6.2.3 ASSESSMENT 3 – MAJOR ASSIGNMENT
You need to write an essay related to the development of an employee’s psychological contract. This essay is designed to widen your knowledge of this particular facet of the employer-employee relationship. Hence, you are required to widely research the concept of psychological contracts and write an essay that discusses the construct. Details of what is required within this assignment will be discussed in class.
A psychological contract expresses the combination of beliefs and mutual understandings shared by an individual and an employer with regard to the expectations of one another in the workplace. It can be described as the set of reciprocal but not necessarily articulated expectations that exist between individual employees and their employers (Maunder, 1998). Although it is possible to examine a psychological contract in a “snapshot” in time, it is important to understand that is “organic” i.e. developmental and “living”. A snapshot taken in the first months of an employment relationship will be very different from one taken in the same relationship several years later. As defined by Schein:
‘The notion of a psychological contract implies that there is an unwritten set of expectations operating at all times between every member of an organization and the various managers and others in that organization.’ (Schein, 1965, p156)
This statement has been further modified by Rousseau and Wade-Benzoni who stated that:
‘Psychological contracts refer to beliefs that individuals hold regarding promises made or implied, accepted and relied upon between themselves and another. Because psychological contracts represent how people interpret promises and commitments, both parties in the same employment rel ...