Johannes Kraak

Although scholars and practitioners argue that organizations should provide justice information in the aftermath of a psychological contract breach (PC breach) to prevent or reduce violation feelings, it remains unclear whether that information should be provided within a few hours, days, or weeks following a PC breach. We estimated a 2-level time-lagged regression model on experience sampling data from 76 (226 observations), 70 (213 observations), and 70 (344 observations) employees with different intervals to test the durability of informational justice as a moderator on the PC breach-violation feelings relationship. We found that justice information should be provided in close temporal proximity (i.e., within the same day; Study 1) of PC breach to reduce violation feelings. In contrast, neither justice information provided the day (Study 2) or week (Study 3) after a PC breach successfully moderated the PC breach-violation feelings relationship. The current paper underscores the importance of being informationally just in close temporal proximity to a PC breach in line with resolution velocity as an indicator of the effectiveness of the recovery process. We discuss theoretical and practical implications of these findings.

This paper is the result of the collective work undertaken by a group of Psychological Contract (PC) and Sustainability scholars from around the world, following the 2023 Bi-Annual PC Small Group Conference (Kedge Business School, Bordeaux, France). As part of the conference, scholars engaged in a workshop designed to generate expert guidance on how to aid the PC field to be better aligned with the needs of practice, and thus, impact the creation and maintenance of high-quality and sustainable exchange processes at work. In accordance with accreditation bodies for higher education, research impact is not limited to academic papers alone but also includes practitioners, policymakers, and students in its scope. This paper therefore incorporates elements from an impact measurement tool for higher education in management so as to explore how PC scholars can bolster the beneficial influence of PC knowledge on employment relationships through different stakeholders and means. Accordingly, our proposals for the pursuit of PC impact are organized in three parts: (1) research, (2) practice and society, and (3) students. Further, this paper contributes to the emerging debate on sustainable PCs by developing a construct definition and integrating PCs with an ‘ethics of care’ perspective.