Abstract
Social exchange theory and notions of reciprocity have long been assumed to explain the relationship between psychological contract breach and important employee outcomes. To date, however, there has been no explicit testing of these assumptions. This research, therefore, explores the mediating role of negative, generalized, and balanced reciprocity, in the relationships between psychological contract breach and employees’ affective organizational commitment and turnover intentions. A survey of 247 Pakistani employees of a large public university was analyzed using structural equation modeling and bootstrapping techniques, and provided excellent support for our model. As predicted, psychological contract breach was positively related to negative reciprocity norms and negatively related to generalized and balanced reciprocity norms. Negative and generalized (but not balanced) reciprocity were negatively and positively (respectively) related to employees’ affective organizational commitment and fully mediated the relationship between psychological contract breach and affective organizational commitment. Moreover, affective organizational commitment fully mediated the relationship between generalized and negative reciprocity and employees’ turnover intentions. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 2552-2579 |
Journal | International Journal of Human Resource Management |
Volume | 29 |
Issue number | 17 |
Early online date | 16 Nov 2016 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2018 |
Bibliographical note
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Human Resource Management on 16/11/2016, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/09585192.2016.1254099Keywords
- psychological contract breach
- reciprocity norms
- social exchange
- Pakistan