The effects of change in political leadership on the psychological contract in the metropolitan municipality

Abstract

City of Johannesburg (CoJ) has undergone a political leadership change in the past year. The study aimed to understand the level of authentic leadership and psychological contract, their relationship, and the influence of job embeddedness on these relationships at CoJ as perceived by employees. To conduct this investigation, a cross-sectional, descriptive, quantitative research was employed. Of the 501 sample targeted, there were 110 responses of which 93 were utilised for the final data analysis after data preparation. The analysis was conducted using IBM. SPSS version 24 of which there were five key principal findings: Setting-based number of authentic leadership dimensions; indifferent views on the level of authentic leadership; transitional psychological contract not evident; the significant relationship between authentic leadership and relational psychological contract; and how job embeddedness moderate the relationship between authentic leadership and relational psychological contract. Based on these findings, the study concluded that employees perceive low authentic leadership on the new administration, high level of authentic leadership should lead to a relational psychological contract and that job embeddedness moderates the relationship between authentic leadership and psychological contract. These findings should be viewed within the context of the limitation of the study, which was: There was small sample size in the study; not all targeted entities could be reached to be included in the investigation, and some of those that were reached had challenges with IT restrictions into the survey platform. Based on the conclusion of the study, the key recommendation of management for CoJ were continuous ALQ self-assessment, Johari window, management of the psychological contract. For academia were to conduct the study with face-to-face interviews (qualitative studies) to get an in-depth knowledge of authentic leadership and psychological contract, and the drivers of the current state at CoJ. Furthermore, it is recommended that a comparative study is conducted across South African metropolitans comparing the three scenarios to ascertain the influence and magnitude of change on authentic leadership, psychological contract for same political leadership, different political leadership with same policy (same party) and different political leadership with different strategy (different party).