如何在危机中“同舟共济”?——基于高星级酒店员工心理契约的研究

How to Bind Together in Times of Crisis? A Research of Employee Perceived Psychological Contract in High-star Hotels

在新冠疫情危机影响下,员工感知酒店应该承担的责任——即“心理契约”受条件限制往往难以履行,严重破坏了劳动关系的和谐稳定。文章运用多案例与扎根理论方法进行探索式理论建构,探讨危机时期酒店员工心理契约的关键内涵、心理契约破裂的发生机制及其对员工的影响。结果发现:与关系型契约相比,员工在危机时期更关注交易型契约;酒店无力履约、有意违约和双方对组织责任认知不一致是导致心理契约破裂的主要因素;员工的责任归因、个人特质影响他们对心理契约破裂的反应。文章提出,危机时期心理契约呈现“破裂-维护-调整”的基本演化过程,提供酒店在危机及日常经营情境下应采取的关键措施,帮助酒店与员工建立可持续发展的心理契约纽带关系。

In the COVID-19 pandemic,the employee-employer relationship in the hospitality industry has been shaken.The psychological contract between employers and employees has changed dramatically during this turbulent time.Extant studies have primarily focused on the impact of crisis on the tourism and hospitality industry at the macro-and meso-levels.However,the impact at the microlevel,e.g.employees’psychological mechanism,is underexplored.Few studies have explored the process of how psychological contract breaches occur during crises,as well as the mechanism of how psychological contract breaches influence employees.Using the multiple-case method and grounded theory,this study explored the content of psychological contract,and the mechanism and outcomes of psychological contract breach in hotel organizations.Six high-star hotels located in Fujian province were selected as our study cases,and their human resource managers,frontline managers and employees were interviewed.The salient dimensions of psychological contract in the crisis were identified,which are income guarantee,safety assurance,job security,specific welfare,and work arrangements.Employees emphasized the transactional obligations(i.e.income,welfare,and job guarantee),and attached far less importance to relational obligations in the crisis setting.Three causes of psychological contract breach were identified:inability,unwillingness,and incongruence.Employees’attribution of this crisis,demographics(i.e.age,education,and position),and personalities(i.e.collectivist mindset)make they respond differently towards the psychological contract breach.Most employees did not blame the hotels for the breach,and attributed the breach to the factors beyond the hotels,thus their negative responses were attenuated.Our study proposes a dynamic model that indicates psychological contract breaches lead to varied employee responses and how psychological contract maintenance occure.Whether hotel employees and management can bind together during the crisis depends on their mutual consideration and fulfillment of corresponding obligations.Hotels that invested in employees during normal times and actively helped employees during crisis times were more likely to motivate employees’loyalty to the hotel.Several remedy strategies are proposed to help hotels develop a sustainable employee-employer relationship during and after the crisis.Our study advances knowledge in hotel crisis management by systematically investigating psychological contract and its influencing mechanism,which helps to build a resilient hotel workforce in crisis time.