Date of Award

Summer 5-15-2019

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Department

Managerial Sciences

First Advisor

Lisa Schurer Lambert

Abstract

Psychological contract literature has found that employees typically react with anger when faced with breach of their contracts (Robinson & Rousseau, 1994). However, the supervisor’s emotional reactions to evaluations of psychological contracts should also be examined because of the supervisor’s key role in overall employee performance evaluations (Ferris, Munyon, Basik, & Buckley, 2008). It is important to understand the complete process that supervisors undertake, which is likely not just a cognitive one as implied by psychological contracts and performance management literature. In this empirical essay, I use emotions and affect events theories as the foundations of supervisors’ emotional reactions to comparing the promised and delivered contributions from their employees. I then build on power-dependence theory to hypothesize about how these emotional reactions are influenced by the supervisor’s dependence on the employee’s contributions. I focus on a variety of emotions – satisfaction, pride in employees, gratitude, anger, disappointment, and jealousy as mediators and neglect and mentoring as employee-targeted outcomes. I aim to show that, because of their dependence on employees’ delivery of contributions and emotion regulation abilities, supervisors experience a variety of emotions – positive and negative – that lead to positive and negative employee-targeted outcomes.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.57709/14613724

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