations. With the findings of this study, companies can establish mutual understanding with their employees and attract diverse talent.

Editors of employee magazines may be torn between diverging expectations among their stakeholders. The management might be interested in strategically supportive communication, whereas employees might expect objective, independent, or critical coverage. Based on quantitative data, the paper aims to analyze how the editors perceive these expectations, how they see their professional role in this field of tension and how critically the magazines report.

The authors conducted a quantitative survey of 197 editors of employee magazines and a quantitative content analysis of 200 articles of employee magazines.

Editors perceive differences regarding the expectations of management and employees. These discrepancies, in turn, contribute to the experience of role conflicts. Our analysis reveals three types of editors: the voice of the management, the critical observer and the consensus-oriented mediator.

The study addresses the scarcely investigated area of conflict in which editors of employee magazines work. It is one of the first studies to analyze editors' perceived expectations of stakeholders, their professional self-perception and potential role conflicts with a quantitative survey. For the first time, quantitative methods are used to examine the causes of editors' role conflicts.

This paper aims to explore the extent to which unionized employees are dissatisfied in Chinese Enterprise Trade Unions (CETUs) when they perceive high levels of the triple-role conflicts, as well as whether rights expectations will moderate these relationships. The authors define CETUs' triple-role conflicts as the extent to which CETUs and their cadres prioritize fulfilling the roles of preserving social stability (“peace”) and/or maintaining the production order (“production”) over protecting worker's rights and interests (“workers” rights).

Pilot study developed the scales via both qualitative and quantitative studies, which include item generation using the transcript of individual interviews with 36 informants, and exploratory factor analyses with 106 respondents. The study used a sample of 327 employees from more than 20 firms in North and Southwest China.

Results indicate high reliability and validity of the scales and provide largely consistent supports for our hypotheses: three dimensions of triple-role conflicts are negatively related to employees' satisfaction in CETUs, and rights expectations moderate these relationships.

This study developed three scales to respectively measure CETUs' triple-role conflicts, rights expectation and satisfaction in CETUs. More importantly, the findings shed light on the moderating mechanism of rights expectation in the relationships between triple-role conflicts and satisfaction in CETUs.

The paper aims to provide a better understanding of psychological contract (PC) constructed by examining the relationships among unfulfilled expectations, unfulfilled promises, and employee behavioral outcomes.

This study used a cross-sectional survey with data collected at three separate times, each one month apart to reduce the possibility of common method biases. The data were collected from multiple sources of 250 employee-supervisor pairs.

First, both unfulfilled expectations and promises were related to employees' negative behavioral outcomes. However, unfulfilled promises were likely to trigger stronger negative behavioral outcomes, such as a decrease in loyalty to the organization and job performance, and an increase in complaining and intention to leave the organization. Second, different dimensions of unfulfilled PCs trigger different types of behavioral outcomes. Specifically, unfulfilled transactional contracts were likely to trigger employees' withdrawing behaviors, such as intent to quit and carelessness of job performance. Similarly, unfulfilled relational contracts were likely to influence employees' extra-role behaviors, such as increased grumbling and decreased loyalty.

This study contributes to the PC theory in three ways. First, PCs were discussed in multiple perspectives, employees' expectations and employer's promises, which contained different meanings about employees' behavioral outcomes. Second, the contents of PCs were evaluated in multiple dimensions, transactional contents and relational contents, as they were related to different types of work-related behaviors. Third, this study was conducted in Taiwan to reveal how employees react to unfulfilled PCs in a high-context cultural environment.

This study aims to investigate how meeting the training expectations of Chinese employees influences their intention to stay with their company.

The authors collected data from 292 employees in eight Chinese organizations. Applying partial least squares path modeling, they tested how fulfilling employees' expectations with regard to different training dimensions influences their level of job satisfaction, organizational commitment and perceived movement capital and how variations in these mediating factors in turn influence turnover intentions.

Chinese employees exhibit varying expectations with regard to the content, the organization and the outcome of training. The relationship between meeting such expectations and turnover intentions is mediated by job satisfaction, affective commitment, continuance commitment and perceived movement capital. Fulfilling employees' expectations with regard to specific skills and operational factors reduces turnover intentions. Fulfilling expectations with regard to general skills increases turnover intentions. Fulfilling expectations with regard to intra‐organizational outcomes has a double‐edged effect.

It is promising to analyze the relationship between training and turnover from an employee perspective. It is important to distinguish different dimensions of training and to consider mediated paths in order to depict various conflicting influences. This study contributes to the understanding of Chinese employees' attitude towards training, and to the literature on HRM in China in suggesting that there is an indication of a definitive link between training and turnover, as there is in the West.

Organizations in China need to consider employees' pre‐training expectations when designing their training programs. Meeting employee expectations with regard to the design, organization and implementation as well as the outcome of training offers a promising venue to retain skilled employees.

The authors contribute to the literature by explicitly expounding employees' comprehensive training expectations regarding their turnover intention. Differentiating five dimensions of training and including four mediating factors, the authors are able to disentangle conflicting influences found in the extant literature.