Differential perceptions of employers' inducements: implications for psychological contracts

This paper reports findings from an exploratory study that addresses the qu estion of whether or not measures of perceptual 'gaps' in organizational in ducements contribute unique explanatory power above and beyond such familia r measures as employee job attitudes. Perceptions of inducements were obtai ned from both employees and representatives of their organizations. An aver age of IZ executives responded for each of four organizations to provide th e organizations' view of the inducements offered to their employees, and a total of 339 employees across the four organizations reported their views o f the inducements in the respective organizations. It was found that the la rger the gap between what the employees viewed as the inducements offered t hem and what their employers reported offering them the lower was the emplo yees' satisfaction with their organization, even after controlling for empl oyee job satisfaction and employee performance. This finding, as well as th e finding that in a substantial number of cases the employees report greate r amounts of inducements than do their organizations' representatives, was explored for its implications for research on psychological contracts. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.