Psychological Contract Breach and Its Influence on the Job Embeddedness of Professional Nurses

Abstract

A shortage of professional nurses is a global concern, and employers of professional nurses in many countries, including South Africa, are losing them to lucrative international job opportunities, further exacerbating the problem. Traditionally, the migration of nurses is studied in the context of turnover and turnover intentions. With the aim of contributing to the knowledge on the retention of nurses, this study examined whether breach of the psychological contract predicts nurses’ job embeddedness, as embeddedness has been found to increase intention to stay. A cross-sectional sample of 228 professional nurses was drawn from private hospitals in South Africa. Hierarchical regression and ANOVA were used to examine the relationship and group differences. The findings indicate that, after controlling for age, citizenship, and employment status, psychological contract breach negatively impacts job embeddedness. The implication for managers is that employers of professional nurses must honour their obligations and promises made to retain them as part of the retention strategy to stem this outflow and loss of expertise.

Do broken promises matter? The effects of psychological contract breach on job embeddedness and nurses' work attitudes

“…This is in line with prior research (e.g. Jacobs et al, 2020), and further explains the breach-outcome relationship (Coyle-Shapiro et al, 2019) through job embeddedness theory (Mitchell et al, 2001). That is, nonfulfillment of obligations tends to incite employees to develop negative feelings toward their job and their employer to balance the interchange.…”

“…It also contributes to the relevant literature by applying the norm of reciprocity (Gouldner, 1960) to explore how psychological contract breach relates to attitudinal and behavioral consequences through a mediating mechanism of job embeddedness, which is outlined that there has been a lack of research in these areas (e.g. Jacobs et al, 2020;Kiazad et al, 2018;Thakur and Bhatnagar, 2017). There are three important findings to discuss.…”

“…According to the Norm of Reciprocity Theory (Gouldner, 1960), when employees perceive that their psychological contracts have been fulfilled, they tend to reciprocate by holding more positive work attitudes and delivering more desirable work outcomes (Conway et al, 2011). Vice versa, when employers do not fulfill their promises, employees experience psychological contract breach and tend to negatively react by reducing their effort and devotedness or changing their work mindset (Jacobs et al, 2020;Lub et al, 2016).…”

“…Such selfperpetuating reciprocity may impact employee retention (Zhao et al, 2007). Jacobs et al (2020) suggest that employers should facilitate employee retention strategies to maintain this equilibrium, one of which is to ensure that psychological contracts in the employment relationships are not breached. This study, therefore, seeks to extend the breach-outcome association (Kiazad et al, 2018) by drawing insights from job embeddedness theory (Mitchell et al, 2001).…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, few research (e.g. Jacobs et al, 2020) has been conducted to investigate the impact of psychological contract breach on job embeddedness. In addition, none of which examines such effect on its separate dimensions of fit, links and sacrifice.…”