Is the psychological contract worth taking seriously?

Although the psychological contract has become the focus for a body of research, it retains a number of conceptual and empirical problems and challenges. This paper reviews some of the main problems associated with the construct and with the way in which it has been studied. It also considers critically the ‘problem’ of the psychological contract, namely that organizations are either no longer able to promise the traditional organizational career and job security or they violate their promises, and suggests that the novelty of this problem has been overstated. Finally, it sets out a case for retaining the psychological contract as a focus for policy and research and presents an embryonic theory built around the causes, content and consequences of the psychological contract which implies a rather different research agenda to that which has dominated the debates so far. Copyright © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.