Psychological Contract Breach and Organisational Citizenship Behaviour: The Role of Work Attitudes and Personality Traits among Medical Doctors in Ghana

Abstract

This study was designed to assess the direct relationship between psychological contract breach and organisational citizenship behaviour among medical doctors in Ghana. It further looked at the mediating roles of work attitudes (job satisfaction, organisational commitment, and job involvement) and moderating roles of personality traits (conscientiousness, agreeableness, extraversion, openness to experience, and neuroticism) on this direct relationship. The positivist philosophical paradigm, quantitative research approach, explanatory research design, and cross-sectional study design were utilised. A structured, pre-tested, self-administered and validated questionnaire was employed. The simple one-stage cluster sampling approach was utilised. IBM SPSS Statistics Software for windows, version 23 and Smart PLS Software, version 2.0M.3 were used to analyse the data. After controlling for sex, age, employment type and organisational tenure, this study found a significant negative relationship between psychological contract breach and organisational citizenship behaviour. This negative relationship was partially mediated by job satisfaction, organisational commitment and job involvement. Conscientiousness and openness to experience traits moderated the relationship between psychological contract breach and organisational citizenship behaviour. Similar finding was recorded for extraversion trait, but not in the direction hypothesized. However, agreeableness trait did not moderate this relationship. This research concludes that positive work attitudes reduce the effect of psychological contract breach on citizenship behaviour. Also, this study established that, during a psychological contract breach, medical doctors who are more conscientious, extraverted, and opened to new experiences are more likely to be good organisational citizens. Therefore, this study recommends the need for managers of Ghana Health Service to improve the welfare and well-being of medical doctors working in stressful environments. Moreover, healthcare managers should consider recruiting, retaining, and promoting medical doctors who display high scores on conscientiousness, extraversion, and openness to experience. Those who display low scores should be encouraged, motivated and groomed to catch-up to increase their propensity to be good organisational citizens, during a psychological contract breach.