Eye of the beholder: A meta-analysis of personality traits' relationships with psychological contract breach and job performance

Abstract

Psychological contract breach (PCB) is a subjective perception that one's employer has failed to live up to promised obligations. Because PCB is subjective, personality traits should play an important role. However, existing research on the relationships between personality traits and PCB is scattered and explores a variety of subsets of personality traits, with little agreement on which traits are most important to PCB. Thus, we focus on personality traits selected based on insights from a reneging-incongruence framework suggesting that personality traits will be important to the degree that they influence the likelihood that employees are targeted for a “real” PCB (i.e., reneging) or bias their perspective of their PCB (i.e., incongruence). Further, drawing from social exchange theory, we examined PCB as a mechanism by which personality traits relate to job performance. Meta-analytic results indicated that the multiple correlation between personality traits and PCB was R = 0.34, and they continued to account for variance in PCB beyond social exchange quality. Emotional stability and equity sensitivity were the strongest predictors of PCB. Results also demonstrated that PCB mediates the relationships equity sensitivity and emotional stability have with task performance, organizational citizenship behavior, and counterproductive work behavior, even controlling for job satisfaction as an alternative mediator.