Does Psychological Contract Breach Decrease Proactive Behaviors? The Moderating Effect of Emotion Regulation

Abstract

In a set of two studies, based on employees from two countries, we examined how emotion regulation moderates the relationship between psychological contract breach and (a) feelings of violation and (b) proactive behaviors (knowledge sharing and taking charge). We found that cognitive change buffers the negative effect of breach on feelings of violation and knowledge sharing (Study 1, United States). We replicate this result using taking charge as an outcome. In addition, we demonstrate that using high levels of attentional deployment as an emotion regulation strategy accentuates the negative effect of both social and generative breach on employees’ taking charge (Study 2, the Netherlands). Based on our results, we call for additional research on how emotion regulation modifies the relationship between psychological contract breach and work outcomes.