Kevin Henderson

This study examines sequential psychological contract breach, which is defined as patterns of breach and fulfillment that unfold over time within the same organization, such that earlier events shape responses to subsequent ones. Using an experimental design, we manipulated breach sequences across two time periods among 329 college students. Participants either experienced no breach, breach early, breach later, or breach twice. Results show that breach negatively impacts trust and job satisfaction and positively impacts violation and intention to quit. In addition, participants not experiencing breach had the most positive attitudes, while participants experiencing two breaches had the most negative attitudes, but declines were less pronounced following a second breach. Timing also mattered. While attitudes were significantly worse at the end of the study for those who experienced breach only later, early breach had a more significant negative impact on attitudes, but attitudes were able to recover following subsequent fulfillment. Together, these findings underscore the importance of breach history and timing in shaping employee reactions, contribute to the limited research on post-breach processes, and highlight the dynamic nature of psychological contracts, including conditions under which organizations may recover from breach.

According to research, approximately one‐third of the time constructive feedback is given, it is not successful—leading to a decline in performance. This is problematic because employees (and all humans) need feedback to develop and succeed. While many studies have examined options for making performance feedback more effective, there is a gap in simultaneously understanding the giver's and receiver's perspectives, including affective mechanisms at play. This study examines whether a simple addition to performance feedback—starting feedback with a statement that frames the feedback as helpful to the recipient can improve outcomes for both parties. To investigate this, student samples were used to understand the receiver's perspective, while an adult MTurk sample was used to understand the giver's perspective. For more subjective feedback, framing it in a performance‐oriented, helping‐focused way led to positive outcomes, including improved feedback perceptions, positive affect, and motivation to act upon the feedback for recipients; with givers reporting better perceived management fit, higher positive affect, and lower negative affect, effort, and perceived risk. Interestingly, givers preferred gain‐focused framing, while recipients did not significantly favor gain over loss framing. For both parties, mediators were found. Theoretically, this study supports an affective events view of feedback. Practically, it suggests that framing feedback in a gain‐focused, performance‐oriented, cognitively positive way can improve outcomes for the giver, the receiver, and, ultimately, the organization. Win. Win. Win.

Organizations are using social media as part of their selection processes. However, little is known about whether bias or discrimination is problematic when using these sources. Therefore, we examined whether manipulating the name and photograph of two otherwise equivalent LinkedIn-like profiles would influence evaluations of candidate qualifications and hireability as well as perceived similarity using an experimental design. To test our hypotheses based on bias/discrimination research and the similarity-attraction paradigm, a total of 401 working adults were recruited through Mechanical Turk. No evidence was found for bias or discrimination against women or people of color. However, female candidates were viewed as more hireable than male candidates, and Black men were viewed as less qualified than Black women and White men. Furthermore, we found that perceived similarity increased when the participant's gender or race matched the candidate's gender or race, respectively, and also that perceived similarity was related to candidate ratings; however, neither gender nor race match was directly related to candidate ratings. When profiles were more detailed, participants rated candidates of the same race higher than candidates of other races, and perceived similarity fully indirectly mediated this relationship. Conversely, when less detail was provided, participants rated candidates of the same race lower. Thus, while bias/discrimination toward women and people of color is not inherent when using LinkedIn for selection, having a racially diverse set of selectors is important to ensure fairness. This reveals a nuanced view of diversity issues when using social media for selection.

Research on psychological contracts has not been clear on why psychological contract breach (PCB) impacts psychological contract violation (PCV). While a few studies have examined individual mediators, no integrated view of the mechanisms responsible has been undertaken. In addition, the emotions associated with PCB have been underexplored to date and studies have over-relied on a PCV measure that focuses primarily on intense emotions like anger and betrayal. Therefore, this study examines multiple mediators of the PCB-PCV relationship: mistrust, distributive injustice, perceived lack of organizational support, and self-identity threat. Using a longitudinal design and a random sample of 148 university alumni, the results show that only mistrust is a significant mediator of the PCB-PCV relationship. The results also show that the primary emotion associated with PCB is sadness, not anger, and that both of these emotions decrease over time. These findings highlight the importance of repairing trust and reducing feelings of sadness following PCB in order to diminish its negative consequences.

This study investigated ways an organization might mitigate the negative effects of psychological contract breach. Drawing on the trust repair literature and organizational justice theory, we examined six general repair tactics (i.e., full penance, partial penance, denials, apologies, excuses, and combined apology/excuse) in terms of whether they improve trust and diminish the negative emotions following a breach. Data were obtained via two experimental studies employing 918 participants, including both college students and working adults. All of the repair tactics were effective at enhancing trust and easing negative emotions, except for denying that the breach occurred. Full penance (i.e., offering full reparation) was the most effective, with the next best option depending upon what outcome was being addressed and the population studied. The type of contract and magnitude of breach did not play a significant role in the effectiveness of repair tactics. The results of this study show that companies can do something to “fix” breaches. We extend the trust repair research to the context of breach and show that the effectiveness of repair tactics differs across outcomes. Practically, based upon our results, we advise companies to use these repair tactics (except denial) when breaches occur. This study is the first to empirically examine how companies might address breaches to avoid their negative consequences. It is also among only a few studies on trust repair to include emotions, initial trust, more than three repair tactics, and a sample of working adults.

An alternative conceptualization for job satisfaction, the most commonly measured variable in organizational, vocational, and work psychology literatures, is explored in 3 differing samples totaling 811 working adults. Eudaimonic, meaning-based job-related well-being (MJW) predicts job and life outcomes just as well as the more commonly measured hedonic, pleasure-based job satisfaction (JS), and MJW relates to outcomes above and beyond JS. MJW locates a new origin of job satisfaction in the person, in a life situation, in a community and social relations, rather than in the work organization. Our findings demonstrate that MJW is distinct from but related to JS and other job attitudes, and that facets of MJW exist that have been excluded from job satisfaction research, including satisfaction with the impacts of the job on family, life, and standard of living, how the job facilitates expression and development of the self, and sense of transcendent purpose through job role. These facets are important to individuals, the practice of management, organizational design, and society. MJW derives from the impact of jobs on workers' larger worlds and on the fulfillment of their basic human needs from work. Thus, the causes of job satisfaction broaden from enjoyment of work in isolation, to its contextualized meaning and impact in workers' lives. This is the first study in many decades, of which we are aware, to broaden the conceptualization of the origins of work attitudes beyond the confines of the workplace.

Everyone expects a boss to manage their subordinates – manager is usually in their job description after all. But this unidirectional paradigm of management is changing, as evidenced by significant popular interest in managing your boss (MYB). An internet search of MYB brings over five million hits, and Managing Your Boss (Gabarro and Kotter, 1980) is one of the most highly accessed Harvard Business Review articles of all time. However MYB remains ill-understood. While practitioner advice is plentiful, empirical research is scant. Academic topics like followership, Leader-Member Exchange, influence tactics, impression management, voice, and informal learning provide pieces of the MYB puzzle. However, none of these offer a coherent or systematic understanding of MYB. Therefore, using a qualitative methodology with 129 reports of boss-subordinate experiences from the subordinate's perspective and 65 from the boss's, this study develops a process model and theory of MYB. The presented MYB model has a number of critical components. First, subordinates use numerous, interrelated, positive, and equivocal behaviors when managing a boss. Second, to determine which behaviors to employ, subordinates often consider multiple stakeholders and use a variety of learning strategies ranging from understanding the boss to trial and error. Third, while well-executed MYB generally leads to positive outcomes, there are a few negative outcomes for managing well, and there are situations where moderators cause well-executed MYB to not result in positive outcomes. Researchers can use this model to better understand MYB and related concepts, while subordinates can use it to work more effectively with their bosses.

Explanations of turnover from extant management research focus on the what (content) and how (process) of turnover. This study engages a sensemaking framework to explore the why (meaning) for employees of quitting or staying at an employing organization, in order to add a new layer to our understanding of retention and turnover. Analysis of data from in-depth interviews with leavers and stayers, both post hoc and in situ, using grounded theory methods, reveals identity and well-being assessment sensemaking cycles, which occur periodically or when threat to core elements of identity and well-being across life domains is perceived. Core elements of identity and well-being include purpose, trajectory, relatedness, expression, acceptance, and differentiation. Perceived threat to identity and well-being across life domains leads to varying levels of psychophysiological strain, coping with threat and strain, and reassessment, often in escalating cycles resulting in turnover and continuing into new jobs. Lack of threat to, or facilitation of, identity and well-being, and successful coping result in retention. Overall, these findings suggest that from the perspective of the actors “being retained” or “turning over,” these phenomena are part of a deeply felt quest for positive, congruent identity and psychological well-being across life domains. Along with other research, these findings suggest that when people consider leaving jobs, it may invoke a liminal identity stage, which makes family and other life domains salient to turnover decisions. Implications for research on retention, turnover, identity, well-being, work life, and psychophysiological health in organizations, as well as practical implications, are discussed.