Serving the cause when my organization does not: a self‐affirmation model of employees’ compensatory responses to ideological contract breach

Deng, Hong, Coyle‐Shapiro, Jacqueline ORCID: 0000-0002-7658-7878, Zhu, Yanting and Wu, Chia‐huei (2022) Serving the cause when my organization does not: a self‐affirmation model of employees’ compensatory responses to ideological contract breach. Personnel Psychology, 76 (4). 1161 - 1186. ISSN 0031-5826

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Abstract

Transactional and relational contract breach occur when organizations fail to deliver on promised personal benefits for employees and are associated with negative behaviors reciprocating such mistreatment. However, recent research suggests that ideological contract breach, a unique form of contract breach, may yield constructive behaviors because it is not organizations’ direct personal mistreatment of employees, but organizations’ abandonment of a valued cause to benefit a third party. Such an interesting prediction goes beyond the dominant social-exchange framework, which mainly forecasts destructive responses to breach. In this research, we develop a novel self-affirmation model to explain how ideological contract breach results in counterintuitive positive outcomes. In a hospital field study among medical professionals (N = 362) and their supervisors (N = 129), we found that ideological contract breach induces employees’ rumination about the breach, which in turn prompts them to self-affirm core values at work. This self-affirmation eventually spurs proactive serving behavior and self-improvement behavior to compensate for the breached ideology. Professional identification enhances this self-affirmation process.

Item Type:	Article
Official URL:	https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/17446570
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	Management
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor > HD28 Management. Industrial Management B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
Date Deposited:	14 Nov 2022 11:18
Last Modified:	16 Nov 2024 23:39
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/117313

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