Employee

Relations Management enforced job

19,3 change and employee
perceptions of the
222
psychological contract
Jerry Hallier
Department of Management and Organization, University of Stirling,
Stirling, Scotland, and
Philip James
Civil Aviation Authority, London, UK

Employee Relations,
Vol. 19 No. 3, 1997, pp. 222-247.
© MCB University Press, 0142-5455
Introduction
Traditionally, the power of professional occupations has derived from their
ability to regulate their skills, control entry to their ranks and exercise discipline
over members (Glover and Hughes, 1996). However, in the wake of increased
competition, deregulation and initiatives to transform the public services,
professionals are now exposed to more and more managers and organizational
controls with the aim of reducing their status and autonomy. However, while the
emergence of these assaults on professional discretion is not disputed, it is less
clear whether they constitute a general expansion of management control. In
the public sector, for example, evidence of resistance to these management
initiatives are found to co-exist with points of integration and accommodation
between managers and professionals (Kirkpatrick et al., 1996). Considerable
variation between organizational contexts and even between sub-groups within
the same profession add to the complexity underlying these changes. Where a
profession successfully captures management territory, for example, not all
levels of a professional grouping will necessarily benefit. Senior members’
conditions and opportunities may often improve while those of junior levels
decline (Ackroyd, 1994). Different motives and available resources, therefore,
mediate the professional group’s capacity to resist or accommodate
management imperatives and ideological claims.
Out of these jurisdictional disputes, novel alliances and opportunities to
pursue status and control, new forms of relationship may also be created.
Important echoes of these evolving work arrangements are particularly
apparent in the radical changes taking place to the traditional employment
relationship. Here, operational tensions existing between managerial and
professional groupings may be amplified by the transition from contractual
arrangements formed to sustain middle-class employment relationships in an
earlier era to those now favoured to support preferred organizational strategies.
Thus, while employers have become increasingly preoccupied with promoting
notions like employee commitment, empowerment and the learning The
organization (Storey, 1995), at the same time restructuring has weakened the psychological
traditional job security and career benefits of many white-collar, professional contract
and managerial workers (Hendry and Jenkins, 1997; Institute of Management,
1993). In this shifting occupational landscape the psychological contract is
central to understanding employee responses to these changes to the
employment relationship. Defined as beliefs about reciprocal and promised 223
obligations, psychological contracts provide one of the main supports by which
the employer-employee relationship is regulated (Rousseau and Parks, 1993).
Although the investigation of psychological contracts represents a recent
research focus, initial findings indicate that employers frequently break their
promises to employees. Herriot and Pemberton (1995), for example, found that
many middle managers have become disenchanted by the recent decline in their
security, career opportunities and the equity of their rewards. Similarly,
Robinson and Rousseau (1994) have shown that employers often unilaterally
breach the psychological contracts of business graduates during the early years
of employment. Outcomes of such violations to contractual terms include
reduced trust, job satisfaction and commitment to remaining with the
organization, and the withdrawal of some types of employee obligation (Hallier
and Lyon, 1996; Manning, 1992; Robinson, 1994).
Research, therefore, has begun to highlight the general salience of employee
perceptions of contractual obligations and some of the outcomes of employer
violations on the employment agreement. Less evident, however, have been
organizational case studies which examine how the status and content of the
psychological contract are perceived to alter or endure as groups of employees
experience different aspects of change to their roles and conditions throughout
a major job-change exercise. Accordingly, the purpose of this article, is to
examine the significance given to the contractual relationship by employees
undergoing management enforced job change. In particular, we assess the
importance attached to contractual issues by professional employees whose
roles have remained unchanged for many years but who now face the
imposition of a major work transition. Given their stable histories, it is
conceivable that such workers might encounter considerable difficulties in
interpreting the contractual impact of job change (Sparrow, 1996). Indeed, while
role change may be broadly similar among all the employees affected, it is not
improbable that particular facets of management’s behaviour may become
personally salient and thus engender different contractual meanings.
Relatedly, then, we also consider questions about how employees interpret
and treat separate instances of management violation. Do employees, for
example, compartmentalize individual transgressions or do they become
integrated into an overall but continually shifting construction of the
employment agreement? This question is especially pertinent where
restructuring gives rise to mass job changes which require considerable time
for preparation and implementation. Both planning and encounter periods may
be critical, not only for the recognition and evaluation of management
Employee violations, but also for the possible healing of breaches as over time employees
Relations accommodate their new role and setting. Thus, we also consider whether or not
19,3 employees tend to distinguish violations seen to damage the employment
relationship from those believed to shatter its integrity.
We attempt to answer these questions by examining employee perceptions of
the psychological contract before and during enforced work-role transition. To
224 begin, we consider the relationship between relational contracts and employer-
imposed job change. We then argue that Louis’ (1980a and b) theory of
transition sensemaking offers a useful framework for assessing the importance
of the psychological contract to the way employees experience the prospect and
actuality of involuntary job change. Thereafter, these assumptions are used to
examine the contractual perceptions of a sample of employees experiencing
different types of job change in an air traffic control company referred to here as
ATC.

Relational contracts and work-role transition

MacNeil (1985) proposed the existence of two types of psychological contract
which underpin different forms of employment relationship. Transactional
contracts refer to specific, often monetizable exchanges (e.g. pay for particular
skills) which serve short-term employer needs. Transactional contracts,
therefore, are typified by temporary and subcontractor employment (Rousseau,
1990). In contrast, relational contracts are characterized by open-ended, more
generalized agreements which seek to create and sustain a long-term
relationship involving both monetizable and non-monetizable exchanges (e.g.
hard work, security, commitment). Under this form of contract employees are
encouraged to believe that they will be employed over the long term and
provided with training and career opportunities.
So far there have been few empirical investigations of how employees
perceive changes to their long-term agreements. Nevertheless, by drawing on
the conceptual work on psychological contracts by Rousseau (1995), it is
possible to discern a number of putative features of relational agreements
which render them prone to violation from organizationally-imposed job
change. Crucial among these is the tendency for employees to come to believe in
the stability of their obligations. Thus, while both parties’ mutual obligations
are assumed to evolve and alter over time, employees with long-standing
agreements come to expect fewer changes to their contractual responsibilities.
With the passage of time more socio-emotional and personalized obligations are
also incorporated into the agreement. In part, the tendency for the contract to be
perceived as enduring and immutable, therefore, stems from the employee’s
inclusion of more and more relational employer obligations such as loyalty,
consideration, support and fairness. For the employee, acceptable change to
contractual terms requires that the employer honour these relational obligations
by emphasizing negotiation, mutual consent and reciprocity.
Given that employees expect the contract to become more dependable over
time, it is tempting to conclude that organizationally-imposed job change will
inevitably violate their conception of the employment agreement. While The
employers may favour honouring the contract, as Rousseau and Parks suggest, psychological
in practice employers’ commitment to fulfilling their obligations to employees is contract
usually subordinate to achieving short-term organizational goals (Herriot and
Pemberton, 1997; Rajan, 1997). Forster (1991), for example, found that
employer-initiated job changes are commonly managed with little warning or
support provided to the employees affected. Personnel managers appeared to 225
recognize the need to meet their obligations to redeployed staff but still placed
most emphasis on the demands of rationalization, filling vacant posts and
succession planning.
Since organizational concerns will be awarded highest priority, imposed job
change is likely to increase employer non-compliance. The significance of
changes to the employment agreement, however, may not always be readily
apparent. Where complex job changes are faced the employee’s need to
interpret their meaning may prevent immediate or certain recognition of a
violation (Louis, 1980a). Rousseau and Parks (1993), for example, have drawn
attention to the ambiguous and fragmented character of the relational
agreement. This is particularly the case where multiple contract parties are
involved (e.g. old and new bosses, personnel staff, senior managers). In this
sense, where numerous managers are engaged in co-ordinating job change, the
employees affected may need to evaluate not only the significance to attach to
substantive breaches, but also the power and status of the various contract
parties within the process. Such assessments may also involve considering
whether middle managers are acting as full contract parties or merely as the
agents of senior management. In reality, determining who has altered the
agreement may be as salient to the individual’s explanation as the substance of
the change.
Similarly, the highly subjective and idiosyncratic nature of the perceptions
which comprise the relational agreement makes any change subject to personal
interpretation. Employees can be expected to display variation in what is
perceived and understood, even where they encounter collective job transitions
which are broadly similar. In particular, Rousseau and Parks (1993) have argued
that employer breaches will not necessarily result in felt violation where an
alternative but equally valued obligation is offered. As with other aspects of the
change, what constitutes equal value will vary according to the individual’s
personal circumstances, style, equity sensitivity and self-efficacy. Overall, as the
employee’s experience of the transition develops, both procedural and
distributive aspects of the change may require scrutiny against the established
agreement (McFarlin and Sweeney, 1992).
However, while the need to interpret any deviations from what the parties
have agreed is thus recognized, some imprecise use of descriptive terms
nevertheless is detectable in the existing literature. The words “breach” and
“violation” in particular tend to be used interchangeably to signify any failure
to meet contractual obligations (Rousseau and Parks, 1993). Such failures are
believed to give rise to feelings of wrongdoing, deception and betrayal which
Employee damage the contractual relationship. Yet, as Rousseau and Parks (1993)
Relations acknowledge, not all breaches will erode the relationship. Instead it is
19,3 conceivable that recognition of a breach may be distinct from the meaning
applied by the injured party. It is, therefore, more appropriate to refer to the
individual’s recognition of the other party’s non-compliance as a contractual
breach. In turn, the individual’s response to the breach may encompass
226 anything from an acceptance of the change in obligations to an acute sense of
violation. Violation conceived this way thus refers to a class of perceptions
which reflect the individual’s sense of grievance over the impairment of the
relationship.
Arguably, then, not all employer decisions or actions which breach the
existing pattern of obligations between the parties will be interpreted as
unacceptable. Thus it is likely that imposed changes will be monitored through
a “zone of acceptance” not dissimilar to the one used by employers to define
acceptable variation in employee behaviour (Rousseau and Parks, 1993). But
insofar as major job transitions are characterized by a wide range of unfamiliar
experiences and features, the employee’s zone of acceptance may be only
vaguely defined in the early stage of change. Indeed, the separate meanings
assigned to particular elements of a complex change initiative may vary
considerably between one another. For example, the employee’s career
development opportunities may have increased in the new role but management
support may be inadequate. In highly novel roles and settings the employee
may need time to be able to ascribe meaning to the changes in the agreement’s
terms. In such situations it is possible that what constitutes the employee’s zone
of acceptance will be subject to periodic revision. Put another way, part of the
process of interpreting the personal implications of imposed job change may
centre on the individual’s efforts to identify the boundaries which signify
fulfilment, violation and complete fracture of the contract.

Sensemaking and appraisal

So far it has been argued that involuntary job transition could evoke numerous
perceptions of change in the psychological contract which will require
interpretation by the individual. While provisional judgements may surface
early on, further evaluations will be made and revised as additional features of
the new situation emerge. Louis’ (1980a and b) theory of sensemaking and
surprise provides a transition framework which is especially compatible with
our assumptions about psychological contracts. Louis postulates that on
encountering a new work setting the employee detects changes and contrasts
with the earlier role. In addition, the individual may perceive positive or
negative “surprises” which reflect unpredictable differences between
expectations and actual experiences. Applied to psychological contracts, the
individual may also be expected to register discrepancies between established
obligations and those observed in the new setting. Such differences trigger the
individual’s need to explain and interpret discrepancies before behavioural
responses can be selected (e.g. to remain in or leave the new setting, reduce
obligations, try to alter the role). Resources which are assumed to assist the The
sensemaking process include reflecting on past surprise experiences (such as psychological
earlier instances of contractual change or breach), personal characteristics and contract
circumstances, cultural assumptions discernible in the new setting, as well as
seeking information and interpretation from others.
Given that surprises trigger the individual’s need to explain job changes,
similarities are apparent between transition sensemaking and the process of 227
subjective appraisal (Lazarus and Folkman, 1984). Indeed, while central to
Lazarus and Folkman’s theory of psychological stress, subjective appraisal has
also proved insightful in explaining individual reactions to major role
transitions. Job insecurity, for example, has been widely conceived as the
person’s subjective evaluation of the risks and consequences of job loss (Hartley
et al., 1991; Roskies and Louis-Guerin, 1990). Moreover, Hallier and Lyon (1996)
found that both primary and secondary appraisals were crucial to the way
managers interpreted the psychological contract following the threat and
outcomes of redundancy. Since imposed job change confronts the individual
with unexpected discrepancies which threaten the existing agreement,
contractual sensemaking may also depend on primary appraisal. Here the
individual seeks to assess the source, relevance and significance of the threat to
the contract. Following assessment of the nature and extent of the contractual
breach or threat, the person turns to assessing available measures to alleviate
the problem. However, whereas Louis regards behavioural decisions as the
major response to sensemaking, secondary appraisal admits the possibility of
internal coping strategies. In this way subjective appraisal contributes a more
precise explanation of the process underlying transition sensemaking and its
outcomes. More importantly, by refining Louis’ theory to include subjective
appraisal, sensemaking suggests that contractual terms act as a major focal
point for the employee’s attempts to interpret enforced job change.
In order to assess the utility of these assumptions, we now consider their
salience to the experiences of job movers at ATC. We begin by examining the
background of ATC’s business and organization.

Background to ATC
ATC currently controls aircraft arriving and departing from a range of small
and large airports. Acting as the mainstay of ATC’s operations are two types of
controller. Area controllers work at area stations and are responsible for en-
route traffic or aircraft descending to or ascending from congested airspace.
Airport controllers operate the tower in which they manage take-off, landing
and aircraft movement, as well as radar approach to control aircraft at 40 miles
from landing. Controllers achieve ratings in area and/or airfield disciplines at
air traffic control colleges. However, they are also required to be confirmed as
competent by the unit at which they work. On transfer the controller must
“validate” by undertaking lengthy on-the-job training which is overseen by
validated and trainer accredited controllers, and pass an oral and practical
examination. Failing to validate at a unit may result in transfer to another unit
Employee and in some cases dismissal. Controllers are directly supported by air traffic
Relations support assistants who provide technical administration. Units are also staffed
19,3 by maintenance engineers, administrators and managers.
Two organizational job change exercises occurred during the research
period. While ostensibly unconnected, both exercises occurred against a
background of considerable change in the management and operation of ATC in
228 the previous five years. Up until then, air traffic volume had increased steadily
since the end of the Second World War at a rate of 4 per cent per annum.
Throughout this period of expansion employees in the industry experienced a
high level of job security. From the late 1980s, however, ATC began to move
away its traditional public service ethos in response to wider and more intense
competition in airfield air traffic services. In parallel, the recession of the early
1990s also affected airline revenues and led to pressures on suppliers of air
traffic services to restrict increases in their charges. These new demands have
resulted in a new emphasis on financial planning and finding ways to improve
operational efficiency.
Around the same time as the job changes, management also launched a
major organizational change programme to improve customer focus, service
delivery and business processes, while reducing costs. Overall, ATC’s new
approach increased the requirement for job change and relocation. So while
controllers’ employment conditions have always included a mobility clause,
unilateral moves have become more common.

The job changes

We now consider the origins of the two job changes. (In what follows all unit
names, projects and locations have been anonymized.) In the first, all ATC staff
had to vacate Eagle Airport by 31 March 1993, as a result of the loss of the air
traffic services contract. Renewal of the contract was in doubt from April 1992,
but it was only certain that ATC would vacate the airport in November. Even up
to the early months of 1993 there were questions as to whether a skeleton staff
would remain to provide a limited service. In total, 34 controllers, air traffic
support assistants, engineers and administrators were transferred to other
units.
In contrast, the relocation of the radar approach functions at Hawk and Swift
airports to a Central Management Function (CMF) at Dove area station, was
part of a plan devised by ATC’s management to improve landing and departure
rates at these locations. In 1991 a separate control room was created and staffed
by area controllers already based at Dove station. Our research focused on the
next stage of the plan when 75 of the 170 Hawk and Swift controllers would
transfer to the CMF. Up to this point airport controllers had carried out both
tower and radar approach functions. Under CMF, controllers would now
perform only one of these roles. Henceforth the tower role would remain at the
airports, while those moving to CMF would only perform a radar function. The
decision to adopt the CMF approach was unilaterally made by management,
although the union did negotiate the rostering system and the pay and grade for The
a new operational supervisor position. psychological
In early 1992, controllers at both airports were asked to register their contract
preference for either moving to CMF or remaining in the tower role. Changes to
plan, however, resulted in more CMF controllers being needed than originally
envisaged. Because of this, some controllers were forced to move against their
stated wishes. Also in the Spring of 1993 the move date was put back twice 229
because of technical problems with the new CMF equipment. On both occasions
the decision to cancel the move date was announced just days before the new
system was to become operational. At the time management provided no
explanation of the reason for the delays. Transfer to CMF finally occurred in
late October.

Research procedure
The research which forms the basis of this paper was conducted between
January 1993 and May 1995. All staff to be transferred were initially informed
of the research objectives by union newsletter. The researchers then made direct
contact with the employees affected by letter and invited their participation in
the research. The total sample comprised 41 controllers, assistants, engineers
and administrators. Out of the 34 Eagle airport staff, 12 participated in the
research. In the CMF move, all 29 participants were controllers out of the total
of 75 who were redeployed. Length of service among all participants ranged
from two to 28 years. Their age was between 24 and 55. Of these, 60 per cent
were aged 40 or older. Most of them were male (93 per cent). All of these features
were broadly representative of the total population of job movers.
Three separate interviews were conducted with each employee over the two-
year period. The first Eagle airport interviews took place two months after the
transfer. The first CMF interviews occurred one month prior to these
controllers’ moves. Second interviews were conducted three to six months later.
Final interviews took place after a further 12 to 16 months.
To explore the meaning given to these transitions, semi-structured
interviews were adopted which prompted individuals to reflect freely on their
concerns, feelings and interpretations as their experiences developed. At the
first interview a number of key question areas were also used to structure the
discussion (e.g. background to the move, expectations and feelings about the
transfer, treatment during the anticipatory phase). However, at subsequent
meetings when experiences began to vary, it was necessary to follow up earlier
perceptions while also allowing individual accounts to develop in their own
direction. Thus, the interviews were both exploratory and guided by prompts to
ensure that factors believed to be important to the experience of enforced job
change were covered. Re-interviewing enabled not only interpretations to
develop but also the checking of earlier accounts.
Drawing on their accounts of how individuals experienced the lead-up and
implementation of those moves was felt to be the most effective way to reveal
employees’ perceptions of the psychological contract. Employees, without
Employee prompting, were found to employ the use of contractual terms and perceptions
Relations of the employment relationship when explaining their experiences. This
19,3 occurred when individuals related events where either they or the organization
were believed to have met, went beyond or fell short of what could be expected
of them in their treatment of the other party. While categories of terms such as
fairness, flexibility, honesty, mobility and job arrangements may have been
230 presented as one or other party’s obligation, their contractual salience was
determined in the analysis by whether or not versions endorsed essential
contractual features such as reciprocity, mutuality and consent.
Employee responses were subjected to further analysis by drawing on data
collected from many of the senior and middle managers and personnel
practitioners who planned and implemented the job changes. Thus, while only
used indirectly here, management accounts helped to refine our examination of
employees’ contractual perceptions of the moves. All the interviews took place
at ATC units. The discussions were between 35 and 90 minutes in length and
were taped in all but one case. Other sources of data used in the research
included company documentation and records.

Anticipation of the move

Following the announcements of the two moves staff affected had considerable
time to assess their reactions to the changes ahead. Such appraisals centred on
not only what could be expected, but also the existing agreement and past work
experiences. While some form of appraisal was undertaken by all of these
employees, the personal significance given to the job change varied
considerably between individuals. In both exercises, some employees came to
regard the forthcoming change as a potential or actual violation of the existing
agreement. These individuals felt that certain core obligations had been broken
or were threatened by management’s actions. Prominent among these was the
perception that job change would eradicate valued aspects of the task and role.
Concerns here focused on the future loss of satisfaction, skills, status and
occupational identity. Equally, some employees encountered a range of
procedural decisions and experiences which gave rise to doubts about
management’s continued commitment to relational obligations such as
employment protection, equity, care and consent.
Not all employees, however, perceived these job changes as unacceptable or
outside the terms of the established agreement. But even here, a range of
interpretations was detectable. On the one hand, some employees viewed their
transfers mainly in negative terms but still as a legitimate modification to the
psychological contract. Others, however, saw their new role as capable of
providing positive outcomes. These individuals felt that their transfer offered
either improved career prospects or a release from job strain. Consequently, over
this long anticipatory period a diverse spread of explanations and affective
reactions emerged. In order to understand these variations in preparatory
response we consider, in turn, the subjective appraisals of the decision itself,
experiences of uncertainty, and perceptions of victimization.
The job change decision The
Initial appraisals focused on whether employees regarded the job change as psychological
permissible under the existing agreement. Critical here were assessments of contract
management’s responsibility for the change as well as its personal significance.
Because of the separate events surrounding the Eagle airport and CMF
decisions, there were marked differences in their perceived legitimacy. To begin
with, most employees felt that the withdrawal from Eagle airport lay beyond 231
management’s direct control. In seeing their transfers as an outcome of the
heightened competition facing ATC, employees absolved management of the
responsibility for their predicament. Nevertheless, following the announcement
in August, concerns were aroused about the likelihood of suitable redeployment.
While employees believed that management were obliged to offer alternative
posts, there were few examples of similar situations from which they could
draw comparisons. Such concerns were amplified at the time by unit
management’s inability to confirm any plans for their redeployment. By
October, however, airport management’s response to the problem had become
clearer. At this time the airfields personnel manager visited the unit to interview
staff about their relocation preferences. He also promised to keep employees
informed of the progress being made to secure transfers. As these actions were
seen to be honouring employee expectations of support and protection, their
doubts about transfer tended to subside.
In contrast, management’s rationale for adopting CMF was strongly rejected
by nearly all of the controllers affected. To them CMF was a flawed and
unnecessary response to the problem of increasing air traffic. Many regarded
CMF as a cosmetic decision aimed at placating earlier airline calls for ATC to
raise flow rates. Since then, however, controllers had achieved CMF traffic level
demands under the existing system. Hence, controllers argued that the
imminent division of the tower and approach roles would provide no additional
operational benefits. Further, at a personal level, they all possessed some sense
that ATC had a responsibility to provide them with appropriate and rewarding
work. For a large majority, this was reflected in their strong identification with
both aspects of the traditional role. Indeed their willingness to undergo years of
assessed training and to remaining in air traffic control was born out of an
unwavering enthusiasm for aviation stretching back to their childhood. CMF,
then, was seen as imposing a choice which would erase the integrity of their
hard-earned and valued skills. Yet while this overall interpretation of CMF was
commonplace, individuals varied considerably in their willingness to accept the
personal implications of the change to their contracts. Critical to this variation
in appraisals was the individual’s assessment of the valence of the move and the
level of personal agency felt to influence its outcome. So while the redundancy
of CMF rendered it illegitimate to most controllers, perceptions of personal
advantage and self-determination emanating from the move were often
sufficient for some level of acceptance to emerge. Though seen as illegitimate,
acceptance of the CMF decision was thus dependent on a process by which
Employee unintended benefits were revealed following a reperception of the personal
Relations significance of its outcomes.
19,3 Perceived at its most acceptable, some controllers were able to feel that the
move offered previously unavailable opportunities to develop their careers. For
them, either immediate or long-term prospects to acquire “area” skills or for
entering management could be seen as desirable options capable of replacing
232 the loss of their tower skills. However, what distinguished these premove
appraisals was the fact that the controllers here were not merely reperceiving
the personal meaning of these role changes. In addition, they could be seen to be
acting highly proactively by intervening so as to enhance their opportunities
prior to the move. They would, for instance, engineer their appointment to key
CMF liaison and planning roles in order to increase their knowledge and to take
advantage of upcoming promotion possibilities. Despite the division of their
established role, the CMF decision furnished these controllers with the chance
to exploit revealed opportunities to benefit from the new location and work role.
However, while only a handful of controllers could be said to have directly
acted on the preparation activities in this way, it would be misleading to
conclude that the remainder were only responding passively to imposed
change. More accurately most controllers could be seen to be creatively
reperceiving and then positioning themselves to benefit from valued personal
outcomes. Perceived opportunities to gain from specific outcomes resulted in
some willingness to trade the loss of tower skills for other salient management
obligations. Moving to CMF was rendered more acceptable, for example,
because the new radar-only role could be reperceived as enhancing controllers’
long-term security. That is, by being located away from airports which were
increasingly vulnerable to competition from outside contractors, CMF could be
seen to be protecting the future of ATC’s approach radar business. By the same
token, while satisfied and particularly proud of the traditional dual role,
controllers over the age of 45 were pessimistic about their ability to maintain
their competence as they grew older. This was particularly due to the frantic
and unrelenting demands on judgements so characteristic of the tower role.
Once again, a new evaluation of CMF was formulated but this time as a way to
avoid the spectre of failure associated with tower work in late career.
These examples demonstrate how in identifying new obligations of some
corresponding value to those being withdrawn, the CMF decision could
represent something akin to an acceptable breach of the existing contractual
agreement. Accordingly, where CMF was seen to go beyond such a breach,
employee appraisals did not merely focus on the withdrawal of skills but also
the person’s feeling of powerlessness to affect the situation. Critical to the
emergence of this loss of personal agency were instances where the job role was
seen as somehow indivisible under the contract. In this sense, for those at Hawk
airport the significance of the loss entirely stemmed from what they saw as the
destruction of an élite and irreplaceable group of controllers. That is to say, they
saw themselves as part of the select few capable of validating on both functions
at the airport and coping with its especially high volume of traffic. In contrast,
moving to CMF meant not only the loss of the tower role but also the absorption The
into a larger and less prestigious group, remote from the environment of psychological
aviation. In becoming detached from the complete role, these individuals felt contract
robbed of their unique sense of status, skill and influence.
In extending beyond the sense of role identification and professionalism
exhibited by controllers elsewhere, this perceived skill superiority could be seen
to hinder the identification of alternative opportunities or gains from CMF. No 233
other benefits could be revealed since the value of the Hawk airport role could
not survive its division. Thus, unlike their counterparts, these individuals’
rejection of CMF prevented any sense of influence over the decisions affecting
them. Both this feeling of powerlessness and the central importance attached to
the loss of the role was also reflected in the intensity with which they rejected
the idea of the reorganization. Although deciding to join CMF or remain in the
tower some 12 months before, just one month before transfer took place
controllers still exhibited signs of anger and frustration with the decision. To
them management’s refusal to listen to their views reflected the fact that the
unique and inalienable status of the their role either had been forgotten or was
never appreciated. Just prior to the moves they appeared to have internalized
their rejection of the reorganization but also seemed defeated by the decision.
Indeed most had given up hope of any further delays to the transfer date. This
detachment from the moves about to affect them was reflected in the way the
inevitable break up of their unit began to be mourned. There was much talk of
their “best days” being over and having no choice but to “prepare for
retirement”.

Uncertainty
Following these job change decisions, the assessment of subsequent
management information and practices represented the principle means by
which employees tested the validity of their initial appraisals. In the months
before transfer, the employment agreement provided a central focus for
employees’ attempts to understand and prepare for their job moves.
Significantly, however, there were periods when employees at all three units
were unsure of how to interpret management’s motives and behaviour. Such
uncertainties not only engendered doubts about management’s commitment to
particular objectives but also on occasion undermined employee confidence in
key aspects of the employment relationship.
What most gave rise to doubts about management’s integrity were occasions
when specific decisions, information or actions were expected or promised but
failed to emerge on time. After the personnel manager’s visit to Eagle airport,
for example, employees remained in the dark about their transfers for several
months. In some cases, employees first learned of their new postings a few
weeks before the airport was vacated. In contrast, a second source of
uncertainty was fuelled in situations where management appeared to be tacitly
introducing additional employee obligations. This was most notable when the
plans for the CMF moves were well advanced. Here controllers learned from
Employee their shift leaders that some extension training on different sectors would be
Relations required. In effect transferred approach controllers might be expected to
19,3 validate on each other’s positions or even train to perform area roles. For older
Swift controllers, especially, the possible requirement to train on more difficult
sectors evoked new concerns about the fate of those who failed to achieve dual
validation. Such fears became exacerbated when extension training on Hawk
234 operations started six months prior to the transfer.
These concerns about management’s aims were amplified by their apparent
reluctance to explain their actions. Often no information was provided and
employees who sought answers from local managers would be told to “wait and
see” or alternatively advised not to listen to rumours. Given these types of
response, unit managers appeared either obstructive or ignorant of the transfer
plans. Both Eagle and CMF staff referred to feeling abandoned or disowned by
managers who seemed uninterested in their concerns about redeployment or
extension training. Some employees went as far as to conclude that
management were prepared to limit information in order to conceal their
mistakes and disarm criticisms of their competence. The difficulty of obtaining
information was magnified still further by employees’ inability to identify
relevant decision makers. Both moves entailed co-ordination between different
parts of the ATC organization and hence involved line and personnel managers
from separate units. Not only were many of these key managers located at
distant sites but in many instances were unknown to employees in these roles.
Given this invisibility, employees widely disagreed about whether unit
management, head office or the personnel function were making the decisions
affecting them.
Yet despite the appearance of bad faith, such experiences did not necessarily
prompt a review of management’s existing obligations. Changes to such
conceptions in fact only occurred when management’s behaviour was perceived
to undermine the employee’s sense of organizational value. Thus, controllers’
high level of confidence in their worth to the operation of ATC largely protected
their belief in management’s responsibility to provide them with job security,
operational autonomy and rewarding work. So while controllers might distrust
management’s recent actions the withdrawal of such core obligations was
prevented by their pivotal role in the ATC operation. The move away from the
public service ethos was accordingly seen as reflecting a “creeping macho-
management” attitude and efforts to apply stricter controls over their work. In
particular, management’s failure to inform and support staff during this
pre-move period was seen as illustrating the way managers now equated
efficiency with greater employee direction and control. But insofar as it failed to
impinge on either these employees’ most valued work benefits or their sense of
worth to the organization, such behaviour was not entirely condemned. Instead
this group simultaneously identified with management’s efforts to
commercialize air traffic services, while also resenting their methods.
This suggests that where employees retain their belief in the immutability of
their core rights under the relationship, management transgressions are less
likely to be experienced as unacceptable contractual breaches. Controllers here The
certainly held grievances against particular managers or actions but these did psychological
not evoke a reappraisal of critical aspects of the employment agreement. In this contract
sense what became tolerable within the employee zone of acceptance developed
not merely out of a scrutiny of the events of each breach. Of equal significance
was the employee’s assessment of the dependability of management’s key
obligations under the contract. 235
Following from this, where employees were less assured of their
organizational value, pre-move uncertainty was found to arouse more
fundamental contractual concerns such as employment security. Doubts about
one’s organizational value arose in situations where management appeared to
be tacitly favouring the needs of other categories of worker. Older Swift
controllers, for example, became particularly concerned about whether dual
validation on a second radar sector would become mandatory for retention at
CMF. Those over the age of 40 were anxious about their ability to cope not only
with Hawk traffic levels but also with the amount of study necessary to
validate. These fears were given further credence when two experienced Swift
controllers were withdrawn from extension training two months before transfer
occurred. Similarly, suspicions that management were less committed to
redeploying the engineers and assistants also emerged during the Eagle moves.
By January all of the controllers had learned of their transfers. This apparent
preferential treatment of controllers heightened the significance of the
additional delays experienced by the remaining staff. Engineers, in particular,
were given no information about the progress of their transfers until just weeks
before the airport was vacated. Far from resolving their predicament, however,
the interim decision to place them “on hold” at the nearby area station merely
reinforced their fears of job loss.
While the employees in both of these situations spoke of having to wait
passively for management decisions, in reality they could be seen to be actively
evaluating the significance of whatever data were available. Critical here was
the examination of rumours, noticeable deviations from normal management
practice and the opinions of co-workers. Short of a formal resolution of their
concerns, these individuals remained constantly vigilant to clues to their fate.
But in being perpetually alert to any signs of management’s intentions such
appraisals remained ambivalent and incomplete. In one sense, these employees
attributed their feelings of vulnerability to management’s apparent willingness
to abandon them. Yet even when facing this evident contradiction with their
established beliefs about job protection, none of them seemed prepared to
accept fully that their concerns might be justified. Employees’ appraisals
reflected these contradictory perceptions in fluctuating between hopes of
protection and fears of dismissal. In effect, the dependability of these key
management obligations was neither confirmed nor breached. Rather this
constant threat to their security rendered such contractual beliefs suspended
and held in abeyance.
Employee Perceptions of victimization
Relations So far the contractual acceptability of approaching job change has been found
19,3 to be dependent on the meaning which the employee attaches to management’s
behaviours as well as the established construction of the agreement. As the
previous section showed, in the face of contractual uncertainty workers will
attempt to hold on to their established beliefs about the employment
236 relationship. In particular, signs of ambiguity in management’s behaviour
appear to provide a justification for avoiding the conclusion that a wilful breach
is occurring. But what happens to the employee’s perception of the contract
where management appears to be clearly singling the person out for lesser
treatment? While the particular events which evoked feelings of ill-treatment
varied, employees’ subsequent contractual appraisals were strikingly similar. In
order, therefore, to consider the general effects of perceived victimization on the
agreement we focus on the experiences of two older Swift controllers.
When asked to decide about CMF, these controllers had elected to remain at
the airport and work on the tower. Although both men preferred the tower role,
their nearness to retirement played a more critical part in their decision. Both in
their 50s, they emphasized that they had settled in their home locations in
preparation for retirement and were concerned about the potential health effects
of driving up to 160 miles to and from CMF each day. About a year after these
choices had been accepted, however, unit management informed them that they
would now have to transfer to CMF. Management’s reversal of the earlier
agreement arose because of their new concerns over the age profile of the
controllers remaining at the airport. In particular, they had come to realize that
as things stood, more than half of the 25 controllers set to remain at the unit
were due to retire within ten years. Also in now requiring the transfer of a
further five controllers to CMF, a more balanced age profile could be achieved
by the inclusion of at least two controllers over the age of 50 among the leavers.
As with other instances of perceived ill-treatment, decisions like these gave
rise to profoundly negative reappraisals of management and the employment
agreement. Despite holding meetings with both men to explain the reasons for
their transfers, the unit manager was seen as unwilling to listen to their
concerns or reconsider his decision. Somewhat ironically, in view of
management’s seeming efforts to secure acceptance of the decision, these men’s
feelings of being singled out in part derived from difficulties in making sense of
their treatment. What is striking is that, notwithstanding the reasons proffered
by unit management, both men still became preoccupied with identifying what
they saw as the real reason for their enforced move.
In the context of this need to locate and understand their place in the
decision, these men appeared both, in turn, confused and certain about why
they were being transferred. In one sense they accepted that unit management
had made no guarantees to honour employee preferences, but still felt strongly
that their years of loyalty and proximity to retirement should have been taken
into account. In particular, they emphasized their work achievements and
additional contributions to the operation of the unit over many years. One of
them, for instance, was at a loss to understand why he was selected to work on The
radar approach when he held the record for the unit’s tower movements. psychological
Correspondingly, the second man referred to his reputation for accepting contract
additional administrative duties on the shift. To these men it seemed
inexplicable that their contributions and commitment to the working of the unit
could have been ignored. At the same time, however, management’s motives
seemed quite transparent. Both were convinced that their selection was 237
primarily driven by financial considerations. They reasoned that to minimize
airport costs, management had favoured the retention of younger, less highly
paid controllers.
Given these men’s long-established beliefs, their strongest feelings of
injustice stemmed from the realization that, while familiar with their work
records and circumstances, management had still proceeded with their
transfers. In perceiving that their skills and loyalty were less valued than minor
cost savings, little of these men’s previous work enthusiasm or organizational
attachment survived. Both of them talked of how little pleasure they now
derived from their job and the pessimism with which they viewed the prospect
of moving to CMF. One in particular emphasized that since the announcement
he now had to force himself to attend work. After more than 20 years of service
he felt he had been relegated to the level of “tea boy”. Yet with the transfer date
fast approaching, they also faced the dilemma of how to reconcile their
impending move with their new awareness of management’s failure to honour
these central obligations. On the one hand they felt disillusioned by what they
saw as managers’ apparent willingness to disregard their needs and interests.
At the same time, they faced the fact that they were reliant on ATC for
employment until they reached retirement. Both of them emphasized the need to
protect their pension rights and therefore felt helpless to change their situation.
What this process of reviewing the reasons for and effects of their selection,
therefore, engendered was the development of a new framework of work values
which was compatible with their new perception of the agreement. In search of
some form of restitution they could be seen to realign the balance between their
work contributions and what they saw as management’s reduced sense of
obligation to them. In this way they stated that they had begun to limit their
involvement by only fulfilling their basic operational duties. They would in
future neither offer nor accept additional administrative responsibilities on the
shift.
In sum, these men’s long-held beliefs about their value to the organization
were contradicted by their perceived treatment as commodities rather than as
valued employees. Their contractual appraisals show how a belief in the
withdrawal of management’s care and interest could not be tolerated or avoided
within a zone of acceptance even at times of organizational upheaval. What
distinguishes these men’s appraisals from the ambivalence shown by the Eagle
airport staff is the fact that management’s actions were seen as deliberate and
even premeditated. Whereas uncertainty enabled some of the Eagle staff to
cling to their established beliefs even in the face of contradictory evidence, the
Employee decisions here were seen to be unambiguous and irreversible. It was not just
Relations that it was difficult for the individuals in this type of situation to feel they had
19,3 any real control over the decisions affecting them. More essentially, it was that
the perceived decisiveness of management’s actions blocked the identification of
more palatable interpretations. Yet in the light of their continuing dependence
on the organization, realignment of their obligations could only be realized by
238 adopting a more transactional attachment to their work. Ironically, in order to
redress the perceived imbalance in the agreement, these men felt obliged to
reject many of the features of their work which had, hitherto, given them most
status and pride. In this sense, evening up the relationship may still require
further sacrifice.

Management motives
These initial employee perceptions of management violations highlight the
need to consider why managers sometimes knowingly departed from
established practices and expectations. For the middle managers handling the
moves, ATC’s new commercial priorities required and justified considerable
changes to worker conditions. While sometimes unpalatable, they saw their
decisions and actions as self-evidently justified to themselves and workers alike
by the pressures on the business. In being largely beyond management’s
control, necessary actions were, therefore, provided with external justification.
But while workers recognized the general need for ATC to become more
competitive, the difficulty with accepting management’s legitimatory rationale
was that changes were mainly seen to be required within management itself.
Indeed, this message had been tacitly reinforced among employees over the
three or four years prior to the implementation of the moves. That is, the new
business values were signalled to workers but they were not seen to have any
necessary consequence for the established employment relationship. In fact it
was only as the job moves approached that the employees affected began to
sense areas of uncertainty in management’s behaviour and human resource
policies. As we have seen, sometimes managers’ violations were perceived not
to emanate from real pressures at all but to reflect the unnecessary abandoning
of the psychological contract. From the employee perspective some of
management’s acts initially just seemed devoid of reason.
In order to understand fully the motives underlying management’s behaviour
during the moves, we need to examine the changes introduced to middle
manager roles under the new regime. Given the changed climate, their goals
shifted away from delivering a public service to contributing to a market-led
business. Unit managers were now assessed on how well they controlled
budgets, increased traffic movements, delivered controller validations, and
reduced headcount. With this new emphasis on performance management, a
quite different psychological contract was forged between senior and middle
managers: one which required operational managers to increase unit
effectiveness but with fewer resources than before.
 Under this new framework they might gain senior management recognition The
and customer plaudits but there was also more scrutiny of performance, less psychological
discretion to set priorities, and reduced security as a penalty for failure. Given contract
the importance and visibility of the moves, the managers involved were
understandably anxious to be seen to be meeting their new obligations. As part
of efforts to exert influence over their personal futures, this meant that they
were prepared to keep some employee concerns at arms length and to go back 239
on earlier decisions perceived to risk senior management criticism of their
performance.
The contractual drift between managers’ obligational motives and workers’
motivated denial of business justifications, thus, can be seen to reflect not only
the parties’ different access to organizational information but also the divergent
“causal backgrounds” they adopted to explain the same events (McGill, 1989,
1995). Accordingly, for managers, the salience of external justifications was in
part fuelled by their need to control the heightened personal risks and
opportunities attached to working under the new regime. In contrast,
employees’ causal backgrounds emphasized the continuity of the relationship
and their own behaviour. Given this felt stability the source of unwelcome
deviations was attributed less to external factors and more to management’s
discretion. In effect, despite management’s expectations, few of the assumed
justifications for non-compliance were received as legitimate by the employees
concerned.

Post-transition appraisals
Because both moves involved protracted anticipatory periods, pre-transition
appraisals primarily focused on management’s contractual behaviour. However,
during the first months following job change, employees engaged in a wider
array of sensemaking activities. These stemmed from the need to understand
and respond to role, skill and social contrasts and surprises present in the new
settings. Such tasks often placed new, but largely predictable, demands on
employee’s sense of professional competence and occupational identity.
However, while such domains largely stood outside their perceptions of the
employment relationship, employee assessments continued to be shaped by
their earlier contractual appraisals. Moreover, after the initial encounter with
job change, the contractual salience of management’s actions re-emerged in the
light of subsequent transition experiences. Over this extended period, job
movers developed more concrete and fixed perceptions of the employment
relationship. Notably, at 15 to 18 months following transfer, employee accounts
reflected two distinct patterns of change to perceptions of the relational
agreement.

Calculative accommodation
During the first months after transfer, the focus on management obligations
gave way to other key tasks centreing on demonstrating skill proficiency and
contrasts between the old and new roles. For staff moved out of Eagle airport,
Employee preoccupation with skill proficiency was particularly significant on transfer
Relations because of concerns about validating at their new units. For CMF controllers,
19,3 too, sensemaking largely coalesced around how they would operate the newly-
designed radar equipment. Despite the provision of simulation training most
felt apprehensive about operating the equipment’s additional functions. These
included larger scale screens, a command menu, and above all computer-
240 generated symbols of aircraft positions and movements. Controllers were used
to working with the immediacy of “raw radar” but now discovered that with
computer processing the display of aircraft position updates was delayed by
several seconds. In addition, while CMF was situated only two miles from Hawk
airport, the ex-Swift controllers were initially preoccupied with longer journeys
to work and in many cases moving house.
While management’s contractual behaviour tended to be sidelined by these
other sensemaking tasks, it would be misleading to conclude that employees’
pre-move appraisals played no part in the way the first few months of job
change were experienced. Instead, such evaluations served as a filter through
which perceptions about competence, work identity and social tasks were
assigned meaning. Negative pre-move appraisals, in particular, appeared to
taint early perceptions of job change and transfer. Controllers, for instance, who
felt especially wronged by the introduction of CMF, exhibited markedly less
tolerance towards the apparent deficiencies of the new equipment and other
contrasting features of the setting. Yet, notwithstanding their importance to
initial interpretations of the moves, such early encounter tasks were recognized
as possessing only a transient significance. At three to six months after
transfer, staff from both moves were already beginning to envisage the
resolution of validation, equipment and relocation problems within the
foreseeable future. That said, they also felt that the accuracy of their pre-move
contractual assessments remained unknowable. As yet insufficient managerial
behaviour had surfaced for the relevance of such appraisals to be gauged. Pre-
move interpretations thus had to remain largely dormant for the moment.
Given that many of these immediate sensemaking tasks were seen as having
only transitory importance, it was not surprising to find that contractual
perceptions reassumed a central place in employee accounts a year later. In
part, further contractual appraisals were invoked by more opportunities to
scrutinize management decisions and actions. More critical, however, was the
importance given to confirmatory experiences. While employees continued to
regret their separation from their previous units or roles, and would draw
attention to minor managerial grievances, primacy was given to comparisons
between their pre-move contractual appraisals and their actual experience of
job change. Here, for instance, individuals felt that their personal aims to
increase their job security or career prospects had been fulfilled. Older
controllers, too, felt that in escaping the pressures of tower work, their
performance on approach radar had improved.
As well as these types of confirmative perception, the experience of positive
surprises also prompted reassessments even among those who, hitherto, had
held largely negative attitudes towards their moves. At CMF, for example, The
employees gradually learned from their new shift managers that no penalties psychological
would be invoked against those who failed to dual validate; nor would pressure contract
be applied to individuals who were reluctant to train in the short term. Even
more unexpectedly, some Hawk controllers became enthusiastic about
extension training on one of the terminal area sectors. A respect for area skills
had developed here from working alongside this type of controller for over a 241
year. The perceived value of holding a second validation in an area skill, in
effect, enabled them to reassemble some of the earlier satisfaction which they
had derived from working at the airport. In a similar sense, a wider range of
controllers came to relish the excitement generated by the concentration of
talent located within CMF. Ex-Eagle staff exhibited an equivalent sense of pride
and status from successfully validating at what were seen as more demanding
units.
On the face of it, such appraisals suggest that the outcomes of these job
moves had not only been assimilated by these workers but also even been
accorded some measure of legitimacy. So while there were remnants of regret
over what had been lost, what now applied was seen as acceptable. But equally
at the contractual level, there was no sense that earlier perceptions of
management transgressions had diminished or been forgiven. Rather, what
was apparent was a highly measured reconstruction of the relationship which
emanated as much from these individuals’ heightened sense of being able to
direct the outcomes of their moves as from any perception that management
had met their obligations. Indeed, over the pre- and post-transition periods their
closer proximity to a wider sample of management decisions and practices
served to de-mystify actions which, hitherto, had seemed inexplicable.
Certainly, by our final interviews, employees exhibited a marked increase in
their sense of confidence to assess the significance of management actions at
different levels and units. No longer were local management decisions, for
example, automatically seen as reflecting senior management policy.
This sense of having penetrated some of management’s defences ultimately
gave rise to an accommodative, yet highly instrumental conception of the
employment relationship. While maintaining feelings of attachment towards
the organization, their attitude towards management changed to one of
calculated ambivalence. In one sense, they continued to see ATC as a “good”
employer. But equally, they felt acutely distrustful of management’s personnel
policies. What appeared to enable the acceptance of these discrepant
perceptions of the relationship was their diminished sense of reciprocal
obligation. That is, the employee zone of acceptance came to be more sharply
drawn in recognition that both parties possessed some power to re-interpret
obligations in pursuit of personal advantage. Depicted this way, management
might as easily break as fulfil parts of the agreement. Yet in accommodating
this realization within a workable relationship, these individuals also detected
uncontrolled spaces which could be profitably exploited. In all, the emergence of
unintended benefits did not prevent the combined effects of earlier violations
Employee from continuing to colour employees’ perceptions of the employment
Relations agreement. Paradoxically, outcomes which management took to indicate
19,3 employees’ acceptance of these contractual changes were actually found to
mask a sense of deep division in the relationship.

Violation as entrapment
242 While most employees eventually came to accommodate their experiences of
enforced job change by constructing a less obligatory agreement, a small but
diverse minority developed sustained feelings of violation by management. By
this we mean that perceived contractual breaches gave rise to what were seen
as enduring and largely unresolvable experiences of humiliation or fear. Such
experiences were evident among employees with widely different roles and pre-
transfer appraisals. Individual expressions of sustained contractual violation,
moreover, were apparent among every category of worker affected by the
moves. Such employees, however, were not distinguished by the presence of
negative pre-move evaluations. Rather, what appeared to differentiate the
experiences of this group was the feeling that they had been deceived into
entering work settings which continuously provoked threats to their self-esteem
or security. Crucial was the fact that prior to the job change, and sometimes for
several months after transfer, employees suspected nothing of the threat which
would eventually ensue. How employees typically came to accept
management’s pre-transfer descriptions of the new work role is well illustrated
by the experiences of three newly appointed supervisors for the CMF project.
About a year before the CMF move occurred, management and the union
agreed to introduce a team supervisor position at a higher grade and salary.
With four team supervisors employed on each shift, opportunities arose to
provide assistance to managers of the larger combined groups and to deploy
supervision flexibly across both airfield and area sectors. In order for them to
supervise unfamiliar sectors, supervisors were promised 40 hours of training
on at least one other function. While predominantly supervisory, the role also
required individuals to control aircraft for four days each month on their
existing radar validation. Taken together, these benefits and career
opportunities were seen as highly attractive by a number of controllers bound
for CMF, and prompted numerous applications for the available posts. At our
interviews a month prior to the CMF transfer, successful applicants eagerly
anticipated their supervisory roles. For these individuals, therefore, the new role
promised both the chance to play an important part in the operation of CMF
and opportunities to build a career in management.
As with other instances of sustained violation, employees approached the
upcoming job change with some enthusiasm. The feeling of being ensnared,
however, came about because perceptions of threat were directly activated as
key aspects of the new role were encountered. Generally, these stemmed either
from the employee’s obligation to attend work or fulfil the main tasks of the job.
In effect, individuals became aware that the job was not just different from what
had been promised earlier. More significantly, the role was also either perceived
to be publicly demeaning or acceptable performance seemed to be prevented by The
certain management actions. With the team supervisors, for instance, it was psychological
only after the elapse of several months in their new positions that they became contract
threatened by the apparent alteration to the intended role. They came to feel
that the role contained none of the status and challenge promised earlier.
Instead the job was seen as composed of little more than minor routine tasks
such as the organization of rosters and annual leave. More importantly for their 243
sense of value to the operation, their lack of practical experience on unfamiliar
traffic sectors severely undermined their credibility as supervisors of
controllers. In practice their 40 hours of training were seen as insufficient to
enable them to act decisively when minimum separation distances were
breached or when controls on traffic rates needed to be imposed. In observing
their uncertainty, some controllers stopped consulting team supervisors and
even started to question publicly their value to the operation. Over the post-
transition period some supervisors were openly ridiculed by controllers over
their contribution to the shift and their own competence.
Underpinning this sense of unremitting violation, therefore, was the
perception that management had engineered a situation where the emergence of
these problems was either denied or attributed to the employee’s shortcomings.
Characteristically, then, the entrapped person came to feel that management
had misled them into entering work settings where role conformance only
served to heighten their sense of being ensnared.
Despite this profound sense of being imprisoned within their roles these
individuals still resolved to withdraw from their current predicaments. Yet
because neither resignation nor internal transfer were seen as feasible at least
in the short term, acts of withdrawal from the agreement were found to combine
symbolic retaliatory gestures with more concrete efforts to secure some form of
release. In this sense, such coping strategies reflected not only attempts to
extricate the individual from their predicament but also efforts to re-establish
some of their personal agency and self-respect. Since the prospect of transfer
was uncertain, such retaliatory acts against management also served to give
notice that these employees had psychologically withdrawn from the agreement
while in practice they continued to occupy the role. The behaviour of one of the
group supervisors just prior to our departure aptly illustrates this blending of
symbolic gestures with more concrete acts of resistance against management.
He first announced to his colleagues and his shift manager that he intended to
leave CMF within a year, but, what is more, he publicly refused to carry out new
administrative duties requested by his watch manager. In their different ways,
therefore, both acts served this dual purpose. At the practical level, his
declarations were immediately followed by genuine transfer applications.
Equally, by publicly rejecting the terms of the present agreement, his behaviour
also represented a way for him to regain some level of personal control.
Elsewhere, comparable acts of symbolic and concrete retaliation emerged and
sometimes drew on third parties such as union representatives and even
solicitors to help employees press their cases against management.
Employee While ostensibly appearing to endanger the entire spirit of the relationship
Relations with management, such violations can actually be seen to be framed within
19,3 employee appraisals which were committed to its continuation. By being
prevented from leaving the organization, employees felt that they had to resort
to individual acts of resistance to escape their predicaments. Yet, paradoxically,
such retaliatory behaviours represented more than just the employee’s tactical
244 withdrawal of certain work obligations. More accurately they can be best
understood as a tacit plea to management for the reinstatement of the
employee’s basic contractual terms.

Discussion and conclusion

The results presented here supported the adoption of Louis’ (1980a) sense-
making model as an appropriate framework for shedding further light on how
employees experience management breaches of the psychological contract.
Potential and actual breaches of the agreement by managers were registered as
surprises requiring interpretation throughout the pre- and post-transition
periods. This process continued until all salient surprise experiences were
exhausted. Sensemaking of contractual changes, however, did not operate
purely at the level of discrete or single issue breaches of the employment
agreement. Over this protracted period, ATC workers were also found to
assemble the separate meanings given to discrete contractual experiences into
a panoptic appraisal of their effect on the employment relationship.
This act of synthesis, nevertheless, did not appear to follow a simple
summation of these employees’ most important contractual assessments.
Rather, the findings highlighted the differential meanings which employees
seemed to attach to these two levels of contractual experience. At the level of
single event or issue violations it was striking how these workers displayed no
desire to abandon the tenets of mutuality and reciprocity underpinning the
established relational framework. While this might be expected in the face of
minor and acceptable breaches, this commitment to the principles of
contracting was evident even when employees encountered what they perceived
as major management transgressions. Withdrawal of employee obligations and
even explicit acts of retaliation, thus, were still framed within the essential
principles of contractual exchange. At the discrete level, then, employees can be
seen to have been less concerned with the status of the overall relationship and
more preoccupied with influencing the direction of their personal outcomes.
This shows that although a succession of breaches may be encountered,
subsequent appraisals still reflect the fact that they are evoked when the worker
is in the “heat” of a particular contractual event. Close proximity to the
perception and personal impact of management’s non-compliant acts, therefore,
appears to evoke understandings and responses which are still embedded in
contractual equivalence, reciprocity and exchange. That is to say, employees
here turned to withdrawals in kind and efforts to realign what management
was believed to have unbalanced. This faith in the contractual framework also
appeared to hold whether the employee faced an isolated breach or the repeated
pattern of threats which typified sustained violation. What was common to The
both was the fact that the person’s appraisal predominantly focused on psychological
assessing the likely consequences to be faced. Here, contractual realignment not contract
reconstruction seems to prevail.
Conversely, when some distance from particular acts and outcomes of breach
is attained, the employee’s gaze turns to determining what this whole pattern of
breaches means for the overall contractual relationship. In the case of ATC the 245
product of this panoptic assessment was a weakening of workers’ contractual
commitment which curiously conflicted with the mainly favourable acceptance
of the overall outcomes of these job changes. CMF, for example, may thus have
provided unintended employee benefits but management’s overall behaviour
was still seen to have impaired the relationship.
It would seem, therefore, that while reperception of alternative, valued
outcomes is necessary if a wilful breach is to be seen as acceptable, the ensuing
feeling of agency may also enable employees to locate areas of porosity within
management’s sphere of control over the relationship. By securing unintended
benefits, employees come to see openings where they feel it is possible to extend
how they typically respond to management violations. Rather than evoking a
panoptic appraisal which parallels perceptions of particular personal outcomes
of the job change, contractual success in the face of an array of management
breaches appears to reinstate confidence to influence how the relationship is
regulated, but in a less obligational way.
In all, the experiences of ATC workers show that even within the setting of
an unfolding programme of organizational change not every management
breach of the agreement will be judged as wrongdoing, betrayal or deception.
Taken as an entire body of contractual behaviour, management’s actions,
nevertheless, may still contribute to employees seeing what takes place as a
continuum of events which has the capacity to reshape their perceptions of the
employment relationship. In this respect, the present findings fail to support
Rousseau’s (1995) conclusion that, unlike contract fulfilment, violation is always
a discrete event.
What continues to remain unclear is whether or not the calculative posture
which developed here will be sustained and come to be deployed more generally
by these workers. Of course, it may be significant that these employees’
reperceived gains did not conflict with management’s operational goals or
interests. It is less certain, however, whether or not this present coincidence of
interests will survive further tests of these employees’ new construction of the
relationship. Should this calculative stance be retained, it may be that it
ultimately proves to be more subversive to management’s aims than those
isolated acts of visible retaliation linked to particular felt violations. In effect,
employees may come to mask their calculative orientation beneath their
otherwise evident acceptance of the consequences of change. In this way the
findings have pointed to how this type of contractual distance may divide
management’s and the employee’s evaluation of the meaning and outcomes of
imposed change.
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