IWS Documented News INTERNATIONAL

IWS Documented News Service

_______________________________

Institute for Workplace Studies----------------- Professor Samuel B. Bacharach

School of Industrial & Labor Relations-------- Director, Institute for Workplace Studies

Cornell University

16 East 34th Street, 4th floor---------------------- Stuart Basefsky

New York, NY 10016 -------------------------------Director, IWS News Bureau

________________________________________________________________________

Oregon Law Review, Vol. 90, Issue 2

Justice, Employment, and the Psychological Contract

By Larry A. DiMatteo, Robert C. Bird, and Jason A. Colquitt

90 OR. L. REV. 449

http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/volumes/90/2/DiMatteo.php

or

http://law.uoregon.edu/org/olr/volumes/90/2/docs/DiMatteo.pdf

[full-text, 76 pages]

The United States has some of the most relaxed employment protections in the world. The American employment regime is centered on the long-standing employment-at-will doctrine, which allows employers to discharge employees at any time and for any reason. No notice is required. Even absurd rationales, such as left- handedness, are permissible grounds for discharge. Although a number of exceptions exist, the core principle enabling broad freedom to discharge remains firmly intact. All fifty states adhere to the employment-at-will principle in some form, and exhortations to overthrow the regime altogether have been unsuccessful. Voluminous scholarship exists evaluating the propriety and effectiveness of the employment-at-will doctrine. The doctrine has produced a deep secondary literature displaying a full spectrum of arguments and theories ranging from those advocating a complete overthrow of the doctrine to others advocating strict enforcement without exception.

While employers can, and regularly do, terminate workers without cause, notice, or reason, that does not necessarily mean that such legal discharges occur without a price. Employees do not leave without complaint, nor do they pursue redress only when the law stands in their favor. Rather, the attitudes of employees toward discharge, and their reactions to being discharged, originate from a complex set of beliefs and attitudes that do not necessarily conform to legal rules. Frivolous litigation, negative publicity, low morale, and increased stress can all arise from the retaliatory actions of discharged employees with a resultant decrease in productivity in the existing work force.

Instead of merely speculating on this point, in this Article we report the results of an empirical survey aimed at measuring the reactions of individuals to various employment discharge scenarios. The results of this survey offer striking insights into the workers’ perceptions of discharge under a variety of foreseeable conditions.

CONTENTS

Introduction ...................................................................................... 450

I. The Evolving Law of Employment Discharge ...................... 455

II. The Employment Relationship and the Psychological Contract ....................................... 459

A. The Psychological Contract Construct ........................... 461

III. The Employee Perception Survey: Design, Methodology, and Findings ............................ 465

IV. Norms in Contract Law and Employment Relationships ...... 477

A. Norms and Contract Law ............................................... 477

B. Relational Contract Norms and the Psychological Contract ..................................... 479

C. Analyzing the Psychological Contract as a Two-Way Exchange ................................... 481

D. Norms and Perceptions of Injustice ............................... 485

V. Knowledge, Perceptions, and Expectations ........................... 487

A. Employees’ Perceptions of Employment Law and Employer Fairness ....................... 487

B. Employer Perceptions: Internal-External Employment Contracts ........................... 492

C. Perceptions, Expectations, and Best Practices ............... 494

________________________________________________________________________

This information is provided to subscribers, friends, faculty, students and alumni of the School of Industrial & Labor Relations (ILR). It is a service of the Institute for Workplace Studies (IWS) in New York City. Stuart Basefsky is responsible for the selection of the contents which is intended to keep researchers, companies, workers, and governments aware of the latest information related to ILR disciplines as it becomes available for the purposes of research, understanding and debate. The content does not reflect the opinions or positions of Cornell University, the School of Industrial & Labor Relations, or that of Mr. Basefsky and should not be construed as such. The service is unique in that it provides the original source documentation, via links, behind the news and research of the day. Use of the information provided is unrestricted. However, it is requested that users acknowledge that the information was found via the IWS Documented News Service.