In an August 2024 article named as Best Paper Runner Up by AMCIS1, Mehwish Waheed, Associate Professor at Institut Mines-Télécom Business School, and her colleagues demonstrate mathematically how psychological contracts encourages the apparition of innovative behaviors among the employees. Here is a look back at some of the highlights of the project.
Individualities and new technologies
The research team points to three predictors of employees’ innovative behaviour. The first is called Individual Knowledge Diversity (IKD). IDK represents the sum of the knowledge that an employee has acquired through other professional or academic experience. It has already been proven in the literature that knowledge improves innovation. What Mehwish Waheed et al. suggest in their paper is that knowledge gives employees a broader perspective. This enables them to contribute to the innovative output of the organisation.
Another point concerns the working environment. With the emergence of AI and other technologies, companies have started to integrate them into the working environment. It promotes an atmosphere where employees can explore new ideas using AI tools. However, the Perceived Sustainability Integration, in other words the physical observation of the elements of progress does not affect innovative behaviour. It is only a moral or regulatory requirement for employees.
The research team used a necessary condition analysis to determine the actual influence of these factors on innovation behavior. Through data collection and a final examination of the results in relation to other existing theories, the researchers were able to demonstrate that these elements have an impact on innovation behavior. This demonstration is supported by other methods to deepen and confirm the theory. In this case, Partial Least Squares Modeling (PLS-SEM) was chosen. This method makes it possible to investigate complex cause-and-effect relationships.
The importance of psychological contract
What is a psychological contract ? This refers to the set of unspoken mutual expectations that exist in a working relationship between an employee and his organization or manager. Although implicit, these expectations can touch on very concrete issues such as compensation, career management, or employee training. The publication by Mehwish Waheed et al. addresses another facet of this contract: the alignment of the employee’s values with those of the organization.
To give a more meaningful example, we can use the case of Antoine Griezmann and his departure from the French football team.
On September 30, the French midfielder announced his international retirement. The reason for his departure was a breakdown in trust between coach Didier Deschamps and Antoine Griezmann. Frustrated by his coach’s refusal to give him the captain’s armband, a highly symbolic position for a player, and by the deprivation of playing time (notably during Euro 2024), the French player realized that his loyalty to the coach was not being reciprocated, that his commitment was being ignored, and hence his premature departure from the team.
This is why the psychological contract is important and must be taken into account by an organization. Breaking the contract can lead to loss of motivation and reduced creativity. That’s why it’s important for managers to honor their commitments and, when necessary, reward their employees for their loyalty.
However, this work has a number of limitations and opens the way for further research. The first of these is that this research does not examine other contexts outside of the firm. The research methods used here should be applied to other contexts in order to validate or invalidate the conclusions presented. It will also be necessary to consult a wider range of sources and to test other methods to give us the capacity to deal with deeper and more complex issues.
1 The Americas Conference on Information System (AMCIS) is a prestigious annual conference for researchers and professionals in information systems and related technologies from around the world. It provides a platform for panel discussions and peer-reviewed presentations of research papers. It attracts approximately 600 submissions each year, and the best papers are edited and sent to hundreds of libraries and bookstores worldwide.
