The impact of psychological contracts dimensions on organizational commitment: a field study of academicians

Abstract

The main object of this paper is to examine the impact of psychological contracts dimensions (tangibility, scope and time) on organizational commitment in the foundation universities. The concept of the psychological contract has recently become very popular as a way of examining and exploring a series of mutual expectations and satisfaction of needs arising from the people-organization relationship. According to Herriot, Manning and Kidd (1997;51) a psychological contract refers to the perceptions of mutual obligations to each other held by the two parties in the employment relationship, the organization and the employee. McDonald and Makin (2000;86) note that there are obvious links between the nature of the psychological contract and the individual's commitment to the organization. In this study, it will be used a feature-oriented assessment of psychological contracts. Sels, Janssens and Brande (2004;461-62) defined the feature-oriented assessment as 'to compare the contract to some attribute or dimension, such as the degree to which the contract is implicit/explicit or stable/unstable over time. Sels, Janssens and Brande(2004) identify six dimensions: Tangibility, scope, stability, time frame, exchange symmetry, and contract level. In this study, only three dimensions (tangibility, time frame and scope) will be used for assessing the psychological contracts. Consistent with the definition of psychological contracts, we focus on both employer and employee obligations. The original population of this study consisted of all academicians in the foundation universities in Turkey. It has been reveal no differences of statistical significance between mean scores of demographic factors and both organizational commitment and perceived psychological contracts. The second part of survey the items for perceived psychological contracts and organizational commitment. In participants' psychological contracts, it is revealed that perceived employee obligations are more important than perceived employer obligations. As a result, while organization commitment is not associated with three dimensions of psychological contract regarding employee obligations, organizational commitment is positively associated with more tangible, long term and broad scope contracts regarding employee obligations