Middle Managers and the Employee Psychological Contract: Agency, Protection and Advancement

This paper investigates the construction and enactment of the employee psychological contract by a sample of middle‐level line and personnel managers responsible for introducing job change in the air traffic control sector. We show how middle managers' concerns with fulfilling their own contractual commitments to senior management are perceived to conflict with meeting obligations to subordinates under the employment agreement. Thus, we illustrate our main argument that middle managers who are exposed to more exacting performance demands and controls do not simply subordinate employee concerns to their own interests. They seek to disguise the presence and outcomes of employee disaffection and to manipulate the impressions of senior management. We conclude that far from increasing individual accountability at middle levels such stringent controls may yield interpersonal rivalry, lower standards of employee treatment and the subversion of corporate aims.