1 Nele De Cuyper & Thomas Rigotti University of Leipzig, Germany Balancing psychological contracts: Validation of a typology Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium

2 Psychological contracts “the idiosyncratic set of reciprocal expectations held by employees concerning their obligations (what they will do for the employer) and their entitlements (what they expect to receive in return)” (McLean Parks, Kidder & Gallagher, 1998, p. 698)

3 Transactional vs. Relational contracts Ongoing Monetary Benefits Identity linked with Organisation Non Monetary Benefits Mutual Loyalty Support Career Rewards / Development Time Based Immediate Rewards Monetary Benefits Identity linked to skills & competencies Little emotional attachment invested

4 Concepts of breach and violation One perceives another as failing to fulfill promised obligation Breach refers to cognitive awareness, whereas violation involves emotional reaction Undermines trust

5 Research on temporary employment – in a nutshell Dominant approach is to compare employees on temporary assignments to those on permanent contracts Inconclusive findings concerning job satisfaction, commitment, well-being,... Representative surveys rather report a disadvantaged position of employees on temporary, as compared to permanent contracts – field studies in Work- and Organizational Psychology reported mixed findings Possibly the only consistent finding is, that those on temporary employment report higher perceptions of job insecurity – but with lower correlations to negative outcomes

6 Mutual high obligations Employee over- obligation Mutual low obligations Employee under- obligation Typology based on reciprocity Mutual high obligations Employees‘ obligations Employers‘ obligations

7 Hypotheses H1: Temporary workers are more likely to have psychological contracts with mutual low obligations, or with employee overobligation, than permanent workers, whereas they are less likely to have psychological contracts with mutual high obligations, or with employee underobligation. H2: Employees perceiving mutual high obligations report higher organizational commitment (H2a), job satisfaction (H2b), and life satisfaction (H2c) than employees perceiving mutual low obligations, employee overobligation, or employee underobligation. H3: Employees perceiving mutual high obligations report less psychological contract violation than employees perceiving mutual low obligations or employees perceiving imbalanced psychological contracts (employee overobligation and employee underobligation).

8 Sample characteristics

9 Descriptive statistics and Correlations among dependent variables

10 Employers‘ & Employees‘ Promises 1 1

11 Latent Class Cluster Analysis …. thanks to QMSS-Workshop..Iterative procedure „to identify a set of mutually exclusive latent classes that account for the distribution of cases that occur within a crosstaulation of observed disrcete variables“ (McCutcheon, 1987, p. 8)

12 Profile of latent clusters

13 H1: Differences between employees on temporary vs. permanent contract Mutual high obligation1.3 Employee overobligation0.6 Employee underobligation3.0 Mutual low obligations0.8 Odds Ratios for permanent employees (N = 687) as compared to temporary employees (N = 580) from Germany and Belgium

14 H2/H3: PC-Typology and outcomes (ANCOVA) Commitment Job satisfaction Life Satisfaction Violation

15 Conclusions Transactional contents build the core of psychological contracts Type of employment contract (temporary vs. permanent) proved to be an important antecedent of psychological contracts: employees on temporary employment contracts were more likely Results underpin the role of reciprocity in social exchange processes – the high perceptions of violations in the mutual low cluster suggests, that this type may be caused by former breaches of the psychological contract As expected, mutual high obligations were related to the most favourable outcomes, but it was not lacking reciprocity per se that showed the most negative outcomes

16 De Cuyper, N., Rigotti, T., De Witte, H., & Mohr, G. (in press). Balancing Psychological Contracts: Validation of a Typology. International Journal of Human Resource Management (Publication in early 2008) Thank you!