Date of Award
2007
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
Master of Science
Program
Psychology
Supervisor
Dr. John Meyer
Second Advisor
Dr. Joan Finegan
Abstract
Understanding the commitments both an employee and his or her employer make to each other is important to organizations. I explore these commitments by examining the relation between employee commitments and employer psychological contracts (i.e., promises employers make to their employees). Traditionally, psychological contracts have been measured based on the contents of the contract (e.g., promotion opportunities), making it difficult to generalize findings across work arrangements. Instead, I adopt and extend a new approach to examining psychological contracts by looking at the contracts’ features (e.g., stable). Employees from a variety of organizations completed surveys on their organizational commitment and perceptions of their employers’ psychological contracts. Results illustrated a clear picture of what features correlated with desired forms of commitment (i.e., affective and normative) compared to a less desired form of commitment (i.e., continuance) and the uncommitted. Implications of the findings for management and directions for future research are also presented.
Recommended Citation
McInnis, Kate, "Beyond the Dotted Line: Psychological Contracts and their Relations with Organizational Commitment" (2007). Digitized Theses. 4654.
https://ir.lib.uwo.ca/digitizedtheses/4654