ABSTRACT
This chapter presents for managing people to understand the nature of the management-worker relationship at its deepest level – the psychological contract. It also presents how the contract is formed, the imprecise nature of the contract, the covert nature of the contract, how it differs from other explicit behavioural characteristics, and why management behaviour is always symbolic. Suppose on Monday morning the worker finds the job harder than they anticipated but the manager less severe than expected. Where the job allows management to measure the output precisely they will use formal controls, but where the output standards can only be specified subjectively other forms of managerial control become necessary. One of the traps that managers so often fall into is to use the satisfaction-dissatisfaction frame of reference as the principal method of interpreting employee behaviour. Managers with responsibility for a particular area of activity will want to make matters within that area controllable.
