Organisational support and job satisfaction as moderators on the relationship between psychological contract breach and work engagement.

Abstract

The objectives of this study were focussed on exploring the relationship between the individual constructs psychological contract breach (PCB), job satisfaction, organisational support and that of work engagement to add to previous literature. The relationship between PCB and work engagement has been previously researched and two different views are held. One that believes there is no direct relationship between PCB and work engagement, and one that believes there is a direct relationship. These different views confirm the complexity of the relationship that exist between PCB and work engagement. To explore this complex relationship we introduced two moderators to ascertain their moderating effect individually on the relationship between PCB and work engagement. The benefits to organisations and employees when work engagement levels are high have been researched and confirmed. An online survey specifically addressing the research objectives was sent out to members of a service organisation who are employed at different organisations across various industries within South Africa. A total of 1029 responses were analysed, using simple linear regression models to determine the relationship between psychological contract breach, job satisfaction and organisational support individually and work engagement and multi variable regression models were used to determine the moderating effect that job satisfaction and organisational support has as moderators on the relationship between psychological contract breach and work engagement. For the sample population, it was determined that this study support the view that there is a significant direct relationship between PCB breach and work engagement as well as between job satisfaction and work engagement and organisational support and work engagement. It was determined that job satisfaction has a moderating effect on the relationship that exist between psychological contract breach and work engagement and that organisational support does not have a moderating effect on the relationship.