This study set out to show that one of the outcomes of demand management is to rob organisations of their ability to keep their side of the psychological contract. The argument used here is that employment relationships are ultimately exchange relationships with expectations that a favour must be followed by a favour if the relationship is to continue (Gouldner, 1960). The study has found examples of the failure of organisations to keep their side of the contract particularly with regards to the living wage. The impression that this is the only problem is contradicted by other examples such as those provided by the two case studies as well as others that we collected but have not reported here1.
These examples and those provided by the teaching profession (such as a graduate urban teacher who lives in a garage and pays for it by offering free coaching to the children of the landlady) are illustrative of organisations stretched to the limit and people who work under experiences that few imagine until they are physically confronted with them. What the nursing officer who has to sell off the drug kits she should be distributing demonstrates, is that the service has deteriorated so much that it is hardly in position to utilise donor help.1 We suggest that these and similar experiences lead employees to evaluate the psychological contract as broken and therefore feeling no obligation to discharge their own part of the contract.
The data gathered here have provided other instances that stretch workers to their limit. The kinship load carried by most of our respondents is out of proportion to their income. This is a fact that is well known but whose consequences organisational makers have paid no attention to. However as the zero order correlations show (see Table 7) kinship responsibility is a significant determinant of the workers' intentions to exit the organisations they work for.
According to the argument we try to advance in this study, part of the expectations our respondents bring to their organisation is that somehow they will be able to take care of their kin if they work for a particular organisation. This expectation is part of the psychological contract they make with the organisation. When they find that this expectation cannot be fulfilled,they consider the contract violated and plan to leave. Whether or not they actually leave or when they do is not the issue. The theory we have proposed suggested that damage to the goals of the organisations begins at the moment of deciding to leave, for it is at this moment that the disgruntled become destructive either actively such as embezzling funds or passively by neglecting their duties or working to rule. Doctors 'cutting' ward rounds, nurses displaying non- professional bedside manners, teachers and schools participating in examination malpractices or forcing parents to have their children couched are examples of destructive behaviour that this study has gathered.
The size of the failure of organisations keeping their side of the psychological contract can be deduced, albeit indirectly, from Table 1. It can be noted that 60% have not worked for more than seven years in their organisations and approximately 45 % have worked for only 4 years or below. If our sample is a good approximation of the working population in these two services, then the turnover rate is disproportionately high. It suggests that there is a steady stream of professionals continuously leaving their organisations or their professions. Apart from depriving the profession or organisations of experienced individuals, it also means that the destruction that accompanies the process of exiting and/or neglecting we have discussed, is also high. In Ugandan organisations, this is witnessed by moonlighting which has become a fact we have come to accept in Uganda, and indeed which has been at one stage recommended by no less than the Vice President (who was then the Prime Minister) who openly encouraged Ugandans to have more than one job. In this work we consider that holding more than one full-time job is a process of exiting or neglecting the organisation and is destructive. We also consider it as a failure in keeping the psychological contract which would ultimately lead to the eventual break-up of the relationship.
When we turn to the psychological indicators used in the study we confirm what the more objective data are telling us about the state of our organisations and that of the psychological contracts therein. We hypothesized that there would be a positive relationship between the psychological contract and discretionary cooperation or organisational citizenship behaviour. This hypothesis was supported as Table 7 indicates. In this table the psychological contract is significantly related to the conscientiousness aspect of discretionary cooperation. This means that those who positively evaluate the state of the psychological contract they made with their organisations are also those who are positively rated by their supervisors as more conscientious.
Psychologically meaningful, and statistically significant findings are also found with regards to the altruism aspect of discretionary cooperation. The first is the positive relation between tenure and altruism. This means that those professionals who have stayed longer with their organisations were also those who were rated relatively more positively by their supervisors on helping behaviour (altruism). This is not surprising. Theoretically, if people who find their psychological contracts violated by their organisations exit and seek for other opportunities, then from among those who stay, you are likely to find those prepared to cooperate with the organisation in fulfilling its objectives as well as their personal altruistic tendencies. Such people should be evaluated positively by their superiors.
The second psychologically meaningful finding is the positive relationship between distributive justice and altruism. Distributive justice has a certain obviousness which suggests that it is a significant component of the psychological contract. More than any of the other two components, viz trust and need satisfaction, it taps directly how one feels about what he/she gets in relation to significant others. If people feel that the distribution of rewards are proportionate, then they are more likely to accept what they get even if it may not be what they expect. Professionals in the services we have surveyed have been hardest hit as the data from interviews indicate. For the skilled and educated professionals, the issue of justice of distribution must rank relatively high in the way the psychological contract is evaluated. A medical doctor with a specialisation and working in Mulago knows that when his/her professional and other allowances are added up he/she takes home a pay packet that, at best, is only equivalent to that of a junior staff or a group employee in parastatal organisations such as Foods and Beverages. The importance of the justice in distribution is also observed with regards to conscientiousness. Here again it was found to be significant and positively related to the rating that supervisors awarded to the respondents.
An important finding with a significant statistical and psychological significance is found in Table 8. Here we indicated that when groups were compared on altruism, urban health workers were rated worst of all. Since the largest number making up this group were nurses, we may say that this statistic genuinely reflects the notorious bedside manner of the nursing staff in all government and non-government hospitals. Probably reflecting the general state of neglect of both services, there was no group differences on the measure of the psychological contract.
The other relationships concerning psychological indicators of interest to this study and depicted in Table 7 above, are those between organisational commitment, job satisfaction, intention to exit and the psychological contract. The last three columns show that relationships are in the predicted direction. Intention to exit is related to most of the variables in the table. We have already discussed its relationship with kinship responsibility. We can also note a similar relationship with education. Those who are more educated are those with the strongest wish to exit their organisations. This was also expected because of the anomaly in the institutional environment of the labour market we discussed above. The anomaly is the discrepancy between education/skill and wage income. That is, owing to the preferred policy of a protected minimum wage and unprotected maximum wage, the reality has been that the more educated and skilled you are, the less you are paid in proportion to the less educated, less skilled employee. The consequence of this policy was observed in a study that compared university graduate teachers with grade 2 and grade 3 teachers (Munene, 1992a). The latter scored highest on discretionary conscientiousness, altruism, psychological contract, commitment and job satisfaction. The two less educated groups (grade 2 and grade 3) of teachers were also highly praised by the Ministry of Education officials for being the only groups that have maintained professionalism in the service.
