Review of the cognitive flexibility level of the public servants in terms of their psychological contract roles a field research: Courthouse of Bakırkoy / İstanbul

Finding answers to the questions pertaining to life such as making predictions, taking decisions and solving problems require mental / intellectual activities. The mental activities displayed by an individual e.g to think, to perceive, to comprehend, to recognize the changes in the conditions of the environment and to adjust to them, to overcome instant issues, to regulate and to structure the conditions which the psychological science conceptualize as cognition, are called cognitive flexibility. Before and after getting a job, individuals form a certain cognitive process in their minds related to the job's requirements and the responsibilities which are normally not accounted for by the formal, legalistic employment contract. Such perceptional contracts which affect the work life are called Psychological Contracts. Review of the literature has shown that no such research was directed towards the relation between the Cognitive Flexibility Level and the Psychological Contract of the employees as of date. The present paper aims the research of Cognitive Flexibility Level of the public servants in terms of their Psychological Contract Roles The research was carried out at the Bakırköy Courthouse under the Republic of Turkey Ministry of Justice with the participation of 299 public servants comprising chief clerks, court clerks, janitors, court criers, debt enforcement clerks employed at courts, prosecution offices and debt enforcement offices between 2016 and 2017. In order to measure the Cognitive Flexibility levels, The Cognitive Flexibility Inventory (CFI) developed by Dennis JP and Vander Wal JS (2010) which was adapted to Turkish by Volkan Gülüm and İhsan Dağ (2012) under the title Bilişsel Esneklik Envanteri (BEE) has been used as the Dependent Variable.. And for measuring the roles of psychological contracts, the Psychological Contract developed by Millward, L.J. & Hopkins, L.J. (1998), the reliability and the validity of which was made by N. Öykü İyigün and Canan Çetin (2012) was used as the Independent Variable of the research. The demographical data of the public servants were generated by the researcher with the use of Personal Data Questionnaire. Furthermore regression technique and Mann Whitney, Kruskal Wallis tests and Spearman correlation tests were drawn upon for the analysis of the research. Findings have shown that, the Psychological Contract Roles of the public servants have positive impact on their Cognitive Flexibility levels. Findings have also shown that the public servants who have participated in the research can display high alternative solutions perception skills which enable them to solve the problems which may arise in the organization. Furthermore it has appeared that the participants' Relational Contract perception level which is a sub dimension of Psychological Contract, is higher than those of Job Dissatisfaction and Transactional Contract.. Consequently, it can be said that the public servants do care about the organization they work for and the people they are in contact with. Keywords: Cognitive flexibility, psychological contract, public servants