Differential perceptions of employers' inducements: implications for psychological contracts

This paper reports findings from an exploratory study that addresses the question of whether or not measures of perceptual ‘gaps’ in organizational inducements contribute unique explanatory power above and beyond such familiar measures as employee job attitudes. Perceptions of inducements were obtained from both employees and representatives of their organizations. An average of 12 executives responded for each of four organizations to provide the organizations' view of the inducements offered to their employees, and a total of 339 employees across the four organizations reported their views of the inducements in the respective organizations. It was found that the larger the gap between what the employees viewed as the inducements offered them and what their employers reported offering them the lower was the employees' satisfaction with their organization, even after controlling for employee job satisfaction and employee performance. This finding, as well as the finding that in a substantial number of cases the employees report greater amounts of inducements than do their organizations' representatives, was explored for its implications for research on psychological contracts. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.