Importance of employee relationship management

Employee-relationship management is an important aspect of any organization’s success. The world is becoming increasingly global, the competition in different industries is soaring high coupled with rising recession woes and layoffs. Amidst, these kind of panicky and intense circumstances, stress levels at work places have been at an all time high. It is thus, very important to effectively manage employees in organizations. Social values and beliefs systems play a pivotal role in shaping up the attitude and behavior of various individuals and organizations towards employment-management relationship. Many individuals tend to look for a broader, introspective meaning in the work that will enable them to feel that they are contributing to the community at large. In most organizations, the urge to behave ethically and to assume responsibility for social and environmental consequences of their doing, has become mandatory in developing good employment relationship management at work. The trend for individual and organizational behavior is more output oriented today. The output is in line with the ethical and social values that have a direct impact on psychological contracts created in today’s organizations. This paper will critically analyze psychological contract in the contemporary organization. What are the issues associated with psychological contract, what are the ethical standards of behavior, in light of both, the individual as well as the organization. It is important to study this, because employee performance is directly related to his morale and higher the employee morale, the higher his productivity and higher the chances of enterprise productivity.

According to Nelson, employees evaluate the organization’s actions with respect to the contributions the organization has “contracted” deliver. When they see no discrepancies, the psychological contact continues to remain stead. On the other hand, Feldman believes that if a discrepancy is observed, the individual will undergo a cognitive process in figuring out if the discrepancy has a positive or a negative impact. If they feel that it’s a positive impact, then business continues as usual while if the impact is negative then the discrepancy is considered as a breach. Anderon and Schalk, Morrision and Robinso are of the view that the level of emotional involvement will determine if the breach is a violation indeed. They believe that a lot of factors are responsible in magnifying the scale of the loss. This includes the history and the current stature of the employment relationship too. This means that not every discrepancy can be considered as a breach and not every breach can be qualify to to be called contractual violated.However, the expanded interpretive framework. Thus, as explained by Nelson in his study, the expansion of the interpretive framework for the psychological helps us to look beyond the constraints associated with transactional and relational parameters that have held sway in most research related to psychological contract. It allows us to identify the boundaries of individual-organization,where relationships are subjective and can be affected by forces that exist beyond these boundaries.

In another study conducted by Cheng Ping Chang and PO Chiun HSU, an interview method was used to explore the psychological contracts of temporary employees working at the Administration Bureau of South Taiwan Science Park. The results of the study suggest that improvements in management practices and worker welfare work positively. These suggestions can be employed by government agencies who hire temporary employees. The term psychological contract was introduced by Argyris in 1960. He linked it with an unwritten agreement. He explains that whenever an employment relationship exisits, an innate psychological contract takes form between the individual and the organization. On the other hand, Levinson believes that psychological contract is an “unwritten, connotative contract on the general rights, duties, and expectations of employeer and employee”. There are two dimensions of this contract: the individual and the employee. Schein on the other hand feels that psychological contract plays a pivotal role in shaping the behavior of an organization. These views were contradicted by Rousseau who recently explained that the psychological contract is more than just agreement between the employee and the organization. It is an individual’s trust in the organizations. It’s about the individual’s belief of their employment and the the extent to which they feel that the employer is dedicated to them. Thus the perception of psychological contract varies in light of general expectations, the individual’s belief about work, or their expected status in the organization.

In Chang’s study a qualitative analysis was undertaken to determine the difference between the psychological contract as perceived by a temporary employee and as implemented by the employment company actually. For this purpose, interviews were conducted with employees at the Bureau of South Taiwan Science Park and the data consolidated and analysed. The results of the study demonstrate that ideal psychological contract of the temporary employee resembles that of a permanent employee. Because temporary employees, do not receive benefits such as bonuses and vacations,certain differences exist between the permanent and the temporary employee. In their study, Culliane and Tundane have questioned the theoretical deficiencies in the existing literatureon psychological contract. From the work of Argyris to Rousseau to Guest recently, there is a realization that more needs to be done to give the psychological contract a viable framework which is capable of understanding thhe complex nature of the relation between the employeer and the employee. They also threw light on some of the central points which have been left un-attended in literature. The need to theorize the psychological contract to advance understanding was voiced out by them. Irrespective of various theoretical and empirical implication, the paper realizes that the notion of psychological contract continues to be popular in today’s age and time.

In the study conducted by Jeffrey. N. Street, employee commitment to the organization was examined as an outcome variable fo the psychological contract. He explains it is generally referred by many as the employee perception of the value he gets in exchange of his work at employment. Street’s study is primarily conceptual in nature with propositions related to the impact on individualism and collectivisim on the type of contract formed, whether transactional or relational are offered and discussed. Street draws comparison between the psychological contract of the Japenese and Americans. While Japaneese psychological contract of the employee is relational, in the United States, it is primarily transactional. In transactional contracts, there are tangible benefits such as salary betweent the employee and the employeer while high competitive wages and absence of long term commitments are characteristics of transactional contracts.

Street proposed a study on mid-level managers and mid-career salaried professionals of Japanese-American firms stationed in the United States and of Japanese firms located in Japan. He believed that the organizational level and position of each participant would be identified by each company on the basis of the description of the target respondent. The study has it’s own limitations. The biggest problem in studying Japanese owned firms in the United States is the fact that they are unusual organizations and have little in common with other organizations. There is a lot of cultural diversity in the United States. It impacts the influence of individualism on the formation of the psychological contract. The study will have determine the impact of changes in work atmosphere in the United States where jobs are no longer considered as safe because of the extent of change in society in the last couple of decades.