Abstract

Past work has documented and described two types of psychological contracts: transactional and relational contracts. The latter assumed individual and organization exchange reciprocally psychological obligations and the former assumed exchange material ones. The purpose of this study was co investigate another two types of psychological contracts: Maintenance contracts in which individual's psychological obligations and organization's material ones are exchanged, and developmental contracts in which individual's material obligations and organization's psychological ones are exchanged. In study 1, 42 employees participated in individual interviews about the individual's and organization's obligations they exchange, and four types were founded. In study 2, 421 employees participated in survey questionnaire composed of the individual and organizational characteristics in competing values model(Quinn, 1988) with the obligations they exchange. It was founded that each three types of contracts except the transactional contract had significant relationships compare to ocher contracts in some characteristics of the management model: The relational contracts had mote characteristics of the clan culture, the effectiveness of human resource development and morale, and affiliation motivations of the human relation model, and the maintenance contracts had more of the hierarchy culture and the hierarchical information processing of the internal process model, and the developmental contracts had more of the adhocracy culture, the broker and innovator role of leadership, the growth and resource acquisition of effectiveness, and the developmental information processing of the open system model. The expected antecedents characteristics and the relative effectiveness of four types of psychological contract were discussed.