Theoretical Approach Of The Measure Of The Psychological Contract Of Employees

The psychological contract (PC), defined as the set of promises that play the role of obligation between the employee and his organization (Rousseau, 1989), represents for the last twenty-five years an almost unavoidable instrument for analyzing the employment relationship. Several studies have demonstrated an undoubtedly link between the psychological contract fulfilment and several behaviors and attitudes at work such as organizational commitment, performance and the intention to stay with the same employer. However, certain methods have been developed over time to measure the psychological contract but they have not been used all the time and in the same way by all researchers. For example, if the analysis of the breach and PC violation marked the beginning of the PC research, its content or its facets began to be used later. As international researches and our own research show, it is only by putting together, in a complementary way, the methods of measurement of PC that one can apprehend the face of the PC of the employees in a certain company or country. In the literature, there are three possible ways to propose measures of the psychological contract (McLean Parks et al., 1998, Rousseau and McLean Parks, 1993, Rousseau and Tijoriwala, 1998). A first approach is the apprehension of its content, while the second deals with its facets, also called characteristics. This second approach measures the nature of the psychological contract. Based on these two elements, a typology of the psychological contract was proposed (Rousseau, 1995, De Vos, 2002). The third approach proposes the measurement of the psychological contract in relation to its realization (its evaluation), focusing mainly on the analysis of feelings of breach and violation. This paper proposes to give an overview of the literature concerning the most important modalities of measuring the PC, mainly identified in a North American and British conception.