Managing the Psychological Contract

This is the first book which shows how the psychological contract can be used in practice. Michael Wellin reinterprets the psychological contract as something very tangible that exists between people at work and indicates how it can be used to increase business performance, improve employee commitment, and enable employees to realise their potential. The author redefines the psychological contract as the 'personal deal', which focuses particularly on the relationship between leaders and their people. After exploring how the personal deal operates in a number of well known organisations, he shows how his approach can be readily used to understand and respond to the changing needs of individual employees, organisations, and the external business environment. This is followed by a section that provides approaches which can be used to enhance personal deals to develop leadership effectiveness and implement organisational and cultural change. Drawing on examples from diverse companies, the author shows how the personal deal can be used in practice as a powerful method for bringing about change. The final section includes a variety of innovative tools that can be used to reshape psychological contracts at work. Throughout the book, Michael Wellin combines the latest organisation behaviour research findings, including those on the psychological contract, with his own and colleagues' experiences, to provide an important and extremely readable book for human resource specialists and all those concerned with the performance of their organisation and its people.