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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.

The aim of this study was to investigate the role of shared psychological contract beliefs between colleagues in a work team, in team in-role performance and extra-role behaviours.

Employees and team managers of 113 work teams answered questions about their working environment and relationships with experiences and perceptions. The data were used in CFA and structural modelling.

The results indicated that evaluations of co-worker psychological contracts in work teams are significantly associated with team in-role performance and extra-role behaviours through work engagement.

Employees with perceived contract fulfilment not only contribute more to their team but also change their expectations of what a team should offer. Managers should be informed that these new and enhanced expectations have repercussions for existing HRM practices.

Laulié and Tekleab (2016) have suggested that perceptions of psychological contract fulfilment shared by team members may act as a motivational driver for team performance, team attitudes and behaviours. This study is one of the first applications of this proposition in a mediation model and empirically tested for non-hierarchical co-worker relationships.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the role of training to explain affective commitment and exhaustion of temporary agency workers (TAW). There is a general assumption that training relates with a social exchange relationship where employees exchange positive outcomes, not only with inducements received by training but also with the expectation of prospective inducements that will emerge from the fulfilment of promises made by the organization.

The hypotheses were tested on a sample of 393 Portuguese blue‐collar TAW using structural equation modeling.

The hypotheses were supported. Training was positively related to workers' affective commitment and negatively to workers' exhaustion. Psychological contract fulfilment partially mediated these relationships.

The study is limited due to the nature of the sample (TAW in industrial sector with similar training opportunities as permanent workers) and the lack of longitudinal design. Neither does it provide implications for other types of commitment that may be relevant for TAW (continuance commitment, for example).

An important implication of this research is that employers should not assume that training is an investment without return from TAW. Developmental opportunities, while important to all employees, were positively related to TAW' affective commitment towards the organization and negatively to TAW' exhaustion.

The findings highlighted the importance of training in developing positive employment relationships with TAW and the role of psychological contract fulfilment as a mechanism that contributes to explain such relationship.

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 develop a model on how business managers perceive that an employee’s psychological contract influences his or her attitude toward an organizational change. More specifically, it aims to provide insight into the managerial views on: first, the affective, behavioral and cognitive responses of employees toward organizational change; second, the pre-change and change antecedents of these responses; and third, the role of the psychological contract as a pre-change antecedent.

Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 39 human resource directors, change managers and management consultants in eight European countries. Based on detailed grounded theory-driven analyses of the qualitative data, a conceptual model was developed.

Based on the grounded theory analysis, a model emerged that positions the individual change perception and individual answer to the “what’s in it for me?” question as central determinants of an employee’s attitude toward change. Moreover, the model distinguishes between “influencing” variables that shape the employees’ change perception, and “overruling” variables that can potentially reverse the change perceptions.

A strong emphasis on managing the employment relationship by fulfilling mutual obligations and by creating trust will yield more constructive responses to organizational change than focussing on managing an organizational change as an independent event.

As one of the first in its field, this study provides insight in the sense-making processes during organizational change, while adopting a managerial perspective. A grounded theory approach by means of interviewing, serves as a first step toward better understanding of the development of employees’ affective, behavioral and cognitive responses to organizational change.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a holistic and systematic conceptualization of the impact of strategic human resource management (SHRM) on the psychological contract. Specifically, this paper aims to explore how the alignment of HR-systems and organizational communication influences the congruence and breach of the psychological contract.

The paper applies the signaling theory as a lens to develop a typology of four “ideal types” of SHRM configurations, each characterized by differences in the alignment of the HR-system and communication quality. Based on this typology, the influence of these different SHRM configurations on the congruence and breach of the psychological contract is being proposed.

The typology shows that the alignment of HR-systems and communication quality impact differently on the formation and breach of the psychological contract. It highlights that employees require both, highly aligned HR-systems and a high-quality communication to form congruent contract perceptions.

The configurational arguments embedded in the typology allow the conceptualization of the interrelationships between the alignment of HR-systems, organizational communication and the congruence and breach of the psychological contract. The propositions derived from the typology can guide research on SHRM as an antecedent of the psychological contract and shed light on the role of the psychological contract as a linking mechanism between SHRM and the employees’ reactions.

Drawing upon social exchange theory and psychological contract (PC) research, this study aims to examine the impact of supervisors' fulfillment/non-fulfillment of transactional psychological contract (TPC) and relational psychological contract (RPC) promises on employees' reactions (e.g. feelings of violation, trust in the supervisor and organizational commitment) in a non-Western context, namely, the United Arab Emirates (UAE).

An experimental field design was used with a sample of employees (N = 234) from a wide range of nationalities and work backgrounds. Four conditions were developed by manipulating the fulfillment of three TPC promises (e.g. competitive salary) and three RPC promises (e.g. sufficient power and responsibility). Participants were randomly assigned to the four conditions and asked to complete the study materials as if they were experiencing a real employment situation with a real organization. Hypotheses were tested using multivariate analysis of covariance and follow-up univariate analysis with Bonferroni post hoc comparisons.

This study demonstrated that a supervisor's failure to fulfill promises pertinent to both TPC and RPC, or one of them, generated negative reactions among participants. Based on a comparison of means analysis, this study also established that breach of TPC promises produced a higher negative impact than breach of RPC promises on perceptions of breach, feelings of violation, trust in the supervisor, organizational perceptions, organizational commitment and recommendation intentions. Furthermore, these findings revealed that a supervisor's breach of RPC promises has no significant incremental (additive) effect above a supervisor's breach of TPC promises. On the other hand, a supervisor's breach of TPC promises has a significant incremental (additive) effect above a supervisor's breach of RPC promises.

This study is one of the very few studies that examined and established, under a controlled setting, the differential effects of fulfillment/non-fulfillment of both TPC and RPC promises on employees' breach perceptions, emotions, attitudes and behavioral intentions.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the psychological contracts (PCs) of international volunteers (IVs) in international aid and development organizations (IADS). Specifically, it explores four questions: how IVs form PCs; what the content of these PCs is; how IVs’ PCs are maintained; and how they are fulfilled or breached.

The study used an inductive analysis of qualitative data: interviews with 27 IVs from a range of IADS.

The findings take the form of research propositions: RP1: IVs’ PCs, like those of domestic volunteers, include relational, transactional and, especially, values-based elements, but the balance of these is influenced by their values-based PC; the self-directed way IVs join their organizations; and reliance on peers rather than the organization’s management hierarchy. RP2: the PCs of IVs working for faith-based organizations have an additional element: spiritual support. RP3: the values-based PC means many transactional elements can be “adjusted away”, making it difficult to breach these PCs. RP4: experienced volunteers have very minimal PCs, but are more likely than inexperienced volunteers to expect basic safety and adequately skilled colleagues.

The authors suggest areas of new inquiry and specific ways each research proposition could be tested empirically.

To alleviate IVs’ expatriation and repatriation adjustment problems, international aid organizations could facilitate the ways IVs already help each other. This would also help fulfill IVs’ PCs.

IVs are a growing but underexplored group and aspects of their PCs may be unique.

This paper aims to investigate the relationships among repatriates' perceived psychological contract fulfillment, counterfactual thinking, and job attitudes.

The paper sampled 135 repatriates from 16 multinational companies (MNCs) in Taiwan through a survey questionnaire. The paper used hierarchical regression analyses to test its hypotheses.

The study results showed that repatriates' perceived fulfillment of their psychological contracts was negatively related to turnover intent and positively related to organizational commitment, after controlling for the variables of change assessments. The study also finds a positive relationship between upward counterfactual thinking and turnover intent and between downward counterfactual thinking and organizational commitment. Moreover, repatriates' perceived fulfillment of their psychological contracts was found to be related to upward counterfactual thinking but not downward counterfactual thinking.

A subjective perception of psychological contract fulfillment is a more important predictor of job attitudes than actual changes in position, pay, and skill improvement. Therefore, it is important for MNCs to maintain open communications with their repatriates to ensure clear understanding of the agreement existing between employees and the organization.

In the international human resource literature, it is unclear whether the relationship between expatriates' (or repatriates') perceived fulfillment of their psychological contract with their job attitudes are simply due to their assessments of actual changes in pay, position, and skills. In the case of repatriation, the paper clarifies the phenomenon by distinguishing both repatriates' assessments of changes before and after expatriation and their perceived fulfillment of psychological contracts (and their counterfactual thinking).

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to develop the construct of affective commitment in business‐to‐business relationships between customers and suppliers, as well as to introduce the psychological contract as a central antecedent to affective commitment.

A review of the literature on psychological contracts and relationship marketing relating to affective relationship commitment was conducted to make a theoretical contribution in a buyer‐supplier relationship context.

By focusing on the individual and incorporating relevant mental processes, theories on affective commitment have been developed. A model and propositions concerning the impact of psychological contracts on affective relationship commitment are suggested, where the psychological contract plays a central role in mediating the effects of several antecedents to affective commitment.

By focusing on the individual's role in affective relationship commitment, this paper contrasts with much of the earlier research, which has used the firm as the unit of analysis. For practitioners, using such an approach will provide a more realistic view of the dynamics in the relationship.

This study makes two main contributions. First, it develops conceptual clarity of the affective commitment construct by putting a clear focus on the individual. Second, it proposes a model that describes the influence of several antecedents to affective commitment, suggesting a central role of psychological contracts in explaining the presence of affective commitment in business‐to‐business relationships.