Our task is to adopt a multidisciplinary view of trust within and between firms, in an effort to synthesize and give insight into a fundamental construct of organizational science. We seek to identify the shared understandings of trust across disciplines, while recognizing that the divergent meanings scholars bring to the study of trust also can add value. Disciplinary differences characterizing traditional treatments of trust suggest that inherent conflicts and divergent assumptions are at work (Fichman, 1997). Economists tend to view trust as either calculative (Williamson, 1993) or institutional (North, 1990). Psychologists commonly frame their assessments of trust in terms of attributes of trustors and trustees and focus upon a host of internal cognitions that personal attributes yield (Rotter, 1967; Tyler, 1990; see Deutsch, 1962, for an example of more calculative framing by a psychologist). Sociologists often find trust in socially embedded properties of relationships among people (Granovetter, 1985) or institutions (Zucker, 1986). These different assumptions are manifest in our divergent use oi language. To some scholars the term "contract" refers to a legal means for avoiding risk where trust is not particularly high (Smitka, 1994; Williamson, 1975); to others the We thank Paul Goodman and Bill McEvily for their helpful comments, Carole McCoy for patient word processing, and Cathy Senderling for her wonderful editing.

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Two forms of unwritten contracts derive from relations between organizations and their members. Psychological contracts are individual beliefs in a reciprocal obligation between the individual and the organization. Implied contracts are mutual obligations characterizing interactions existing at the level of the relationship (e.g., dyadic, interunit). Employee~employer relations and changing conditions of employment give rise to issues not addressed in conventional transaction-oriented models of motivation and individual responses. The development, maintenance, and violation of psychological and implied contracts are described along with their organizational implications.

SummaryPsychological contracts are individual beliefs in reciprocal obligations between employees and employers. In a sample of 224 graduating MBA students who had recently accepted job offers, beliefs regarding employment obligations were investigated. Two types of obligation were demonstrated empirically: transactional obligations of high pay and career advancement in exchange for hard work and relational obligations exchanging job security for loyalty and a minimum length of stay. These types of obligations are connected with two forms of legal contracts: transactional and relational. Relational contract obligations for employers correlated with employee expected length of stay with the firm. Transactional contract obligations were associated with careerist motive on the part of new recruits. The relationship between these and other motives of new hires was also investigated.