Supervisors, mentors, and role models: Do they reduce the effects of psychological contract breach?

External and internal pressures often cause organizations to renege on promises made to employees. Because employees are particularly sensitive to the breaking of implicitly-made promises (i.e., psychological contract breach), we explore measures that organizations can take to ameliorate employees' negative responses. We hypothesise that supervisory relationships, mentoring relationships, and role model relationships will moderate employee responses to such psychological contract breach. Our results indicate that supportive supervisory relationships and mentoring relationships reduce the negative relationship between breach and employee beliefs that the organization values their contributions and cares about their well-being. However, employees who maintained relationships with role models had lower perceived organizational support in response to psychological contract breach, possibly because they believe that role models' psychological contracts are fulfilled. Implications for research and practice are discussed.