Psychological contract at hotel establishments and its effects on work related attitudes of hotel employees: A research at 5-star hotels in Antalya

Psychological contract involves the employees' beliefs which are unwritten in work contracts, hidden and unspoken. Understanding the notion of psychological contract with all aspects is important for both identifying the components which are leading employees to positive attitudes and developing a balanced and coherent relationship between employee and the employer. Althought psychological contract has been used in organizational studies since 1980's, it has been neglected in the studies in tourism area and there is few researches aiming to define the tourism employees' psychological contracts. In this thesis it is aimed to identify the expectations and obligations which constitudes the psychological contracts of hotel employees and to find out the effects of psychological contract perceptions on employees' attitudes such as job satisfaction, affective commitment, job burnout and intention to leave. Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to collect data for this study. First a face to face interview with hotel employees was conducted to explore the components of hotel workers' psychological contracts. Second, based on the collected data from interviews, an attitude scale was developed for the purpose of measuring employees' psychological contract perceptions. And after that a questionnaire survey was conducted on 440 employees working at different 5-star hotels in Antalya. The results indicate that expectations and obligations in psychological contracts of hotel employees' have not been met by their employer, and employees' psychological contract perceptions have important effects on their work related attitudes. This study provides important findings on psychological contracts in employment relationships and the attitudes of employees in tourism industry so that it can be benefited by the sector managers for guidance on determining especially human resources policies. Keywords: Psychological contract, job satisfaction, affective commitment, burnout, intention to leave.