Management enforced job change and employee perceptions of the psychological contract
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/01425459710176963 |
| Date | 01 June 1997 |
| Pages | 222-247 |
| Published date | 01 June 1997 |
| Author | Jerry Hallier,Philip James |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Employee
Relations
19,3
222
Management enforced job
change and employee
perceptions of the
psychological contract
Jerry Hallier
Department of Management and Organization, University of Stirling,
Stirling, Scotland, and
Philip James
Civil Aviation Authority, London, UK
Introduction
Traditionally, the power of professional occupations has derived from their
ability to regulate their skills, control entry to their ranks and exercise discipline
over members (Glover and Hughes, 1996). However, in the wake of increased
competition, deregulation and initiatives to transform the public services,
professionals are now exposed to more and more managers and organizational
controls with the aim of reducing their status and autonomy. However, while the
emergence of these assaults on professional discretion is not disputed, it is less
clear whether they constitute a general expansion of management control. In
the public sector, for example, evidence of resistance to these management
initiatives are found to co-exist with points of integration and accommodation
between managers and professionals (Kirkpatrick et al., 1996). Considerable
variation between organizational contexts and even between sub-groups within
the same profession add to the complexity underlying these changes. Where a
profession successfully captures management territory, for example, not all
levels of a professional grouping will necessarily benefit. Senior members’
conditions and opportunities may often improve while those of junior levels
decline (Ackroyd, 1994). Different motives and available resources, therefore,
mediate the professional group’s capacity to resist or accommodate
management imperatives and ideological claims.
Out of these jurisdictional disputes, novel alliances and opportunities to
pursue status and control, new forms of relationship may also be created.
Important echoes of these evolving work arrangements are particularly
apparent in the radical changes taking place to the traditional employment
relationship. Here, operational tensions existing between managerial and
professional groupings may be amplified by the transition from contractual
arrangements formed to sustain middle-class employment relationships in an
earlier era to those now favoured to support preferred organizational strategies.
Thus, while employers have become increasingly preoccupied with promoting
Employee Relations,
Vol. 19 No. 3, 1997, pp. 222-247.
© MCB University Press, 0142-5455
The
psychological
contract
223
notions like employee commitment, empowerment and the learning
organization (Storey, 1995), at the same time restructuring has weakened the
traditional job security and career benefits of many white-collar, professional
and managerial workers (Hendry and Jenkins, 1997; Institute of Management,
1993). In this shifting occupational landscape the psychological contract is
central to understanding employee responses to these changes to the
employment relationship. Defined as beliefs about reciprocal and promised
obligations, psychological contracts provide one of the main supports by which
the employer-employee relationship is regulated (Rousseau and Parks, 1993).
Although the investigation of psychological contracts represents a recent
research focus, initial findings indicate that employers frequently break their
promises to employees. Herriot and Pemberton (1995), for example, found that
many middle managers have become disenchanted by the recent decline in their
security, career opportunities and the equity of their rewards. Similarly,
Robinson and Rousseau (1994) have shown that employers often unilaterally
breach the psychological contracts of business graduates during the early years
of employment. Outcomes of such violations to contractual terms include
reduced trust, job satisfaction and commitment to remaining with the
organization, and the withdrawal of some types of employee obligation (Hallier
and Lyon, 1996; Manning, 1992; Robinson, 1994).
Research, therefore, has begun to highlight the general salience of employee
perceptions of contractual obligations and some of the outcomes of employer
violations on the employment agreement. Less evident, however, have been
organizational case studies which examine how the status and content of the
psychological contract are perceived to alter or endure as groups of employees
experience different aspects of change to their roles and conditions throughout
a major job-change exercise. Accordingly, the purpose of this article, is to
examine the significance given to the contractual relationship by employees
undergoing management enforced job change. In particular, we assess the
importance attached to contractual issues by professional employees whose
roles have remained unchanged for many years but who now face the
imposition of a major work transition. Given their stable histories, it is
conceivable that such workers might encounter considerable difficulties in
interpreting the contractual impact of job change (Sparrow, 1996). Indeed, while
role change may be broadly similar among all the employees affected, it is not
improbable that particular facets of management’s behaviour may become
personally salient and thus engender different contractual meanings.
Relatedly, then, we also consider questions about how employees interpret
and treat separate instances of management violation. Do employees, for
example, compartmentalize individual transgressions or do they become
integrated into an overall but continually shifting construction of the
employment agreement? This question is especially pertinent where
restructuring gives rise to mass job changes which require considerable time
for preparation and implementation. Both planning and encounter periods may
be critical, not only for the recognition and evaluation of management
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