Psychological Contract Breach, Job Attitude and Behaviours Across Cultures: A Meta-Analysis

Abstract

Although research on psychological contract breach (PCB) has grown in recent years, most of the studies have taken an individual-level perspective to explain PCB effects on employee behavior, thereby overlooking the possibility that the national cultural context might affect employee responses to psychological contracts. This study, therefore, investigates whether employees in various cultures react differently to psychological contract breaches. Drawing on the GLOBE cultural framework, we expected that national cultural practices moderate the relationship between PCB and a key work attitude (such as organizational commitment) and job behaviors (i.e. in-role performance, turnover intention, and counterproductive behaviours). Using meta-analytic data from 176 studies, we found that the results largely support our hypotheses. The study updates and expands prior meta-analyses on psychological contracts and opens a new area of inquiry by showing that cultural practices at the national level can influence the processes of how psychological contract breaches affect employee behaviors at the individual level.