If You Wrong Us, Shall We Not Revenge? Moderating Roles of Self-Control and Perceived Aggressive Work Culture in Predicting Responses to Psychological Contract Breach

The authors develop and test a moderated mediation model that accounts for employee emotions (psychological contract violation), employee motivation (revenge cognitions), employee personality (self-control), and context (perceived aggressive culture) in the relationship between psychological contract breach and workplace deviance. In Sample 1, involving 146 hospitality workers and their peers, the authors found support for a conditional indirect effect of psychological contract violation in predicting workplace deviance via revenge cognitions for those employees who perceive a high as opposed to low aggressive work culture. In addition, they found that at high levels of perceived aggressive work culture, the conditional indirect effects of psychological contract violation in predicting workplace deviance via revenge cognitions were statistically significant for those employees with low as opposed to high self-control. These results were replicated in Sample 2 using an independent sample of 168 hospitality workers in a different cultural context. Overall, the results suggest that self-control and perceived aggressive culture, taken together, influence the enactment of deviant acts. Implications for research and practice are discussed.