Serving the cause when my organization does not: A self‐affirmation model of employees’ compensatory responses to ideological contract breach
研究发现意识形态契约违背（组织放弃有价值的事业）会引发员工反思，进而通过自我肯定核心价值产生主动服务和自我提升行为，对管理者理解员工积极应对契约违背有启发。
Abstract Transactional and relational contract breach occur when organizations fail to deliver on promised personal benefits for employees and are associated with negative behaviors reciprocating such mistreatment. However, recent research suggests that ideological contract breach, a unique form of contract breach, may yield constructive behaviors because it is not organizations’ direct personal mistreatment of employees, but organizations’ abandonment of a valued cause to benefit a third party. Such an interesting prediction goes beyond the dominant social‐exchange framework, which mainly forecasts destructive responses to breach. In this research, we develop a novel self‐affirmation model to explain how ideological contract breach results in counterintuitive positive outcomes. In a hospital field study among medical professionals ( N = 362) and their supervisors ( N = 129), we found that ideological contract breach induces employees’ rumination about the breach, which in turn prompts them to self‐affirm core values at work. This self‐affirmation eventually spurs proactive serving behavior and self‐improvement behavior to compensate for the breached ideology. Professional identification enhances this self‐affirmation process.