The relationship between HRM and performance was explored in 366 UK companies using objective and subjective performance measures and cross-sectional and longitudinal data. Using objective measures of performance, greater use of HRM is associated with lower labour turnover and higher profit per employee but not higher productivity. After controlling for previous years' performance, the association ceases to be significant. Using subjective performance estimates, there is a strong association between HRM and both productivity and financial performance. The study therefore confirms the association between HRM and performance but fails to show that HRM causes higher performance.

The concept of the psychological contract, with its focus on the exchange of perceived promises and commitments, is increasingly used as a framework to study the employment relationship. Yet research has predominantly focused on employee views and has largely neglected the organisational perspective and the management of the psychological contract. This article begins to redress the balance by reporting a study, based on a survey of 1,306 senior HR managers, that explores the management of the psychological contract and in particular the role of organisational communication. Three distinct and relevant aspects of organisational communication are identified, concerned with initial entry, day‐to‐day work and more future‐oriented, top‐down communication. Effective use of these forms of communication is associated with what managers judge to be a clearer and less frequently breached set of organisational promises and commitments, as well as with a fairer exchange and a more positive impact of policies and practices on employee attitudes and behaviour. The findings are discussed within the context of the wider literature on psychological contracts, organisational culture and HRM. The study confirms that the psychological contract offers managers a useful framework within which to consider and manage the employment relationship.

SummaryThe psychological contract has been viewed as an explanatory framework for understanding the employment relationship, and is regarded by some researchers as central in understanding employee attitudes and behavior. Despite the importance ascribed to the psychological contract, it remains theoretically underdeveloped and has received limited empirical attention. This study takes a new approach to researching the psychological contract, through the use of daily diaries, and addresses a number of fundamental questions regarding its nature. Results show that both broken and exceeded promises occur regularly and in relation to virtually any aspect of work, that the importance of the promise contributes significantly to emotional reactions following broken and exceeded promises, and that the psychological contract is an important concept for understanding everyday fluctuations in emotion and daily mood.

SummaryThis paper reports the findings of a two-wave longitudinal study investigating relationships between organizational and individual career management activities and organizational commitment in the early years of graduate careers. Several hypotheses are tested and receive mixed support. High organizational commitment predicts the practice of career management activities by graduates to further their career within the organization while low commitment is closely associated with behaviour aimed at furthering the career outside the organization. Graduates who manage their own careers also receive more career management help from their employer. This suggests that there may be the potential for employers to create a 'virtuous circle' of career management in which individual and organizational activities complement each other.

Psychological contracts and perceived organizational support Exchange relationships: Examining psychological contracts and perceived organizational support Three hundred and forty seven public sector employees were surveyed on four measurement occasions to investigate the conceptual distinctiveness of the psychological contract and perceived organizational support (POS) and how they are associated over time. Results support the distinctiveness of the two concepts. In terms of their inter-relationships over time, drawing on psychological contract theory, we found little support for a reciprocal relationship between POS and psychological contract fulfillment. Under an alternative set of hypotheses, drawing on organizational support theory and by separating psychological contract fulfillment into its two components (perceived employer obligations and inducements), we found that perceived employer inducements was positively related to POS which, in turn, was negatively related to perceived employer obligations. Finally, the results suggest that POS and the components of psychological contract fulfillment are more important in predicting organizational citizenship behavior than psychological contract fulfillment.