Identifying employees' perceptions on organizational obligations

International Journal of Public Sector Management Identifying employees' perceptions on organizational obligations: A comparison between the Greek public and private sector Victoria Bellou

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Identifying employees’ perceptions on organizational obligations A comparison between the Greek public and private sector Victoria Bellou


University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece Abstract Purpose – This study aims to identify the organizational obligations that are mostly valued by employees and potential variations in perceptions regarding the ideal psychological contract, between employees working in the public and the private sectors. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 1,145 employees, with 398 being employed in the public sector, participated in the study. The study took place in Greece, where the public sector’s particularities provide excellent ground for comparisons with the private sector. Overall, 40 organizational obligations, drawn from existing literature, were adopted to measure employees’ view of the desired psychological contract. A comparison based on sectors was made to check for differences. Findings – Overall ranking of the organizational obligations, based on employee perceptions, is provided. Next, statistical analysis through t-tests exposed significant variation in seven organizational obligations. In all cases, variations could be attributed to organizational and structural differences between organizations operating within the Greek public and private sectors. Research limitations/implications – The Greek public sector particularities may limit this study’s findings’ generalization across all organizations operating within the public sector around the world. Besides, national culture may have also affected the results. Finally, the sample is a convenient one, as no relevant database was available. Practical implications – According to this study’s findings, employees working in the public and private sector have different view of the desired psychological contract. Theoretically, such a finding provides support to previous researchers’ suggestions about organizational factors’ impact on psychological contract formation. Practically, it seems that effective human resource management necessitates taking organizational factors into serious consideration. Originality/value – This paper provides information of both theoretical and practical significance with regard to employment relationships. Keywords Corporate strategy, Psychological contracts, Public sector organizations, Private sector organizations, Greece, Employees Paper type Research paper

International Journal of Public Sector Management Vol. 20 No. 7, 2007 pp. 608-621 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 0951-3558 DOI 10.1108/09513550710823515

Introduction Individuals enter exchange agreements to the extent they believe these are mutually beneficial (Blau, 1964). For example, in terms of an employment relationship, an employee may expect to get, for example, money, status, recognition, or chances to express creativity in return for hard work, consistency, commitment, or loyalty. According to Rousseau (1989), reciprocal obligations form the basis of employment relationships. Beliefs regarding employees’ obligations toward the organization and


vice versa comprise the psychological contract between the parties involved. Psychological contracts consist of unwritten agreements on direct or indirect promises given. The degree of promises’ fulfillment specifies the quality of the employment relationship (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). And why should someone care for the quality of the employment relationship formed? Simply because following the social exchange theory (Blau, 1964) and the reciprocity norm (Gouldner, 1960), not fulfilling obligations towards the other party may evoke several negative reactions. This is one of the two main reasons that psychological contracts have become very popular among organizational behavior researchers during the last decade (i.e. Bunderson, 2001; Kraymer et al., 2005; Lemire and Rouillard, 2005; Millward and Brewerton, 1999; Schein, 1965; Turnley and Feldman, 1997). These researchers have approached psychological contracts as a means not only for understanding but also for managing attitudes and behaviors within organizations. The second prominent reason for examining psychological contracts relates to understanding the currently constantly changing employment terms, in order to effectively manage employees (i.e. Dainty et al., 2004; Hiltrop, 1996; McLean Parks and Kidder, 1994; Herriot and Pemberton, 1996, 1997). In any case, since psychological contract exists in the eye of the beholder (McLean Parks and Kidder, 1994), each party’s perception of the reciprocal obligations is crucial and may be influenced by individual and organizational factors (Dainty et al., 2004; Herriot et al., 1997; Raja et al., 2004; Rousseau, 1995), even social referents (Ho, 2005). In this context, this study attempts to recognize variations in employees’ perceptions regarding organizational obligations that are determinative of their employment relationship’s quality, based on the sector within which the employing organization operates. Specifically, the study took place in Greece, where public sector’s organizational particularities create a unique, clearly distinct organizational setting, providing hence, ground for comparison. With the exception of a previous study that failed to support significant differences (Herriot et al., 1997), this is the first attempt to identify organizational obligations that constitute a desirable psychological contract. The Greek public and private sector Since 1981, when Greece entered the European Union, a lot of changes have taken place in the public sector, as certain directives – including several privatizations – had to be followed (Hiritakis and Pitelis, 1998). Some 25 years later, the Greek public sector is still an extremely complex morpheme, which functions under monopolist conditions, largely bureaucratic, with minimum concern for the quality of service delivered, and ineffective cost-control (Makrydimitris, 1991). As for employees, several deficits exist, including employee permanency, political parties’ power, lack of substantial employee evaluation, and incentive ellipse. More specifically, employee permanency ensures life-long employment, without actually taking skills or performance into consideration. Although there are rules for punishing non-disciplinary actions, there is no system to identify harmful actions or omissions and to take corrective steps (The Greek Ombudsman, 2003). Such tolerance lies mostly in two factors: (1) lack of substantial performance appraisal, which is followed by inability to ascertain deviations, even serious ones (Joumard and Mulonas, 1999); and

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(2) political parties’ influence, which “protects” followers in case of unfavorable events (Sotiropoulos, 1993; Spanou, 1999). As for the Greek private sector, it needs to be mentioned that the vast majority of organizations are small and medium sized, usually owned and managed by families. In fact, a recent study suggested that 86.17 percent of Greek organizations employ up to 49 employees whereas only 2.31 percent employ more than 250 employees (ICAP, 2006). Literature review The psychological contract Psychological contracts have been receiving increasing theoretical and empirical attention over the last 25 years. Yet, there still exists a dispute over whether forming a clear view of the exchange agreement necessitates looking into both employees’ and employer’s perspectives. For example, Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler (2000) and Guest (1998) suggest that the mutuality of the employment relationship is important for assessing involving parties’ consistency. On the contrary, others insist that due to the fact that psychological contracts are formulated and exist in individuals’ minds, it is their view of reality that counts and thus mutuality is not a requisite (Robinson et al., 1994; Rousseau, 1989). The existing literature, however, unanimously accepts that employees hold psychological contracts with their employing organization. Probably this is the reason why the vast majority of researchers are oriented towards recognizing employees perceptions of organizational obligations and the extent to which these are fulfilled (i.e. Lester et al., 2002; McLean Parks et al., 1998; Robinson et al., 1994). As far as psychological contracts’ measurement is concerned, different methods, including quantitative (Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler, 2002; Coyle-Shapiro and Neuman, 2004; Robinson and Morrison, 1995; Shore and Barksdale, 1998) and qualitative (Argyris, 1960; Herriot et al., 1997; Herriot and Pemberton, 1996; Levinson et al., 1962; Millward Purvis and Cropley, 2003) have been adopted. In both cases, distinct employer obligations constituting the psychological contract have been recognized. In terms of qualitative assessment, researchers initially utilized unstructured interviews to describe employees’ view of psychological contracts within firms (Argyris, 1960; Levinson et al., 1962). Specifically, Levinson et al. (1962) interviewed 874 employees at a large utility and identified expectations that relate to psychological issues, job performance, use of specific skills, social relations in the work place, job security, and economic rewards. More than three decades later, Herriot et al. (1997), using critical incident technique, asked employees and organizational agents to recall incidents at work where the organization went beyond or fell short of what might be reasonable to expect of it in their treatment – as the other party. Their work revealed that training, fairness, needs, consult, discretion, humanity, recognition, environment, justice, pay, benefits, and security were regarded by employees as significant employer obligations. Quantitative methods, utilizing questionnaires, despite the fact that were adopted later on (Rousseau, 1990) have become the most widespread. In particular, Rousseau (1990), after interviewing 13 human resource managers, determined seven types of organizational obligations emerging during employment that were used for measuring employees’ perception of their contract; that is advancement, high pay,


performance-based pay, training, job security, development, and support. Until now, this is the most widely accepted and incorporated – either fully or partly – approach (i.e. Coyle-Shapiro and Kessler, 2002; Coyle-Shapiro and Neuman, 2004; Gakovic and Tetrick, 2003; Robinson and Morrison, 1995; Shore and Barksdale, 1998). In the case of quantitative approaches, there are several other interesting studies, but seem to have limited spread up to now. For example, Roehling et al. (2000) conducted a content analysis of 102 scholarly and trade magazine articles published between 1995 and 1999 that relate to psychological contract and developed a list of 13 organizational obligations. Likewise, Kickul (2001) came up with 38 organizational obligations comprising the contract while Kelley-Patterson and George (2002) with 50. Such obligations include advancement opportunities within the organization, employee involvement in decision making, assistance with career management, friendly and cooperative, working environment, interesting work, honest two-way communication, work and non-work life balance, performance feedback. Having taken all these into consideration, it seems that there are two paradoxes in the psychological contract literature. First, although the employment relationship is undoubtedly complex, generic approaches for describing it have been preferred over the detailed ones. Second, with few exceptions, such as Herriot et al. (1997) – who interviewed employees – and Conway and Briner (2002) – who urged employees to keep a daily track on organization’s inconsistency through personal diaries – researchers tend to seek for employees’ assessment of contract fulfillment or potential content changes through lists of obligations that have been developed by significant others. As a result, it is likely that there are important obligations left out, less important examined and, in turn, the picture created regarding the psychological contract could be – more or less – far from reality. Believing that a better insight into the underlying aspects of the employment relationship can enhance our understanding of the employment relationship and facilitate its effective management, this study attempts to reveal employee perspectives on the desirable psychological contract. Psychological contracts within different organizational settings According to Rousseau (1995, p. 34), “A series of organizational and individual processes affect the creation of a psychological contract”. Among these organizational messages fall those sent by organizational agents, social cues, coworkers and work groups regarding routines, future plans, proposed actions, and previous actions. The interpretation of these messages, of course, depends upon individual’s inclinations and encoding and decoding of messages receives, as well. Consequently, provided that every organization is unique, different settings compose different realities for individuals. In the same context, Herriot and Pemberton (1997) supported that contracts are likely to differ across groups of individuals within organizations, across organizations, across sectors, and over time. It is, consequently, surprising that researchers seem to have almost neglected potential differences in employees’ perceptions of organizational obligations based on overall organizational characteristics. As for examining differences between the public and the private sector, there is limited previous effort, basically in the UK. Specifically, Herriot et al. (1997) expected that there would be differences between the British public and private sector due to major restructuring that the latter faced in the UK during the 1990s. However, they


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failed to support their hypotheses. The findings of Shield et al. (2002) were alike. Yet, other researches’ results are opposing. Guest and Conway (2000, 2001) as well as Willems et al. (2003) revealed that civil servants tend to have greater expectations in terms of job security, respect for personal life, and informing on organizational issues that directly or indirectly affect themselves. Given all these and considering organizational dissimilarities between the Greek public and private sector, this study also tried to look into potentially different patterns of psychological contract between individuals employed in so different organizational settings. Method Sample and procedure In Greece, existing employee databases are extremely limited and in most occasions not available to researchers. For this reason, in order to conduct a large-scale study, 1350 questionnaires were personally administered to employees, randomly chosen around Greece. A total of 1,145 participants (86.9 percent) returned fully and correctly completed questionnaires, with 398 working in the public sector (government, utilities, transportation, education, health, and finance). Those in the private sector came from organizations operating in wholesale and retail, hotels and catering, education, finance and insurance, services, manufacturing, health, transportation, and construction. In the case of the public sector, 47.2 percent were female, 71.1 percent were married, and 54.2 percent had received at least a higher education degree. Regarding age, 7.7 percent were between 18 and 24 years old, 20.7 percent between 25 and 34, 32.7 percent between 35 and 44, 35.0 percent between 45 and 54, and 3.8 percent older than 55 years. As for the private sector, 60.7 percent were female, 39.9 percent were married, and 32.5 percent had received at least a higher education degree. With regards to their age, 28.4 percent were between 18 and 24 years old, 41.5 percent between 25 and 34, 19.2 percent between 35 and 44, 9.4 percent between 45 and 54, and 1.5 percent older than 55 years. Instruments In this study, employees were asked to rate the importance of several organizational obligations, by means of a questionnaire. Given the fact that there is no consensus on how many distinct employer obligations exist, and that both of the most prominent lists (Herriot et al., 1997; Rousseau’s, 1990) are rather limited to fully describe what employees need to get from their employing organization, a new list of items was developed, based on these two and those of Kelley-Patterson and George (2002), Kickul (2001), and Roehling et al. (2000). However, some of the organizational obligations could not be included, as they did not apply to all employees (i.e. good commission scheme, tuition reimbursement, provision of travel expenses). The organizational obligations that arose numbered 40 and appear in Table I. Participants were provided with a five-point Likert scale (1 ¼ “not at all”; 5 ¼ “very much”), in order to assess the extent to which they would like their employer to fulfill each one of these obligations. Since the study took place in Greece, the questionnaire had to be translated into Greek. The list of organizational obligations was translated into Greek by independent groups of Greek citizens that were fluent in English (researchers, employees, and


Psychological contract item Timely payment of wages Healthy working environment Safe working environment Respect from supervisor Job security Respect from co-workers Non-stressful work Effort recognition by supervisor Involvement with decisions affecting self Enough resources to do the job Rewards for increased performance Open and honest communication with supervisor Equal opportunities for all Interesting job Gratitude for special contribution Supervisor support during work problems Fair supervision Life balance Clear rules and procedures Extra health care benefits Advancement opportunities Clear job description Coaching Co-worker support during work problems Open and honest communication with co-workers Autonomy to do job in one’s own way Opportunity to express grievances and concerns Take leave at a time that suits self Balance in personal life Extra pension benefit Performance-based rewards Continuous training Flexible work schedule Constant informing on corporate issues Supervisory understanding for personal problems Performance feedback Co-worker support during personal problems Supervisor support during personal problems Teamwork Participate in decision making that involve the company Opportunity for personal growth and development

Mean

Standard deviation

4.64 4.63 4.55 4.55 4.52 4.46 4.44 4.43 4.43 4.42 4.40 4.37 4.33 4.33 4.32 4.30 4.30 4.29 4.29 4.25 4.24 4.23 4.21 4.21 4.20 4.19 4.14 4.13 4.12 4.08 4.08 4.00 3.87 3.66 3.66 3.65 3.48 3.39 3.39 3.33 3.05

0.65 0.68 0.75 0.72 0.78 0.77 0.87 0.78 0.80 0.73 0.84 0.84 0.87 0.83 0.83 0.83 0.90 0.83 0.83 0.95 0.93 0.83 0.84 0.89 0.90 0.85 0.86 0.92 0.95 1.05 1.06 0.95 1.09 1.09 1.13 1.11 1.24 1.24 1.19 1.19 1.18

English language teachers). The researcher took all these into consideration and selected the terms to be used in Greek. The Greek version was then given to an official independent translator – unaware of the English one – to translate it to English. The procedure was repeated until agreement was reached. The Greek version of the questionnaire was tested on a group of 40 employees, aged between 18 and 60, working in several sectors in both public and private organizations in Greece, in order to ensure that it was fully and correctly understood.


Table I. Psychological contract items’ overall ranking

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Results The first analysis looked at the levels of importance that employees place on the organizational obligations examined. After calculating mean scores, it was found that 32 of 40 items were regarded as at least “very important” by employees. The means and standard deviations for all organizational obligations appear in descending order in Table I. Within the ten most important organizational obligations are timely payment of wages, healthy and safe working environment, respect from supervisor and co-workers, job security, non-stressful work, effort recognition by supervisor, involvement with decisions affecting self and enough resources to do the job. As evident, most relate to the work environment and the job itself, rather than the consequences of completing the job. Surprisingly, certain obligations scored rather low (i.e. balance in personal life, performance-based reward, and opportunity for personal growth and development – 28th, 30th, and 40th place respectively). Contrary to previous findings, (Martin et al., 1998), training was not regarded by employees to be among the most important organizational obligations. T-tests were used to examine variations between employees’ perceptions based on the sector. As can be seen in Table II, employees working in the public sector hold different perceptions for the ideal psychological contract than those working in the private sector. In particular, it was revealed that employees place significantly different value on seven of the 40 employer obligations examined, based on sector. Among these differences lie fair supervision, enough resources to do the job, flexible work schedule, rewards for increased performance, involvement with decisions affecting self, constant informing on corporate issues, and job security. In order to create a clearer picture view of the different employee perceptions based on sector, Table III provides a comparative ranking of organizational obligations’ with a mean value greater than four, as these were not very different for those that scored below four. As evident, the greatest difference relates to “life balance”, as it scores in the 13th higher position for employees working in the private sector but only in the 27th for those employed at the public sector. Other great differences appear in the

Organizational obligations

Sector

Mean

St.Dev.

F

Sig.

Fair supervision

Public Private Public Private Public Private Public Private Public Private Public Private Public Private

4.44 4.21 4.53 4.35 3.76 3.93 4.34 4.44 4.51 4.38 3.84 3.56 4.63 4.46

0.836 0.919 0.659 0.756 1.129 1.065 0.947 0.773 0.743 0.817 1.054 1.096 0.711 0.804

5.834

0.016

11.360

0.001

4.061

0.044

14.545

0.000

4.487

0.034

4.125

0.042

21.089

0.000

Enough resources to do the job Flexible work schedule Rewards for increased performance Table II. Differences in psychological contract items’ relative importance, based on sector

Involvement with decisions affecting self Constant informing on corporate issues Job security


Psychological contract item

All

Private

Public

Timely payment of wages Healthy working environment Safe working environment Respect from supervisor Job security Respect from co-workers Non-stressful work Effort recognition by supervisor Involvement with decisions affecting self Enough resources to do the job Rewards for increased performance Open and honest communication with supervisor Equal opportunities for all Interesting job Gratitude for special contribution Supervisor support during work problems Fair supervision Life balance Clear rules and procedures

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19

1 2 4 3 5 6 9 7 10 12 8 11 17 15 14 16 22 13 18

1 2 4 6 3 8 9 13 7 5 17 12 10 15 19 16 11 27 14

relative ranking of “fair supervision” (22nd versus 11th position for the public and private sector respectively), “rewards for increased performance” (8th versus 17th position for the public and private sector respectively) “enough resources to do the job” (12th versus 5th position for the public and private sector respectively), and equal opportunities for all (17th versus 10th position for the public and private sector respectively). Of course, there were also certain organizational obligations that were placed in the same (or roughly the same) position, including timely payment of wages, healthy working environment, safe working environment, non-stressful work, open and honest communication with supervisor, supervisor’s support during work problems, and interesting work. Discussion The findings of this study are really interesting and are of both theoretical and practical significance. Generally, as it became evident, in accordance with the employment relationships’ complexity, employees place increased importance on several organizational obligations. Among the most important organizational obligations are several “prime” ones, such as timely payment of wages, safe and healthy working environment, and enough resources to do the job and a traditional one, job security. Other than that, it seems that nowadays, individuals care for a non-stressful work, maybe due to the increased anxiety that their current job bears, and for involvement in decision affecting self, which is natural for increasingly skilled employees. In any case, such high ranking of transactional obligations may very well reflect employees’ acknowledgment of organizations’ inability to provide long-term employment in a constantly changing setting.


Table III. Differences in psychological contract items’ ranking, based on sector

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After comparing public and private sector employees’ perceptions, however, significant variations came up. In fact, the differences that were revealed are in accordance with the sectors’ characteristics. Besides, according to Rousseau and Greller (1994, p. 385), “practices used in recruiting, training, performance review and compensation all contribute to employees’ beliefs in a psychological contract with their employer”. In specific, it seems that individuals whose employing organization operates within the public sector value significantly more fair supervision, probably due to experience (direct or indirect) of unfairness. In the case of Greece, such a variation may be attributed to political parties’ interference (Sotiropoulos, 1993). These employees also seem to care more for having enough resources to do the job maybe because Greece is a developing country and thus public resources are not abundant (Nikoletzos, 2005). Involvement with decisions affecting self and constant informing on corporate issues can be ascribed to the fact that the Greek public sector is a highly bureaucratic system, in which most decisions are made in a centralized manner and, hence, individuals often have no control over them. Besides, the public sector’s size inevitably renders more time-consuming procedures – including disseminating information (Makrydimitris, 1991). Another interesting finding pertains to job security. Individuals working in the public sector value it more than those working in the private sector. Although such a finding may seem odd, as they are absolutely secure in their employment relationship, already, it may very well reflect individuals’ priorities. In Greece, the most common reason for preferring the public to the private sector is said to be the employment permanency that the former entails (Theophanidis, 2006). On the contrary, they value less rewards for increased performance just for the reason that they know that there is no connection between them (Law 3205/2003). When it comes to the private sector, however, things are quite different. These employees seem to care less for job security, probably due to the fact that they know that organizations can no longer provide long-term, let alone life-long, employment any more (Herriot et al., 1997). Fair supervision is, certainly, important but not because there are signs of deficiency, but for equity reasons (Adams, 1965) while provision of enough resources to do the job may be considered as given in a privately held organization. Under the circumstances, employees can be involved – at least to some extent – to decisions affecting self, as private organizations are definitely less bureaucratic and centralized than the public sector (at least in the case of Greece), and they are better informed for corporate issues perhaps due to smaller size. Rewards for increased performance and gratitude for special contribution appear to be more important for employees working in the private sector than those working in the public sector. Besides, it is only natural to expect privately held organizations’ reward systems to take – more or less – performance and extra-role behavior into consideration. Finally, these employees value flexible work schedule and life balance more, possibly due to the fact that their jobs are more demanding (both in terms of time and effort). In the case of those working in the Greek public sector, in most occasions there is no such thing as overtime, beyond their 37.5 working hours per week (private sector employees’ working hours per week in Greece are 40), not to mention taking work at home (Katsimi and Tsakloglou, 2000). All these differences that were revealed between individuals working in the Greek public and private sectors are in line with previous researchers’ suggestions (Herriot et al., 1997; Rousseau, 1995) about organizational characteristics impacting on the


psychological contract. It seems, thus, that detachment of organizational characteristics when examining the psychological contract provides only a partial picture of individuals’ perceptions regarding organizational obligations. Consequently, it is likely that studying organizational characteristics, such as size, and business, human resource policies and practices, organizational culture, strategies adopted and available resources may forward our understanding of psychological contracts. Of course, information on individuals’ priorities within the work setting provides organizational agents of what it takes to satisfy employees. As a result, such information can be exploited towards minimizing contract breach that stems from incongruence and subsequent negative attitudes and behaviors (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). As any study, this one has some important limitations that need to be taken into consideration when interpreting its results. First, as already mentioned, since it took place in Greece, where several particularities apply to the public sector, its findings cannot be safely generalized among employees working in the public sector around the world. Yet, it seems to be an interesting case for identifying essential differences between the public and private sector, providing ground for further research. Researchers in the future could test psychological contract synthesis and items’ relative importance first of all in different national settings and second in specific sectors within the public and private sector. Moreover, there is a chance that individual characteristics related to the national culture reflect on the findings, For example, Greeks were the most risk avoidant people among those that Hofstede (1980) examined when studying national culture differences. Given that national culture impact on employees’ perceptions of the psychological contract has not been examined up to now, further research is needed before extrapolating these findings across employees around the world. The questionnaires were randomly personally administered to employees around Greece, as no employee database is available in Greece. Even though this was a convenient sample, this was the only way for conducting a study of this scale. Besides, the sample for many studies conducted on psychological contract used MBA students or graduates (i.e. Edwards et al., 2003; Rousseau, 1990; Robinson et al., 1994; Robinson and Morrison, 1995; Robinson et al., 1994; Shore and Barksdale, 1998). Nevertheless, it is believed that these limitations are counterbalanced by the strengths of the study. Taking for granted that psychological contracts are important for understanding organizational behavior and changes in the employment relationship and that a clearer picture of the content itself is necessary, this study looked into the relative importance that employees place on several organizational obligations and the differences that exist between employees’ perceptions, based on the sector their organization operates within.

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Further reading Kotter, J.P. (1973), “The psychological contract”, California Management Review, Vol. 15, pp. 91-9. Robinson, S.L. (1996), “Trust and breach of the psychological contract”, Administrative Science Quarterly, Vol. 41, pp. 574-99.

Shore, L.M. and Tetrick, L.E. (1994), “The psychological contract as an explanatory framework in the employment relationship”, in Cooper, C.L. and Rousseau, D.M. (Eds), Trends in Organizational Behavior, Wiley, New York, NY, pp. 91-109. Turnley, W.H. and Feldman, D.C. (1999), “A discrepancy model of psychological contract violations”, Human Resource Management Review, Vol. 9, pp. 367-86. Turnley, W.H. and Feldman, D.C. (2000), “Re-examining the effects of psychological contract violations: unmet expectations and job dissatisfaction as mediators”, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Vol. 21, pp. 25-42.


Corresponding author Victoria Bellou can be contacted at: [email protected]

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