Individuals' inducements and the role of personality: implications for psychological contracts

The purpose of this paper is to explore and identify relationships between psychological contract inducements and the five‐factor model of personality (FFM) in Greece.

A survey questionnaire that incorporated measures of intrinsic and extrinsic psychological contract inducements and a Greek personality measure of the FFM was completed by 299 respondents. Hierarchical regression analyses were used to explore the hypotheses.

The paper finds that extroversion and conscientiousness are associated with intrinsic but not extrinsic psychological contract inducements and that neuroticism is associated with extrinsic but not intrinsic inducements. The hypothesis pertaining to openness to experience was rejected, because it was not associated with intrinsic psychological contract inducements, as expected.

The study design was cross‐sectional and used only self‐report measures. Therefore, it should be cross‐validated with different research designs (e.g. longitudinal research) and in other countries.

The findings provide further support on the significance of personality measures for the selection, development and motivation of employees.

The most significant contribution of the study is that it explores the relationship between personality and psychological contract inducements rather than psychological contract types. Another contributing factor is that the study is carried out in Greece.