Multiple obligations: distinguishing the dimensionality and confirming the role of ideology within the psychological contract framework

I seek to further understand and empirically test the role of ideology, orcommitment to an espoused cause, as part of a multidimensional psychological contractamong employees in organizational settings. I present and provide a preliminaryvalidation of a measure of ideological contracts and propose a model that suggestsemployees develop perceived obligations with their employers based on economic,social, and ideological reasons. Different behaviors are likely to be expected based onthe obligation types that are most significant to the employees. Specifically, my modelsuggests obligations stemming from the espousal of a cause may elicit positive employeecontributions toward organizational goals. Further, I posit that employees may seek tobenefit distinct individuals and/or entities within the organization based on theirpsychological contract form. Cross-sectional data from four distinct samples providedstrong support for the idea that transactional, relational, and ideological components ofthe psychological contract are distinct, and preliminary support that such components arepredictive of specific individual-level outcomes.