Climbing the Ladder of Performance: Are Psychological Contract and Organizational Commitment Steps?
| Autor | Maia, Leticia Gomes |
| Cargo | Clinical report |
Introduction
Job performance has an essential economic function for organizations and carries out an important psychological function for employees as an element in the construction of their personal identity and their inclusion in social groups, including at work. For organizations, knowledge about employee performance and the factors that influence it represent a competitive advantage. Specifically in public organizations, the situation of their employees offers a series of peculiar characteristics for job performance, such as job security afforded, and therefore this knowledge could be even more valuable. Low attrition and high job security make the risk low for consequences of performing poorly. How can performance improvement be stimulated without the possibility of offering different benefits or payment? It is important to note that the public sector has many similarities across the world, thus our results and reflections about the possible impacts that the individual perception of psychological contract and affective commitment promotes on the process of human resource and job performance management are likely to hold true in different contexts.
Psychological contract refers to how the employee perceives his/her own obligations towards the employer as well as the obligations of the employer towards themselves, while affective organizational commitment (AOC) highlights the emotional nature of the attachment between the individual and the organization. Our goal is to answer whether the organizations can expect employees to perform better depending on the level of fulfillment of the psychological contract and the level of AOC of employees.
Job performance is a complex behavioral phenomenon. Its complexity may be a reason why its theoretical concept has considerable heterogeneity, as does its methodological operationalization, with a plethora of associated measures; however, the concept is one of the most investigated in the area of organizational behavior. The epistemological difficulties of research into job performance have made the study of its antecedents scarce and inconclusive. In this study, we conduct an empirical test of the association between the fulfillment of the psychological contract, AOC, and job performance. This test will take into account both parties in the psychological contract: how the employees perceive the fulfillment of employer obligations, and how they perceive the fulfillment of their own obligations towards the organization.
A research design with employees and their bosses (N = 202) and a time lag between the measurement of the predictor and criterion variables relieves common method bias and aims to demonstrate in a robust and unique way, by applying structural equation modeling through a study carried out over two years, the effects of the fulfillment of the psychological contract on in-role job performance and the role of organizational commitment in this process.
The aim of this article is to investigate the effects of the fulfillment of the psychological contract and AOC on job performance in a longitudinal study. The way we chose to achieve this aim is by comparing three models of mediation: in the first model of full mediation, there is no direct link between the psychological contract and job performance; in the second model of partial mediation, all variables are interconnected; and in the third model, there is no mediation and no link between fulfillment of the psychological contract and AOC. Our question is whether the fulfillment of psychological contract and AOC are two notable steps on the ladder of job performance.
Theoretical Background
The definition of job performance is usually divided into in-role and extra-role performance (Riketta, 2008). The first theories on job performance in the context of Taylorism and Fordism tended to emphasize task performance, which, like in-role performance, focuses on the fulfilling of tasks or on the outcomes of work. Task performance relates to the individual's proficiency in contributing to the technical core of a position or occupation or proficiency in performing the technical and instrumental requirements of each job behavior (Borman & Motowidlo, 1993). In-role performance is difficult to operationalize since the outcomes or the tasks may depend on other factors besides those under the control of the individual. Therefore, the models consider only the behaviors or actions that are under the control of the individual, especially in a process of evaluation, that have consequences, so individuals can be punished or recognized for their results. Moreover, in-role performance ultimately devalues other behaviors that, although not directly linked to the implementation of the tasks, also contribute to the achievement of organizational objectives. In this paper, job performance refers to behavior that is relevant to the objectives of the organization and that can be measured in terms of the proficiency level (or contribution to the goals), which is represented by a particular action or set of actions (Campbell, 1999). There is a variety of factors that can be combined to determine job performance. The related constructs are located at different levels, such as individual, group, organization, and society. Two of the predictors of job performance are psychological contract and organizational commitment (Bal, Chiaburu, & Jansen, 2010; Conway & Coyle-Shapiro, 2011).
Psychological contract refers to beliefs concerning the terms and conditions of a reciprocal exchange agreement between an individual and the organization (Rousseau, 1995). A central aspect in the definition of the psychological contract is the idea of two-sided exchange and reciprocity (Conway & Briner, 2005). The employee perceives his/her own obligations towards the employer as well as the obligations of the employer towards themselves. In investigating the consequences of the psychological contract, the focus should be on the state of the psychological contract, which is determined according to the fulfillment of its contents. One of the consequences of fulfillment of the psychological contract is organizational commitment, which refers to "the relative strength of an individual's identification with and involvement in a particular organization" (Mowday, Porter, & Steers, 1982, p. 27). There are many studies relating psychological contracts and organizational commitment. Some studies found that fulfillment of the psychological contract is related positively to organizational commitment (e.g., McInnis, Meyer, & Feldman, 2009; Sturges, Conway, Guest, & Liefooghe, 2005). On the other hand, studies investigating the relationship between psychological contracts and job performance are less numerous. Conway and Coyle-Shapiro (2011) found that the strength of the relationship between the fulfillment of the psychological contract and performance increased over time. The results of Turnley, Bolino, Lester and Bloodgood (2003) suggest that psychological contract fulfillment is positively related to in-role performance and organizational citizenship behavior.
Bal, Chiaburu and Jansen's (2010) study showed that the state of the psychological contract has considerable impact on work performance, while Lester, Turnley, Bloodgood and Bolino (2002) found that the greater the breach perceived by the employees, the lower their job performance. The significant and direct effects of the psychological contract on in-role performance were also supported by the studies by Johnson and O'Leary-Kelly (2003) and Restubog, Bordia, Krebs and Tang (2005). Our first hypothesis is that when employees feel that their psychological contracts have been fulfilled, they will become more committed to the organization, and they will then perform better. This hypothesis investigates the direct effects of fulfillment of the psychological contract on AOC, its indirect effects on job performance, and the direct effects of AOC on job performance. In this model, there is no direct link between psychological contract and job performance, as shown in Figure 1.
Hypothesis 1: Affective organizational commitment mediates the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and job performance.
While there is some consensus about the relationship between psychological contract and the other variables in this study, the relationship between AOC and job performance is not conclusive. The complexity of these two phenomena is an explanation for this gap in research on organizational behavior.
Job performance can be investigated as in-role or extra-role performance and assessed by many different methods, for example, self-ratings, supervisor ratings, or objective indicators. There is not broad consensus about the dimensionality of the job performance construct. It is a very complex construct and subject to important biases. In a meta-analysis, Riketta (2002) found that the correlation was significantly stronger for extra-role performance than for in-role performance as well as for performance assessed by self-ratings than for supervisor ratings or objective indicators.
A review of the literature on commitment shows the existence of different perspectives: one-dimensional views (Mowday et al., 1982; Solinger, Van Olffen, Roe, & Hofmans, 2013) and multidimensional views (Meyer, Allen, & Smith, 1993), person-centered approach (Meyer & Morin, 2016), attitudinal views (Mowday et al., 1982; Solinger et al., 2013) and behavioral views (Staw, 1974) that focus on different targets of commitment, such as the organization, the job itself, the team, the career, and the labor union. It seems important to consider which one is the target of commitment in each case. Bishop and Scott (1997) found that team commitment led to increased productivity, but organizational commitment did not. Becker, Kernan, Clark and Klein (2015) found organizational commitment unrelated to productivity. No significant relationship...
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