Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between individual value-orientations and psychological contracts in organizations, the data were collected from divers industries including manufacturers, banks, and retailers. From a statistical analysis of 247 questionnaires we found basically the following two facts. First, among two value-orientations, individualism and collectivism, collectivism has strong relationship with psychological contract dimensions. The more collectivist an individual is, the less specific and the longer term contract he or she expects. In contract, individualists have no preference in psychological contracts except that they prefer non-specific company obligations toward employees. Second, collectivism has stronger relationships with the employees's obligations toward company than with the company's obligations toward employees. In other words, ones who have strong collectivism feel strongly non-specific and long term obligations toward their company, while they ask less strongly their company to treat them in that way. As expected, collectivism has strong relationship with psychological contracts. Collectivists prefer more non-specific and longer term psychological contracts. However, individualism show no expected relationship with psychological contract. Individualists even want non-specific employment relationship. This phenomenon suggests that in a traditionally strong collectivist country like Korea, individualism orientation has little influence in shaping psychological contracts. Further researches are needed to explicate the complex role of individualism in the collectivist countries.