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.