Does psychological contract breach have an influence on organization citizenship behavior? A mediating and moderating role of cynicism and abusive supervision

Abstract

The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of perceived contract breach (PCB) on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and to analyze the mediating role of employee cynicism (EC). We also analyzed the moderating role of abusive supervision on the relationship between PCB and OCB, PCB, and EC as well as EC and OCB. Data was collected from 349 respondents from different industries of service and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan. We analyze the direct effects using regression and Hayes PROCESS macro was used to measure indirect moderation, mediation effects. The results of our analysis supported our hypothesis. We investigated the significant positive influence of PCB on EC and the negative effect of EC on OCB and PCB on OCB. EC partially mediates the relationship between PCB and OCB. The study investigated partial moderation of abusive supervision in the relationship between PCB and EC. Interesting results of partial moderation revealed that AS reduces the negative effects of PCB and cynicism on OCB, which shows that employees were forced to take part in supporting activities other than their job duties. In future researches, this model can be investigated under a longitudinal method of data collected for the robustness of data and other positive leadership dimensions can be used as a moderator to see the influence of negative work experience on citizenship behavior.