Guest editorial: Psychological contract: issues and emerging developments

This article aims to critically evaluate the dynamic, evolving nature of the psychological contract (PC) within the framework of modern organizational structures, which highlights the growing need to explore its understanding and application amidst rapidly changing external landscapes. PC is a central concept in the wider business psychology and organizational behavior domains (Argyris, 1960; Coyle-Shapiro et al., 2019; Kozhakhmet et al., 2023; Chen et al., 2025). It hinges upon the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964), which postulates the mutual exchange and expectations in the employee-organization relationship. Rousseau (1989) reconceptualized PC as a dynamic concept, emphasizing the individual's subjective interpretation shaped by experiences within the organization regarding mutual obligations. While the concept of the PC in workplace settings has been studied for decades, the surrounding economic, sociocultural, technological, political and environmental contexts have continued to evolve and remain under-researched (Rousseau and Schalk, 2000; Thomas et al., 2003; Kutaula et al., 2020; Phuong and Takahashi, 2021; Kiefer et al., 2022; Laulié et al., 2025).This special issue was positioned to invite articles that critically examine and address the gaps in the literature owing to these ongoing key developments. First, the lifelong employment model and the notion of a singular, stable employer are diminishing, as individualization gains prominence in the modern world of work (Boland and Griffin, 2023; Schabram et al., 2023). For example, traditional workplace boundaries have been progressively eroded by the rise of temporary workers, gig workers and consultants, leading to a transition toward more complex, multi-dyadic relational structures (Doellgast and Wagner, 2022; Dries et al., 2024; Kraak et al., 2024). This has introduced new layers of complexity to how the PC is formed and managed, especially around its conceptualization and how it impacts other workplace outcomes.Second, globalization has led to an increase in multicultural teams, where employees may interpret the terms of the PC differently across cultural contexts (Thomas et al., 2016; Sparrow, 2018; Tung, 2024). These cultural differences could have a significant impact on not just how the expectations are formed and shaped but also how employees perceive PC breach or violation (Jayaweera et al., 2021; Ng, 2025). This merits a focus on examining the broader contextual factors such as the sociocultural, institutional or political milieu within which individuals, groups and organizations operate. For instance, national culture dimensions such as individualism-collectivism or power distance can influence individuals' expectations around promises or obligations (Thomas et al., 2010, 2016; Den Hartog and De Hoogh, 2024). Therefore, managing PCs effectively in global teams would require a nuanced understanding of the cross-cultural beliefs and values to positively impact the employee attitudes and behaviors.Third, with the growing significance of global sustainability issues – such as climate change, fair working conditions and social inequality – organizations are expected to steer towards a broader set of responsibilities and consider a multi-stakeholder approach, including people, planet and profit, rather than focusing solely on profit (Schaltegger and Hörisch, 2017; Schuler et al., 2017; De Roeck et al., 2024; Laulié and Pavez, 2024; Bansal et al., 2025; Wijen et al., 2025). This shift impacts the PC by raising employees' expectations regarding social and ethical standards, renewing the workplace through a focus on these commitments rather than traditional economic transactions. Navigating these changes in the business world – and the consequent successes or failures – reshapes the discourse around the relational and transactional elements of the PC.Fourth, the widespread adoption of technologies – such as artificial intelligence (AI), information-processing software and virtual work environments – has significant implications for the PC in the workplace (Ballas et al., 2024; Moin et al., 2024). In this context, employees are led to reassess mutual expectations, particularly related to the facilitation of digital competency and ethical employment of technology, which is significant for relational elements of PC, given the decrease in face-to-face interactions (Braganza et al., 2021). These advances can influence how employees view fairness and trust within organizational settings, more so when AI-driven decision-making has gained momentum. Therefore, there is a need to assess the ethical consequences of integrated technology within the workplace from a PC perspective.Finally, in addition to these changing contexts, the COVID-19 pandemic has globally brought to light the need for continual adaptation and rethinking of how we work through volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous times (Lopez and Fuiks, 2021; Karani Mehta et al., 2024). Some of the main challenges faced by employees and organizations include managing work, providing effective leadership in these changing and challenging times and rebuilding businesses. This has implications for attitudinal and behavioral outcomes – such as mental health, burnout, stress and anxiety – which are fundamental to understanding, predicting and guiding practical interventions moving forward (Gong and Sims, 2023; Kim et al., 2025). These changes have also redefined employees' beliefs around flexibility and psychological safety, increasing the need to investigate PC in times of heightened crises and similar events.These ongoing global and organizational developments make the future of work even less predictable, making it important to study the PC in these changing and complex environments. The objective of the special issue is to address these gaps and serve as a conduit to broaden the understanding of psychological facets of employment relationships within the workplace by serving as a platform for disseminating novel research findings and charting the course to extending and developing the PC domain. In doing so, this special issue encourages researchers to revisit the PC and examine its content – including the transactional, relational and ideological dimensions – as well as evaluation approaches by exploring breaches and violations of mutual promises and obligations between employees and their organizations amid rapidly changing circumstances that disrupt the balance of reciprocity.We are delighted to introduce this special issue of the Journal of Managerial Psychology on “Psychological Contract: Issues and Emerging Developments”. This topic continues to attract interest, as evidenced by the number of manuscripts submitted to the special issue, which was handled by the guest editors' team and underwent a double-blind peer-review process. Following multiple rounds of review, the resulting 12 manuscripts, together with this editorial essay, form our SI on issues and emerging trends in PC. This issue presents insightful research contributions that examine the PC across varied sociocultural, economic and organizational contexts and propose future research directions.The editorial essay is organized as follows. First, we present an integrative overview of the PC through a discussion of the theoretical perspectives adopted in the 12 special issue articles, summarizing their key findings and highlighting their unique contributions. We conclude by offering six key themes around adopting diverse theoretical perspectives, integrating novel concepts and constructs, incorporating business ethics and sustainability, accounting for contextual factors, exploring links with technology and methodological considerations to guide future research.The papers of this special issue represent a wide range in terms of the concepts covered, theories and methods across diverse global and industry contexts (for details, see Table 1). In the first paper, Conway and Clinton (2026), using a sample of sales advisers via a longitudinal study within a UK bank, bring forward the novel concept of dilemmatic commitments to PC theory and research; while breach is negatively associated with affective commitment, it increases continuance commitment. They uncover dilemmatic commitments as a novel mediating mechanism for the breach-employee turnover relationship. Their results reveal a breach has a positive influence on affective commitment, which, in turn, enhances employee turnover. On the other hand, there is a negative relationship between breach and continuance commitment, which lowers employee turnover. Interestingly, dilemmatic commitments explain the negative effects of breach on OCB. This study offers detailed insights into dilemmatic commitments following PC breach by not just considering turnover but also OCB.Saksida et al. (2026), in the second article, adopting a mixed-methods design, investigate the effects of PC violations amongst gig workers on trust in organizations and intentions to leave during the COVID-19 pandemic. The survey results indicated PC violations lessen organizational trust and increase intentions to leave. Exploring the quantitative findings further, the authors interviewed 32 gig workers to examine the relationships between economic dependence and cynicism. The findings suggest that cynicism has varied connotations for gig workers – those relying more on the gig work financially expressed cynicism resulting from frustration and powerlessness. However, those who had less financial dependence on the platform aired casual cynicism – showing detachment and indifference towards platform issues.The third article by Sanders and Florkowski (2026) explores how individuals' PC interpretation differs as PCs are guided by personal sensemaking. This research develops a conceptual model for understanding PC through the lens of individual sensemaking, emphasizing the impact of personal and contextual factors acting upon it. The theoretical underpinning of the proposed conceptual framework is based on the formation and compliance of sensemaking, along with the behavioral outcomes adopted from the EVLN model (exit, voice, loyalty and neglect) to explain employees' attitudes and behaviors. The authors argue that personal sensemaking of the environment around them impacts PC and resulting behaviors in the workplace. The conceptual model proposes that ambiguity in new workplace relationships can initiate individual sensemaking, and they make sense of environmental signals to evaluate mutual expectations.The fourth article by Nayak and Budhwar (2026) focuses on diversity-related PC, defined as implicit expectations employees harbor around fair redressal of diversity and inclusion issues by their organization. Integrating organizational justice theory and social exchange theory, this study examines the relationship between diversity practices and two employee behavioral outcomes, turnover intentions and engagement. Drawing upon a sample of 856 people working in 8 software organizations in India, they found that implementing diversity practices increases employee engagement, which then reduces employees' intentions to leave. The authors examined the role of PC breach as a moderator for the diversity practices-turnover relationship via employee engagement.The fifth article by Arslan et al. (2026) extends the special issue's focus to a critical area – corporate social responsibility (CSR), examining the mediating role of PC in shedding light on the relationship between CSR and employees' environmental behavior. Based on a sample of 200 employees in Turkish small and medium-sized enterprises, the findings reveal that transactional PC and relational PC mediate the CSR-employees’ environmental behavior link. Also, employees' environmental attitudes moderate the CSR-relational PC-employees’ environmental behavior.The sixth article by Chaudhry et al. (2026) employed the social information processing approach to explore the concept of implicit promises within PCs, focusing on how external socio-institutional and cultural factors influence employees' perceptions of these promises. This research conducted a rich qualitative investigation involving 53 interviews with senior managers and employees across four multinational corporations (MNCs) in Pakistan, which varied in size, industry and HR policies. Its findings revealed that implicit promises are socially constructed and shaped by socio-institutional factors such as social stratification, relational networking and structural influences, expanding our context-specific PC insights.The seventh article by Foroudi and Fakhreddin (2026) introduces the concept of ideological PC, which aligns with individuals' personal values and self-concept. It relates closely to deeply held personal values and the self-concept. The study adopts a quantitative survey approach, using 399 employees from various European organizations. Notable findings include significant associations between ideological PC and three employee outcomes – work engagement, organizational commitment and organizational citizenship behavior. The study also identified and examined organizational factors like AI adoption, diversity climate and employee well-being as moderators. The results provide evidence for a positive moderation effect of diversity climate and employee well-being for the ideological PC fulfillment–organizational citizenship behavior relationship, while AI adoption negatively moderated the ideological PC fulfillment–organizational commitment relationship.The eighth article by Kusi et al. (2026) explores the relationship between the metaverse and PCs, with an emphasis on frontline employees and customers. The study presents a conceptual model and propositions based on flow theory, which states that individuals develop a sense of deep engagement while using technology. The research emphasizes the need to understand the psychological expectations of employees and customers – not only in physical realities but also within the metaverse, which is increasingly being adopted by companies in the marketplace and workplace. It proposes that employee PC will be fulfilled if firms utilize metaverse platforms. Due to the immersive nature of the metaverse, companies can build long-term relationships with customers, thereby positively influencing customer PC.Hassan et al. (2026), in the ninth article, examines knowledge sharing behavior, referred to as the exchange of information, knowledge and skills within the organization, as a key employee outcome of PC violation. This study goes beyond the traditional employee outcomes studied in PC literature so far and expands it to knowledge-sharing behavior. Based upon a survey of 250 US professionals, the study confirms a negative relationship between PC violation and knowledge-sharing behavior. Further, the research assessed and confirmed the role of perceived job insecurity as a mediator and perceived organizational support as a moderator for the PC violation-knowledge-sharing relationship.The tenth article by Saef et al. (2026), underpinned by the theory of purposeful work behavior, tested a moderated mediation model to investigate the influence of big five personality traits on emotional and behavioral responses when employees experience breach events. This study responds to the earlier calls for examining individual differences in relation to PC breach and violation. Adopting a scenario-based experimental methodology, key results confirmed moderation effects of agreeableness on the breach-voice relationship. Also, neuroticism reinforced the feelings of felt violation experienced through breach, and extraversion lessened the responses of neglecting work as a means to deal with felt violation.The eleventh article by Manchia et al. (2026), based on an extensive review of 217 articles published over a 30-year period, examines the PC antecedents – an area that remains underexplored to date. The review categorized the findings into four groups: the first comprising systematic reviews, meta-analyses and narrative reviews published between 1999 and 2019; the second including highly cited articles, defined as those cited more than 10 times; the third focusing on the latest PC research developments from 2017 to 2023 and the fourth consisting of articles from 1989 to 1999. This last period was selected particularly because 1989 signifies the year Rousseau redefined PC, emphasizing employees' perceptions of mutual exchange and the management of expectations within organizations. Leadership, human resource practices and personality emerged as the most studied antecedents in the the article by et al. (2026), based on from employees and from examines PC as a mediating mechanism for the behavior link. that an is negatively associated with behavior. Further, PC this relationship, while as a This research increases our understanding of how organizations can to behaviors through a positive PC, an effective organizational 12 papers in this special issue a significant in our methodological and understanding of PC across varied this special issue, we a for future research in this six key research as in Table First, while most researchers social exchange theory as the for authors have novel perspectives, such as sensemaking and flow theory et al., social information processing theory et al., and organizational justice et al., to present insights into PC research is to PC and related particularly where they impact and influence PC and For instance, Conway and Clinton (2026) researchers to into dilemmatic such as are by PC could significant in understanding of PC as employees breaches could positive and negative They could trust in the organization but could trust as they can and more of the dynamic nature of can to the increasing their to make future research could focus on more novel antecedents and outcomes of PC while also examining their mediating and expanding our understanding of this concept, particularly within the wider organizational psychology and The papers in the special issue such For example, Manchia et al. (2026), in their review of PC antecedents over the last decades, revealed practices and personality as the three most examined are to a significant role in the relationships between employees and managers and have the to employees' However, PC violations may be to a of The review also revealed that HR practices may across individuals and HR practices can employees' PC has also found a relationship between personality traits and the for example, a personality traits can to employees' PC such future can focus on how factors such as or PC Further, more could exploring under-researched mediating and While shedding light on the behavior relationship, et al. (2026) suggest into and as mediating such when employees with a perceive PC they see ethical behaviors as their personal are less to behaviors. we to focus on these psychological that organizational to employees' ethical attitudes and behaviors.Third, a area of investigation could be business ethics and For instance, upon environmental sustainability, Arslan et al. (2026) examining the between transactional PC and employees' environmental transactional are and on economic employees who this view may not as in the organization. Therefore, they are less to in attitudes and as organizational citizenship and In in this special issue, Nayak and Budhwar (2026) propose organizational antecedents such as diversity climate in with diversity-related HR practices and PC. These with the social sustainability given that diversity climate is of an view on and This can employees' PC formation and interpretation around and future research can the influence of wider economic, social and institutional factors that could impact how PCs are formed and Manchia et al. (2026) the need to examine how culture can impact antecedents that form PC more so as it a key role in individuals' behaviors. Further, researchers can study how cultural such as and power distance influence PC formation and evaluation and Nayak and it is to understand how economic and socio-institutional factors impact PC formation and evaluation et al., social stratification, they found that employees with and work experience more to within to implicit promises of and and relational within support and the formation of implicit mutual promises and obligations. Also, structural factors, such as the economic of an organization, employees' perceptions of implicit promises fulfilled or papers in this special issue examined PC in varied contexts, from the US et al., Saef et al., et al., the UK and and and to emerging such as et al., et al., and and et al., We suggest future researchers in this and contextual and research would to increase and of the PC research to to with technology, especially the rise of AI and metaverse platforms. and upon this the need to explore employee interactions with AI In this special issue, Kusi et al. (2026) present novel insights examining the implications of the metaverse in the workplace and marketplace by focusing on PC. They that and employees' and social expressed through in the metaverse, can to PC is by Foroudi and Fakhreddin (2026), who suggest future research could examine the influence of AI adoption in industry contexts such as organizations. This could be because AI adoption may impact decision-making job and across team and organizational differently across PC research could from PC breach or over through a longitudinal et al., et al., et al., Also, given the of research is quantitative in relying on future can a qualitative research approach, using focus groups and or a approach and Chaudhry et al., Further, to sensemaking Sanders and Florkowski (2026) the of and is to multiple to such as including or and or using objective such as information or and et al., to the issues associated with objective of this special issue is to discussion on PC, nuanced theoretical and practical understanding of the This editorial presents an review of the 12 articles in this special issue – their theoretical key insights and contributions to theory and We this special issue to upon future trends in this adopting diverse theoretical perspectives, integrating novel concepts and constructs, incorporating business ethics and sustainability, accounting for contextual factors, exploring links with technology and methodological We this special issue as a in the of developing in the area of PC, particularly in light of ongoing external changes and evolving organizational authors would like to on and on earlier of the special issue