title: Antecedents of Psychological Contract Breach: The Role of Job Demands, Job Resources, and Affect.
abstract: While it has been shown that psychological contract breach leads to detrimental outcomes, relatively little is known about factors leading to perceptions of breach. We examine if job demands and resources predict breach perceptions. We argue that perceiving high demands elicits negative affect, while perceiving high resources stimulates positive affect. Positive and negative affect, in turn, influence the likelihood that psychological contract breaches are perceived. We conducted two experience sampling studies to test our hypotheses: the first using daily surveys in a sample of volunteers, the second using weekly surveys in samples of volunteers and paid employees. Our results confirm that job demands and resources are associated with negative and positive affect respectively. Mediation analyses revealed that people who experienced high job resources were less likely to report psychological contract breach, because they experienced high levels of positive affect. The mediating role of negative affect was more complex, as it increased the likelihood to perceive psychological contract breach, but only in the short-term.
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology research unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium.
authors.forename: Tim
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Vantilborgh
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology research unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium.
authors.forename: Jemima
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bidee
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology research unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium.
authors.forename: Roland
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Pepermans
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology research unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium.|Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, 2500 University Drive, Northwest Calgary, AB T2N 1N4, Canada.
authors.forename: Yannick
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Griep
authors.affiliation: Department of Experimental and Applied Psychology, Work and Organizational Psychology research unit, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Pleinlaan 2, 1050 Brussel, Belgium.
authors.forename: Joeri
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Hofmans
mesh_terms: D032982:Contracts; D004651:Employment / Q000523:psychology*; D005163:Factor Analysis, Statistical; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008954:Models, Biological; D008962:Models, Theoretical; D055361:Multilevel Analysis; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D013997:Time Factors; D017132:Workplace / Q000523:psychology*