Psychological Contracts of Proactive Public Service Employees

Abstract

We examined the impact of proactive personality on the fulfillment of psychological contracts in a large governmental organization in Belgium. In an on-line survey 216 employees filled out the Proactive Personality Scale (Bateman & Crant, 1993) and responded to a list of employee promises. Through t-tests for independent samples, we explored what constituted psychological contracts of least vs. most proactive public service employees. Regression analysis tested the predictive power of proactive personality on fulfillment of the psychological contract, while controlling for gender, tenure, and educational level. Our key findings indicated that employee's proactive personality linked to own proactive behaviors in psychological contracting. The implications of findings were discussed in view of contemporary needs of public services and of employeepublic employer relationships.