HR practices and their impact on the psychological contracts of temporary and permanent workers

Abstract

Given that social comparison processes take place within social exchanges, this field study examines the relationship between the differences in organizational treatment of a diverse workforce and psychological contract (PC) fulfillment. With a focus on the provision of performance-related pay and training programs for 748 temporary and 1432 permanent employees in the food manufacturing, retail and educational sectors, the study covers 78 organizations in seven countries. Hierarchical linear modeling with polynomials for both human resource practices showed a significantly positive association of incongruence in training distribution with PC fulfillment, but not for performance-related pay. Permanent employees' PCs benefit more from this incongruence than do temporary employees'. Training incongruence that derives from tailoring those programs to the needs of the specific employee group is recommended.