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This paper sets out to review selected psychological contract literature to aid in developing understandings about the unique nature of today's work agreements and work environment. This conceptual paper aims to provide practical knowledge, future research directions and fill several gaps in knowledge about the contract.

The paper provides insights and directions for future psychological contract research, while explaining the implications for research and practice of the work previously undertaken in developing this area of research.

This paper suggests that psychological contract measurement and its theoretical implications must be reconsidered. In this context, the interface with organizational justice literature is discussed.

Limited research in the field has focused on the implications of previous research. This paper aims to bring together what has been done previously and provide directions for future study.

The employee-organization relationship (EOR) has increasingly become a focal point for researchers in organizational behavior, human resource management, and industrial relations. Literature on the EOR has developed at both the individual – (e.g. psychological contracts) and the group and organizational-levels of analysis (e.g. employment relationships). Both sets of literatures are reviewed, and we argue for the need to integrate these literatures as a means for improving understanding of the EOR. Mechanisms for integrating these literatures are suggested. A subsequent discussion of contextual effects on the EOR follows in which we suggest that researchers develop models that explicitly incorporate context. We then examine a number of theoretical lenses to explain various attributes of the EOR such as the dynamism and fairness of the exchange, and new ways of understanding the exchange including positive functional relationships and integrative negotiations. The article concludes with a discussion of future research needed on the EOR.

Psychological contracts represent unofficial or informal expectations that an individual holds, most commonly applied to an employer–employee relationship. Understanding psychological contracts helps explain the consequences of unmet expectations, including increased budgetary slack and reduced audit quality. This chapter reviews and synthesizes accounting behavioral research that discusses psychological contracts and that was published in academic and practitioner journals in the areas of financial accounting, management accounting, auditing, taxes, non-profit organizations, accounting education, and the accounting profession itself. Despite the prevalence of psychological contracts in the workplace and the applicability to behavioral research, accounting literature remains limited regarding applications of psychological contracts. This chapter aggregates research across all areas of accounting to provide suggestions for use of psychological contracts in future research and thus create a connected research stream.

Recent advancements in the field of organizational psychology have transformed the employees’ perceptions related to the reactions of the employment relationship. The main aim of the study is to explore the consequences of psychological contracts among the nursing staff and how to provide better patient care and quality service in the health-care system as nurses play a pivotal role in the context of Pakistan. Significantly, this study attempts to bridge the research gap by exploring consequences of psychological contracts. Drawing on the social exchange theory, this study examined the psychological contracts of nurses and their reactions to the perceived violation.

This research adopted a qualitative method and was based on an exploratory approach. Data were collected through in-depth semi-structured interviews from 21 nurses working in public, private and charity hospitals in Karachi, Pakistan. The thematic content analysis is employed for the analysis of data by using NVivo software.

The study identified the relational and transactional elements related to the psychological contract of nurses who predominantly consisted of supervisor support, autonomy, tangible/intangible rewards and trust. The intrinsic motivation which relates to their devotion to work was found as an additional element to balance their psychological contract. This research also establishes that the psychological contract of nurses is being violated in their work settings.

By highlighting the importance of psychological contract breach, the findings demonstrate that health-care institutions should take measures to cope with psychological contract breach issues at the workplace.

This study contributes to the body of knowledge by exploring psychological contract breach. Substantially, there are rare studies conducted on psychological contract breach among nurses in developing country context (Pakistan). However, this study adds to the previous studies related to the psychological contract of nurses in the context of Pakistan by using social exchange theories. Finally, this study enables the management of healthcare to balance the psychological contract issues effectively.

The study aims to explore and validate the revised psychological contract scale in this new normal era.

To serve the purpose, four studies were conducted. Study 1 was conducted for item generation through the extant literature review and phenomenological study. Study 2 highlighted the expert review. Study 3 explained the confirmatory factor analysis. At the end of study 3, the new psychological contract content had 14 items along with 15 traditional psychological contract content items. The nomological study validated the scale with the help of antecedent, i.e. supervisor's support, and outcomes, i.e. well-being and innovative behavior.

The revised psychological contract was bifurcated into two categories: new and traditional. Further, the revised psychological contract scale was having two dimensions: content and breach/fulfillment. The new content was the outcome of changes in perceived obligations due to pandemic. The nomological study found that supervisor support had a positive impact on the content of the psychological contract and fulfillment/breach of the psychological contract. Further, it was found that the new content of psychological contract was impacting more on well-being and innovative behavior than the traditional psychological contract.

In the new normal era, the working style and patterns have changed. Thus, it was important to capture changes in perceived obligations and employees' perception regarding to which extent their organizations were able to meet these altered perceived obligations. The study has direct implications for the practitioners as the revised psychological contract scale enlisted the perceived obligations of the employee and the extent to which these obligations were fulfilled by the employer. The study is also helpful in developing new normal HR policies and practices in the organization.

The study is original as it creates a new scale to measure the content of psychological contract and fulfillment/breach of psychological contract during new normal.

Most research on employment relationship has been done on the Anglo‐Saxon context, the results of which may not be totally valid for India. The emerging employment relationship in India is best viewed through the lens of psychological contracts. Psychological contract has significant influence on valuable workplace outcomes. This paper seeks to propose a model for understanding employment relationship through the concept of psychological contracts.

With the help of published case studies in the Indian context and based on social exchange theory, this paper proposes a model wherein trust mediates the relationship between the perception of breach of the psychological contract and HR systems.

As more and more employees come under non‐unionized workforce, the non‐formal aspects of employment through the lens of psychological contracts becomes an important lever to manage employment relationships. The model presented in this paper suggests that depending on the HR system an organization adopts, the perception of breach of psychological contract gets affected. Based on the notion of consistency of HR practices, it is argued that HR systems across organizations form two archetypal extremes and each of these give rise to a different perception of breach of psychological contract.

As HR managers are faced with a range of choices in implementing HR systems, it becomes difficult to narrow down the available options. This study would provide some guidelines to do so, by highlighting the process through which HR systems impact the perception of breach of psychological contracts and the resulting employment relationship.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact of three components of the psychological contract (i.e. obligations, fulfillment and breach) and the individual characteristic negative affectivity (NA) onto three key outcomes, namely, job satisfaction, organizational identification and psychological distress.

Questionnaires were completed by 222 Australian nurses and midwives from a medium-sized metropolitan Australian hospital. The response rate for the study was 39 percent.

Structural equation modeling revealed that perceptions of psychological contract fulfillment were positively linked to organizational identification and job satisfaction, while psychological contract breach was negatively linked to these outcomes. NA was negatively linked to job satisfaction and positively linked to psychological distress. Psychological contract obligations were not associated with any of the employee outcomes.

Psychological contract fulfillment is an important driver of employee satisfaction and organizational identification and the findings highlight the importance of including NA in psychological contract research. The occupation and context, being in-demand employees, appeared to neutralize the impact of one dimension of the psychological contract, employer promises and obligations.

Explicitly managing employees’ psychological contracts by focussing on fulfilling realistic promises will enable managers to improve employee outcomes and facilitate employees embracing their organization.

This study is one of the first to explore all three components of the psychological contract. These results may assist in the development of strategies to retain in-demand employees such as nurses, particularly highlighting the need to make and fulfill realistic promises.

In dynamic business environments the concept of the psychological contract has altered radically. Empirical evidence from a case study conducted in one of Australia’s largest banking organisations is used to illustrate how change can impact upon the psychological contract. Traditional loyalty to an organisation and continuance commitment are becoming less important as organisations pursue more transactional relationships with their employees and as employees are encouraged to pursue more self‐interested “protean” careers. The question could be asked whether, with such increased emphasis on self‐serving personal and organisational strategies, the “psychological contract” continues to provide a means of establishing effective relationships between organisations and their employees. The main conclusion is that the maintenance of such contracts still makes an important contribution to organisational relationships but that organisations need to seek ways of adjusting the terms of the psychological contract to meet the needs of an increasingly mobile and protean workforce.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of human resource management (HRM) systems (expressed by content, process and climate) on organizational performance through the mediating role of psychological contracts (expressed by employer and employee promises fulfilment).

The study examines theoretical relationships in the Greek context, based on structural equation modelling (SEM) estimation, using a sample of employees from both private and public sector organizations.

The study finds that the impact of HRM content on organizational performance is less strong compared to its impact through HRM process. Additionally, the study finds that psychological contract partially and positively mediates the HRM – performance relationship, where the impact of HRM on organizational performance through employee promises fulfilment is stronger than that through employer promises fulfilment.

The study does not allow for appropriately investigating dynamic causal inferences due to the cross-sectional nature of data. Additionally, considering that Greece is experiencing a severe economic and financial crisis, the findings from this unique context may not generalize across borders.

For improving organizational performance, managers and decision makers should make their HRM systems more visible, understandable, legitimate and relevant. At the same time they should make HRM systems more instrumental, valid and consistent of HR messages.

Investigations into the relationship between HRM systems and organizational performance have become increasingly common. Nevertheless, empirical studies that measure the influence of HRM systems, which integrate both content and process, on organizational performance are still rare. This paper partially fills this gap.

Social comparison and job-based psychological ownership (JPO) are compared and contrasted as explanations for relationships between organization relational psychological contract fulfillment (ORPCF) and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs).

Survey data were collected from 241 employees and 82 of their managers at an information services company. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling to test for hypothesized and exploratory indirect relationships.

Consistent results were found for sequential mediation from ORPCF to employee investment of the self into the job, to JPO, to supervisor-rated helping and voice OCBs. Employees' perception of their relational psychological contract fulfillment (social exchange) did not simultaneously mediate the relationships between ORPCF and employees' OCBs.

Psychological ownership presents a complement to social exchange to explain effects of relational psychological contract fulfillment on employee outcomes. Because of the cross-sectional nature of the data conclusions about causality are quite limited.

Organizations and managers should emphasize that fulfillment of relational psychological contract obligations represent a significant investment in employees, who reciprocate by investing themselves into their work. This in turn bolsters JPO and its positive employee outcomes.

This is the first study to directly compare social exchange and psychological ownership explanations for effects of psychological contract fulfillment on employees.