This chapter includes two parts. The first part indicates the discussion of this study. The second part indicates the implications for theoretical and practical fields as well as limitation of this study.
Discussion
The purpose of this study was to discover the relationships among psychological contract breach, career plateau, and intention to leave by collecting the samples of domestic baking employees in Taiwan. Furthermore, the career plateau served as a moderator between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. There were two main results in this study. Firstly, psychological contract breach had positive effect on intention to leave. Secondly, career plateau and its one dimension of hierarchical career plateau served as a moderator on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. However, job content career plateau does not moderate the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. Based on the results of analysis, the conclusions were drawn as follows:
Hypothesis 1a predicted that psychological contract breach is positively associated with intention to leave. Precisely, individual with higher psychological contract breach leads to higher level of intention to leave. The result of this study indicated that individuals with high psychological contract breach face the situation that did not get expected outcome from their employers after they completed the obligations and responsibilities within the organization. Therefore, they tend to have psychological withdraw from present job or leave the workplace in the end. This finding also agrees with the previous research conducted by Morrison and Robinson (1977) and Robinson (1996). It stated that if individuals did not receive expected
outcomes for completing their obligations from an organization, they perceived there was unfairness in the mutual psychological contract then had intention to leave or actual quit finally.
Hypothesis 2 predicted that career plateau served as a moderator on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. As shown from the results of data analysis, the interaction effect (psychological contract breach and career plateau) was positive and significant to intention to leave. The degree of career plateau moderated the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave.
The finding not only confirmed the Hypothesis 2 but also indicated that individuals who perceived career plateau usually faced the problem of being unable to get higher position or trap in the same position for a long period within the organization. These characteristics of career plateau drive them to have higher degree of intention to leave than those individuals who have not perceived career plateau in the organization. The result of this study was consisted with several previous literatures in this field (Davenport & Russell, 1994; Tremblay et al., 1995). It implies that the higher career plateau individuals perceive, the higher intention to leave they have when working in the organization.
Furthermore, Hypothesis 2a predicted that hierarchical career plateau serves as a moderator on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. The finding confirms the Hypothesis 2a and it implies that higher perception of hierarchical career plateau individuals have, the stronger relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave it will be. This finding is consisted with Burke (1989), stressed that an individual who perceived hierarchical career plateau had higher absenteeism at workplace and greater intention to leave the organization.
On the other hand, Hypothesis 2b predicted that job content career plateau serves as a moderator on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. However, the result is quite surprising and unexpected. This study did not demonstrate the moderating role of job content career plateau on the relationship between and intention to leave. It is difficult to explain the result, but it might be that individuals with psychological contract breach face unfairness in the mutual psychological contract. Therefore, no matter individuals do the routine things in daily life at workplace or tired of maintaining similar job duties, individuals with psychological contract breach still have intention to quit the job or leave the organization and seek for new career instead. Besides, Robinson and Rousseau (1994) found that the individuals with psychological contract breach had lower job satisfaction, job performance, organizational commitment and higher intention to quit the job than those individuals without psychological contract breach.
Implications
In this section, it provides theoretical implications and recommendations for future management.
Theoretical implications
In the past of career management field, several researches have investigated psychological contract breach which is related to plenty of different issues. However, few studies conduct with the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave while career plateau serves as a moderator. Hence, this study provides the evidence to fill in the literatures of career development research field. To contribute to the theoretical perspective, this study not only explores the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave but also tries to explore the moderating effect of career plateau on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. From the result of this study, there is a positive relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. That is to say, when individuals’ perceived psychological contract breach is high, the individuals’
intention to leave turns out to be high. Furthermore, the result of this study also showed that there is a positive moderating effect of career plateau on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. As a conclusion of this study, the career plateau will affect the individuals with psychological contract breach to have higher intention to leave the organization.
Management Implications
This study provided evidences showing that psychological contract breach positively associated with intention to leave and career plateau played as an important
moderating link between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. Hence, this study advises that organizational management and human resource practitioners should take individuals’ psychological contract breach in to consideration in order to prevent from employees’ intention to leave and prevent employees from eventually quitting the job. Otherwise, higher personnel flow rate would affect and damage organization performance. Specifically, if most employees tried to leave the organization and seek for new careers outside, the organization may face losing valuable human capital which would cause serious losses for organization (Rotondo
& Perrewe, 2000).
Besides, the results of this study could also benefit organizational management and human resource practitioners for understanding the banking employees’ current working situation. For understanding the current banking working situation, human resource practitioners could try to come up with methods to help the employees with career plateau before employees have intention to leave the present organization.
Furthermore, through this study could broaden human resource practitioners’
career development knowledge about psychological contract breach as well as career plateau and remind organization of keeping well psychological contract relationship with employees. Wellin (2007) presented that psychological contract added value not only to the employees but also to the organization. If there was a clear and positive psychological contract would help organization support their employees and also increase employees’ engagement and commitment to the organization.
Research Limitations
This study focuses on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave as well as the moderating effect of career plateau on the relationship between psychological contract breach and intention to leave. There are some limitations in this study. The limitations are listed as below:
Firstly, all variable scales were put into one questionnaire in this study, so the independent and dependent variables were answered by the same person and at the same period of time. It might cause the problem of common method variance (CMV).
Therefore, in order to prevent the common method variance, there are three methods to solve this problem in advance. First, the research purpose and variables were not explained in the questionnaire. Second, the different point of Likert scales were used in the questionnaire. Lastly, this study adopted several reverse items in the questionnaire to prevent participants from filling the questionnaire randomly.
Secondly, this study adopted convenient sampling. The banking employees were randomly chosen to respond the questionnaire. Because of the convenient sampling, and the respondents were asked to self-report to the questionnaire, there was the risk that they might misrepresent themselves and it might impact the result of this study.
Thirdly, psychological contract breach was suggested to be surveyed by both employer and employees. However, it was difficult to find employers to participate in this study, so this study only adopted a unilateral perspective for measuring all of the items on the questions of psychological contract breach.
Finally, there were only portion of banking employees who work in domestic banks in this study. Since there are several of governmental backs such as Bank of Taiwan, Land Bank of Taiwan, Taiwan Cooperative Bank and other foreign banks in Taiwan. Hence, the results do not infer from all banking employees in Taiwan. It was
a limitation for this study. Therefore, in the future research, the researcher suggests that future researchers can try to investigate the difference between non-governmental and governmental banking employees or the differences between domestic and foreign banking employees in Taiwan.
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APPENDIX A: BANKS OF QUESTIONNAIRE
DISTRIBUTION
編
號 銀行名稱 發出
數量
回收 數量
1. 第一商業銀行 (First Commercial Bank) 85 64
2. 彰化商業銀行(Chang Hwa Commercial Bank, Ltd.) 40 28
3. 台北富邦商業銀行(Taipei Fubon Commercial Bank Co., Ltd) 75 58
4. 國泰世華商業銀行 (Cathay United Bank) 75 53
5. 聯邦商業銀行 (Union Bank Of Taiwan) 60 41
5. 聯邦商業銀行 (Union Bank Of Taiwan) 60 41