Psychological contract and the financial crisis (PDF)

Essay from the year 2012 in the subject Economics - Job market economics, , language: English, abstract: A key example of drastic change in today's global working environment with important consequences for employees since the diversification of all aspects of work is the transformation of the "psychological contract" among employees and their organizations. As such "psychological contract" is defined by Rousseau (1995) as "the belief that a person for the terms and conditions of a mutual agreement transaction between him/her and another participant, in this case between the employee and the organization". More specifically, the term "psychological contract" refers to mutual obligations, values, expectations and desires of employees from their employers, beyond any formal employment contract.

In other words, it is a transaction relationship, where employees and employers have certain expectations about their mutual obligations, which are, of course, different for each employee and significantly affect what each side believes is its obligation. The psychological contract has been characterized in a various ways, for example, as "unstable, subjective, unconscious, indirect, alive, something that employees know it exists, only when it is changed" (Appelbaum et al.).