The company - client relationship and the retention of staff in the IT consulting industry : a psychological contract perspective

Abstract

This paper will show the similarities in the overall perspective of the Polysem-ployee’s psychological contract with both their employing organisation and their client organisations, although in favour of the employing organisation. Over 100 IT employees active in client engagements from project implementations to support and outsourcing of varying periods of time were surveyed with a cross-sectional questionnaire to identify differences in psychological contracts and attitudes towards their client and employing organisations. We found that there were very few differences in the way the psychological contract is perceived from the perspective of the employee in the triangular relationship although marginally in favour of the employing organisation. Additionally we found that there was a significant relationship between the tenure with the employing organisation and tenure with the client organisation and that there were further indications that this was linked to an issue of life stage. We also conclude that generally the psychological contract of Polysem-ployee’s in the IT industry can be considered flexible or unstable, broad in scope, tangible and more relational in nature. The findings have implications for HR management practices of IT consultancies and outsourcing organisations operating in environments with unacceptably high rates of turnover.