Does employee engagement mediate the influence of psychological contract breach on pro-environmental behaviors and intent to remain with the organization in the hotel industry?

ABSTRACT

Drawing from psychological contract, job demands-resources, and affective events theories, this paper proposes and tests a research model where employee engagement (ENG) mediates the impact of psychological contract breach (PCB) on task-related pro-environmental behaviors (TPEBs), proactive pro-environmental behaviors (PPEBs), and intent to remain with the organization (IRO). The linkages given above were assessed via structural equation modeling. Based on data obtained from hotel customer-contact employees in three waves and their immediate supervisors in China, the findings reveal that PCB is a stressor eroding employee ENG, TPEBs, PPEBs, and proclivity to remain with the organization. Employees with high ENG display pro-environmental behaviors at high levels and exhibit elevated IRO. These findings implicitly illustrate that employee ENG partly mediates the impact of PCB on TPEBs, PPEBs, and proclivity to remain with the organization. Implications of these findings are discussed, as are the limitations and avenues for future research.

本文借鉴心理契约、工作需求资源和情感事件理论，提出并检验了员工敬业度（ENG）中介心理契约破裂（PCB）对任务相关的亲环境行为（TPEBs）、积极的亲环境行为（PPEBs）和留任意向的影响与组织（IRO）合作. 通过结构方程模型对上述连杆进行了评估. 基于三次浪潮中酒店客户接触员工及其直接主管的数据，研究发现PCB是一种压力源，它侵蚀了员工的ENG、TPEBs、PPEBs和留在组织的倾向. 高工程师的员工表现出高水平的环保行为，并表现出较高的IRO. 这些研究结果隐含地说明，员工工程师在一定程度上中介了PCB对TPEBs、PPEB和留在组织的倾向的影响. 讨论了这些发现的意义，以及未来研究的局限性和途径.

KEYWORDS:

• China
• employee engagement
• hotel employees
• intent to remain with the organization
• pro-environmental behaviors
• psychological contract breach

Acknowledgments

Data used in this study came from part of a larger project. Data collection for this project was carried out while the third author was a Visiting Researcher at the Guangdong University of Technology in China. We thank Professor Zhi Li (Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Computer Integrated Manufacturing System, School of Electromechanical Engineering, Guangdong University of Technology) for his kind assistance in enabling the third author to contact management of hotels. We also thank Ms. Liu Siai in the School of Foreign Languages and Mr. Zonggui Tian in the School of Electro-Mechanical Engineering (both at the Guangdong University of Technology in China) for their assistance in data collection.