As the semester winds down, this is usually crunch time. Most of us on campus are pulling our hair out, drinking coffee by the gallons, and grading papers by the billions (ok, an exaggeration, but it’s close). This semester is no different, except this last week was a blast. It was research day at UW-Stout. Students and faculty get to show off their hard work about the knowledge they’ve added to the world. The student posters were just spectacular. Incredible work done around depression, children’s education, nutrition education, augmented reality for mobile phones (I don’t know much about this, but it is super interesting) algae in our lakes, and so much more. We truly have incredible students and faculty doing great work for the world.
My research partner and I were able to present our poster (see below). Our work focuses on organizational exit. We focus mainly on the lived experience women’s career/job exit but have started to look at the lived experienced for men. Our results are interesting and pushing us to new questions and more interviews (we’re going to talk more about our results this summer, stay tuned). One of the emerging themes that is consistent with each participant is betrayal of trust by breaking the psychological contract. What was so fun about our presentation were the non-verbal expressions as people asked about ”…psychological contracts, hmmmm, that is interesting.” Based on their continued comments and facial expressions, I am positive most of the people who stopped by had experienced this type of betrayal as well.
Here’s the thing, psychological contracts are real, and they need to be honored for an organization to be successful. Denise Rousseau does fabulous research regarding psychological contracts and how they affect organizational success (or failure). She describes a psychological contract as beliefs of promises made between people. The “people” typically refers to the leader and follower but could be any relationship within the organization. Psychological contracts are typically unwritten and rely heavily on trust. The psychological contract becomes, in many but not all cases, that agreement between two people about how we will commit, act, and make decisions. In essence, it is very similar to a written contract about our salaries, vacation, benefits, etc. Every one of our participants left the organizations they did because in the end, the psychological contracts were breached. The stories are deep, intense, and big, but the overarching phenomenon is that trust has been broken, and for some on so many levels there was no way to stay. They had to leave to move forward and up.
What I loved about the conversations around our research is that you could see the lights go on, the ah-ha’s, and several senior leaders were quite interested in how they are doing with their own teams in this realm (I honestly have no idea what they were thinking, but I’m going with the optimistic opportunity for improvement). Psychological contracts are real in organizations. They help build solid organizational cultures that allow teams to work together respectfully, productively, and with positive relationships. They are an agreement in how we will treat each other. It’s not about liking someone or becoming best buds with everyone at work. It’s about agreeing that we will be respectful, fair, ethical, and honor the skills and talent a person brings to the organization. I can’t think of a contract that should be honored more. Can you?
What are your thoughts about psychological contracts? Have yours ever been betrayed? What are you doing to honor the psychological contracts you’ve “signed” with others? I’d love to hear your comments.
Rousseau, D. (1995). Psychological contracts in organizations: Understanding written and unwritten agreements. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.
