René Schalk

One job, one deal...or not: do generations respond differently to psychological contract fulfillment?

This paper investigates generational differences in the relations between psychological contract fulfillment and work attitudes. Data were collected from a sample of 909 employees in the Dutch service sector. Structural equation modeling analyses were used to test the moderating effects of generational differences on the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on affective commitment and turnover intention. The relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and these work outcomes was moderated by generational differences. Furthermore, results indicate that different generations respond differently to different aspects of psychological contract fulfillment, such as career development, job content, organizational policies, social atmosphere and rewards. The study provides evidence that generational differences impact the reciprocal relationship between employer and employee. Results from this study suggest that Baby Boomers and Generation X may be more motivated by social atmosphere, whereas Generation Y may be more motivated by job content and career development. Fair organizational policies are particularly motivating to Generation X, and providing rewards, though more important to Generation Y, seem mostly unrelated to work outcomes. This article is the first to study the moderation of generational differences in the relationships between psychological contract fulfillment and work outcomes.

Does a Well-Informed Employee Have a More Positive Attitude Toward Change? The Mediating Role of Psychological Contract Fulfillment, Trust, and Perceived Need for Change

This study examined the mediating role of psychological contract fulfillment, trust, and perceived need for change in the relationship between change information and employee attitude toward organizational change. As one of the first studies in organizational change research, attitude toward change was operationalized here as a tridimensional construct, comprising an affective, a behavioral, and a cognitive dimension. In a sample of 399 employees, data were gathered using questionnaires. The results confirmed that psychological contract fulfillment, trust, and perceived need for change mediated the relationship between change information and attitude toward change. Change information was positively related to all three mediating variables, which in turn were positively related to at least one of the attitude toward change dimensions. Furthermore, the relationship between trust and all three attitude toward change dimensions was mediated by psychological contract fulfillment and perceived need for change. Recommendations for future research and implications for practitioners are discussed.

Intentions to Continue Working and Its Predictors

What we know about managing and retaining older workers is quite limited. Attention is needed regarding the retention of older workers due to demographic shifts and their implications for organizational needs. Simply put, organizations need to retain older workers. Both because they want to keep the older workers’ knowledge “on board” and depend on older workers as the availability of younger workers declines. The chapter addresses the concept of intention to continue working among older workers. How can it be defined? How is it different or related to concepts such as work motivation, commitment and intention to retire early? We review the findings regarding the personal, organizational and context factors that predict it. We need to understand the influences on the employees’ intentions to continue working. In doing so, the HR practices to stimulate older employees to stay at work longer can be better identified. We discuss Human Resource Management practices that can influence employee intentions to continue working.

Manager responses to employee dissent about psychological contract breach : A dyadic process approach

Communication scholars have made significant headway toward understanding the upward dissent process, conceptualizing different types of upward dissent strategies and investigating the use of these strategies. However, scholars have hardly considered the dyadic process associated with upward dissent strategies and manager responses to these strategies, or how the nature of dissent may influence the dissent process. We describe the dissent process in relation to personal-advantage dissent. We focus on a specific trigger—psychological contract breach (PCB)— because this negative workplace event is regularly experienced among employees and employees are likely to express their dissatisfaction about PCB to their managers. We present a dyadic process model that explains how employee–manager interactions following an employee’s initial dissent about PCB evolve over time.

What's in it for me? : A managerial perspective on the influence of the psychological contract on attitude towards change

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to develop a model on how business managers perceive that an employees 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. nnDesign/methodology/approach - Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 39 human resource directors, change managers andmanagement consultants in eight European countries. Based on detailed grounded theory-driven analyses of the qualitative data, a conceptual model was developed. nnFindings - Based on the grounded theory analysis, a model emerged that positions the individual change perception and individual answer to the whats in it for me? question as central determinants of an employees 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. nnPractical implications - 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. Originality/value - 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.

How to coordinate care for people with dementia? A case study of a region in the Netherlands.

The greying of the population and trends that will change the future institutional context have implications for the social care for people with dementia and their caregivers. Based on the data of services provided by 50 organisations in a region in the South of the Netherlands, an organisational analysis revealed that better coordinated care is needed to fit the changing needs of clients in different phases of the disease process.

The development of agency in professional youth work with girls and young women in the Netherlands

Summary Young people living in north-west European welfare states are challenged to develop their individual strength. This is especially difficult for girls living in vulnerable circumstances, because they face a form of marginalization. Girls work is a method of professional youth work that supports girls in their identity development, making them more capable of shaping their own lives now and as adults. This is conceptualized as agency, which consist of the properties: intentionality, forethought, self-reactiveness, self-reflection. This paper examines the extent to which girls work helps girls living in vulnerable circumstances to develop their individual strength. Findings The article is based on a questionnaire filled out by 393 girls who participate in 59 girls work activities in the Netherlands. This study shows that participation in girls work contributes to the development of intentionality of these girls (F(3,387)u2009=u20094.60, pu2009=u2009.004). Furthermore, girls who received an individual approach are better capable of reflecting on their actions than girls who only participated in group activities (F(2,388)u2009=u20093.10, pu2009=u2009.046). Applications The findings suggest that participation in girls work contributes to the intentionality of girls in vulnerable circumstances, which is an important step in the development of agency. But to accomplish this, girls need to learn how to act upon their personal intentions. However, the findings do not show that girls work contributes to the other properties of agency, suggesting that to support girls in shaping their own lives, youth workers need to contribute more to the other levels of agency.

You can see how things will end by the way they begin : The contribution of early mutual obligations for the development of the psychological contract

This study explores dynamic processes in the development of the psychological contract, focusing on the interaction of obligations related to the two parties (i.e., employees’ perceptions of both their own and the organization’s obligations fulfillment) on attitudinal outcomes (organizational commitment and turnover intention) during the initial stage of the employment relationship. In a twofold cross-sectional and two-wave study on newly hired correctional police officers, we examined: (a) whether perception of organizational obligations fulfillment moderates the relationship between employee obligations and their attitudes (Study 1, n.500); (b) the direct and moderated influence of perceived obligations at the entrance stage on those in the following months (Study 2, n.223). Results confirmed that, in the eyes of the newcomer, the obligations fulfillment of each of the two parties interact, having an additional effect beyond the main direct effects, in influencing both subsequent obligations perceptions and, through this, the outcome variables. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Actively Coping with Violation: Exploring Upward Dissent Patterns in Functional, Dysfunctional, and Deserted Psychological Contract End States

Recently, scholars have emphasized the importance of examining how employees cope with psychological contract violation and how the coping process contributes to psychological contract violation resolution and post-violation psychological contracts. Recent work points to the important role of problem-focused coping. Yet, to date, problem-focused coping strategies have not been conceptualized on a continuum from constructive to destructive strategies. Consequently, potential differences in the use of specific types of problem-focused coping strategies and the role these different strategies play in the violation resolution process has not been explored. In this study, we stress the importance of focusing on different types of problem-focused coping strategies. We explore how employee upward dissent strategies, conceptualized as different forms of problem-focused coping, contribute to violation resolution and post-violation psychological contracts. Two sources of data were used. In-depth interviews with supervisors of a Dutch car lease company provided 23 case descriptions of employee-supervisor interactions after a psychological contract violation. Moreover, a database with descriptions of Dutch court sentences provided eight case descriptions of employee-organization interactions following a perceived violation. Based on these data sources, we explored the pattern of upward dissent strategies employees used over time following a perceived violation. We distinguished between functional (thriving and reactivation), dysfunctional (impairment and dissolution) and deserted psychological contract end states and explored whether different dissent patterns over time differentially contributed to the dissent outcome (i.e., psychological contract end state). The results of our study showed that the use of problem-focused coping is not as straightforward as suggested by the post-violation model. While the post-violation model suggests that problem-focused coping will most likely contribute positively to violation resolution, we found that this also depends on the type of problem-focused coping strategy used. That is, more threatening forms of problem-focused coping (i.e., threatening resignation as a way to trigger one’s manager/organization to resolve the violation) mainly contributed to dysfunctional and deserted PC end states. Yet, in some instances the use of these types of active coping strategies also contributed to functional violation resolution. These findings have important implications for the literature on upward dissent strategies and psychological contract violation repair.

Psychological contract breach in the anticipatory stage of change : Employee responses and the moderating role of supervisory informational justice

This study examined the impact of two types of psychological contract breach (organizational policies and social atmosphere breach) on resistance to change and engagement in the anticipatory phase of change and assessed whether supervisory informational justice mitigated the negative effects of breach. Employees from three departments of a Dutch financial institution (n = 141) who were in the first phase of a change initiative participated in the study. Results showed that social atmosphere breach was positively related to affective resistance to change and negatively related to engagement, while organizational policies breach was positively related to cognitive resistance to change. These findings point to the importance of distinguishing between different types of psychological contract breach. In addition, it was found that supervisory informational justice mitigated the adverse effect of social atmosphere breach on cognitive resistance to change, pointing to the important role of managers in the first phase of change.