INTRODUCTION:

In the technological era, majority of the organizations are striving hard to increase their profits, improve the efficiency of production, and attain efficacy in customer satisfaction with usage of optimum resources.

To make this dream come true, organizations require more committed and greater participation of a good majority of people so that the organisations’ effectiveness and efficiency could be enhanced. Today’s organisations are looking for employees who are more committed, innovative and adaptive to business challenges. There is a role shift from being a production-based economy to knowledge-based economy. Various researches have rightfully pointed out that wages are important to employees, but they alone cannot motivate the highly skilled and experienced workforce. Managers would agree upon the fact that employees make a critical difference when it comes to organizational performance, innovation and thus ultimately business success. It becomes the essential role of HR managers to lay the road map for the effective and satisfactory working conditions which would inspire the employees to be engaged, give their best, go their extra mile and persist in the face of difficulties.

With rise of India as the fastest growing economy in the world, the country’s aviation industry is largely untapped with huge potential for growth, considering that air transport is still expensive for majority of the country’s population, of which nearly 40 per cent is the upwardly middle class. Bringing in the right policies and uncompromising focus on quality, cost and customer experience, India would be well placed to achieve its vision of becoming the third-largest aviation market by 2025.

Importance of Indian Aviation sector in Indian Economy:

According to India Brand Equity Foundation (IBEF) December 2018, “rise in working group especially middle income class will effect the demand for aviation sector positively. Further, India is expected to become the third largest aviation market in terms of passengers by 2024. India’s passenger traffic grew at 16.52 per cent year on year to reach 308.75 million. It grew at a CAGR of 12.72 per cent during FY06-FY18. Domestic passenger traffic grew year on year by 18.28 per cent to reach 243 million in FY18 and is expected to become 293 million in FY20E. International passenger grew year on year by 10.43 per cent to reach 65 million in FY18 and traffic is expected to become 76 million in FY20E. In FY18, domestic freight traffic stood at 1,213.06 million tonnes, while international freight traffic was at 2,143.97 million tonnes. India’s domestic and international aircraft movements grew 14.40 per cent year on year and 9.40 per cent year on year to 1,886.63 thousand and 437.93 thousand during 2017-18, respectively”. As of March 2019, there are nearly 606 commercial aircrafts in operation in India.

The major problem facing the aviation sector:

Despite offering huge potential in growth, Indian aviation sector is suffering from perennial problems. Some of the pressing issues are lack of qualified pilots, technical manpower, and attrition rate and employee shortage. There is acute shortage of manpower for technical cadre in the aviation sector as a consequence of which, there is ruthless competition for employees which in turn is driving wages to unsustainable levels. An airline’s employees’ are its lifeblood, which is why poor employer-employee relationship can cripple an airline both financially and operationally. Moreover, the industry is also unable to retain talented employees because of its lesser importance to factors such as employee’s job satisfaction and involvement. In this context, studying how psychological contracts can influence the organizational commitment of employees in the aviation industry becomes more relevant to the current scenario.

Psychological contract refers to unwritten expectations that exist between an employee and the organisation regarding policies and practices in their organization. Psychological contract impacts attitudes, satisfaction and performances of the employees. They address those relationships that are hard to clearly define in a formal employment contract such as motivation, relationship with co-workers, role expectations, ethical code and support from organization and the like. Roehling (1997), Argyris (1960) and Levinson et al. (1962) gave the most extensive research on the topic. The idea of the "psychological contract" was first propounded by Argyris (1960) where he refers to psychological contract as “employer and employee expectations of the employment relationship, i.e. mutual obligations, values, expectations and aspirations that operate over and above the formal contract of employment”.Since then there have been many efforts to improvise this concept. Recent developments in the topic is largely contributed by Rousseau. He explicitly distinguished between conceptualisations at the level of the individual and at the level of the relationship, focusing in her theory on individual employees' subjective beliefs about their employment relationship.

Since the 1960's organizational commitment is a stimulating topic for managers and researchers. “Organizational Commitment is a psychological link between an employee and his or her organization that makes it less likely that the employee will voluntarily leave the organization” (Allen and Meyer, 1996). “Organizational commitment is increasingly valued as a predictor of work behaviours and behavioural intentions” (Jaros 1993). Meyer and Allen (1991) developed their three component model of Commitment which explains that commitment to an organization is a psychological state, and it has three distinct components that affects how employees feel about the organization and the job they do. Affective component talks about the affection for the job; Continuance commitment states the fear of loss of the job and Normative commitment explains the sense of obligation an employee has for his organisation.

The unrest among the employees working in the aviation sector has been steadily growing due to domestic and international rules, regulations, competition and growth. The uncertainty about generating profits in the sector is leading to temporariness in employment contracts. The employees are under enormous pressure to perform. This has very badly affected their psychological health and their levels of commitment. This study attempts to investigate the effect of Psychological Contract on Organisational Commitment to suggest ways to mitigate the negative consequences if any. Employee commitment to an organization is a critical element in gaining competitive and financial advantage. However, research finds that affective commitment is to be on the decline in today’s workplace. (Chaudhuri and Bowen, 2008)

In spite of an increasing attention on Indian aviation sector and its contribution to economy, there has been comparatively very little research in this area (Anuradha et.al 2015). The past researchers measured the effect of psychological contract on organizational commitment using a two dimensional approach which was felt incomprehensive by the researcher. Though various factors have been accounted for measuring Organizational commitment, connecting it with all the four dimensions of Psychological contract is never attempted. The researcher therefore developed a conceptual model by considering all the four dimensions of psychological contract in the context of Indian aviation sector. Analyzing the relationships using type of industry and work experience as moderating variables is novel.

This study aims at developing a deeper understanding about psychological contract and employment relationship in Indian aviation sector. Psychological contract variables such as relational contract, transactional contract, employer’s commitment/obligation to employee, employee’s commitment/obligation to employer, employer’s relationship with employee, and employee’s relationship with employer - were measured on 382 employees from Indian Aviation sector randomly chosen for the studies.

MATERIALS AND METHODS:

The present study is an exploration aimed at developing a deeper understanding of psychological contract and employment relationship amongst employees serving in the aviation industry in India. This is achieved through the measurement of psychological contract variables, studying the relationships among psychological contract variables, and by finding out the significant differences in psychological contract variables across the demographic groups.

The Instrument:

A four part Psychological Contract Questionnaire (PCQ) as has been detailed below, was constructed to measure the psychological contract variables-strength of relational contract, strength of transactional contract, employer’s commitment/obligation to employee, employee’s commitment/obligation to employer, employer’s relationship with employee, and employee’s relationship with employer.

Descriptive research design is used to find out the relationship between employees’ and employers’ psychological contract and their effect on organizational commitment. The population consists of Employees working at main offices of the selected airline service providers - Jet Airways, IndiGo, Spice Jet, Go Air and Air India and Sampling Method used is stratified random sampling. Selection of the Sample is based on the market share statistics provided by Directorate General of Civil aviation (DGCA), Government of India. Out of which employees from one Government owned and top four Private owned airline service Providers were randomly chosen for the study. The employees of these Airlines were categorized as Sales and Administrative staff, Air Traffic Controllers, Pilots, Ground staff, Security and Cargo and inputs were collected from them.

Sample size:

Population of the study consist of 382 samples, sample size is chosen on the basis of, Krejcie and Morgan (1970), To Determine the sample size for a finite population, following sample size formula is used .The formula used to arrive at the sample size for the research work is indicated below:

n₀ =Z² x σ²

e²

where

n₀ sample size

z Value of Z in normal distribution curve

e Level of precision

σ² Variance of an attribute in the population.

Z= 1.955

σ =0.5

e =0 .05

n₀ = 1.955² x0.5² = 381.96

0.05²

(Israel, 2009)

The Human Resources Management Practices questionnaire was constructed and standardized by the investigator. The reliability and validity of the Human Resources Management questionnaire was assessed by a reliability test (Cronbach's alpha) and all the items yielded alpha values above 0.7

The measures used in this study were adapted from the Psychological Contract Inventory developed by Denise M Rousseau (2000) and the Tri-dimensional Organisational commitment model developed by Allen and Meyer (1997). The Psychological contract inventory is in its preliminary stage of development as the tool is very rarely used for conducting empirical studies. Those studies which have used this tool used it in a generic context. Though Allen and Meyer’s Organisational commitment measures were used to test various organisational problems empirically, it was also not applied in the context of the aviation sector. The standards therefore had to be pre-tested, and pilot tested before using the tool for this study.

Statistical analyses:

Descriptive statistics of the measurement items and the composite reliability and convergent validity of the measures are applied in this study and the proposed research model was tested by assessing the path coefficients of the manifest variables with their contributions and significance. Statistical Tools used to accept or reject the research hypotheses formulated at the preliminary phases of the study are Descriptive statistics, One-way ANOVA and Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). Descriptive statistics were used to find out whether the data is normally distributed. The steps includeecal culating the mean, standard deviations, skewness, and kurtos is values. According to Hairetal. (2007), the range of acceptable limits for Skewness is -1 to 1 and Kurtosis is -1.5 to 1.5. A reliability test (Cronbach's alpha) was conducted to assess the scale reliability, and all the items yielded alpha values above 0.7. Data collection was done using a structured questionnaire. Six categories of employees, who are very important to the airline industry, participated in the survey.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS:

Table 1: Mean and Standard Deviation for the dimensions on Organisational Commitment

Organisational Commitment Dimensions	Mean	Standard Deviation
Organizational Commitment	3.623	0.67
Affective Commitment	4.10	0.95
Continuance Commitment	4.51	0.77
Normative Commitment	4.88	1.07

Table (i) denotes that the level of normative commitment was found to be fairly high which is a good indicator that shows that employees have a strong sense of obligation to the organisation. The level of affective, continuance and organizational commitment was found to be moderate. Of the different dimensions of commitment, the most important was normative commitment, followed by continuance commitment, and affective commitment. Meyer and Allen (1991) “state that both affective and continuance commitment represent psychological states that have implications for whether an employee remains with an organization”. Hence, airline companies should focus on developing the affective commitment which ensures that the employees have strong emotional attachment with the organisation and the job they do.

Table 2: Summated descriptive for the constructs

CONSTRUCT	N	MEAN	SD	SKEW	KURTO
Employers’ psychological contract	382	3.294	0.544	0.119	-0.434
Employees’ psychological contract	382	3.324	0.571	-0.108	-0.293
Organisational commitment	382	3.625	0.664	-0.018	-0.687

Table (ii) gives the summated descriptive for the constructs which shows the mean, standard deviation, skewness, and kurtosis values of the constructsused in the conceptual model. The mean value of the construct Employers’ psychological contract items is above three indicating that there is an overall positive response to the items included in the construct. The standard deviationisan indication that most of the respondents agree to the statements as the data show less dispersion. The skewness and kurtosis values are well with in the acceptable limits of -1 to 1 and -1.5 and 1.5, respectively indicating the normal distribution of the items. The positive skewness indicates that the tailis elongated on the left.

Table (iii) gives the summary of the proposed hypotheses test result. The result indicates that there is no direct relationship between the employers’ psychological contract obligations and the employees’ psychological contract obligations in the Indian aviation sector. Also the type of organisation has a partially moderating effect in Private owned airlines and no effect in government owned airlines. Work experience does not moderate the relationship between the employers’ psychological contract obligations and the employees’ psychological contract obligations. Figure (i) gives the conceptual model of summary of hypotheses test result in pictorial form.

Figure 1 : Summary of Hypotheses test result

The result indicates that there is a direct relationship between the employers’ psychological contract obligations and the organisational commitment of the employees in the Indian aviation sector. Also the type of the organisation has a moderating effect and work experience does not moderate the relationship between the employers’ psychological contract obligations and the organisational commitment of the employees. The result indicates that there is a direct relationship between the employees’ psychological contract obligations and their commitment towards their organizations. Also both the type of organisations (both the government-owned and private airlines) and work experience does not moderate the relationship.

Mediation Result of the Employers’ Psychological Contract (PC) in the relationship between Employees’ Psychological Contract and Organisational Commitment (OC) – by using Bootstrapping Method

Table 4: Mediation result of Bootstrapping method

	Β	Boot S.E	Boot LLCL	Boot ULCI	p-value
A	-0.003	0.051	-0.081	0.01	0.988
B	0.71	0.027	0.665	0.757	0.010*
a*b (Indirect)	-0.0021	0.036	-0.058	0.058	0.988
Direct	0.285	0.032	0.231	0.336	0.01
Total	0.283	0.044	0.198	0.347	0.018

Table (iv) gives the mediation result of Bootstrapping method. Employers’ psychological contract does not mediate the relationship between employees’ psychological contract and Organizational Commitment (since p-value of a*b = 0.988 is greater than 0.05, the relationship is not significant). However, the direct effect of employees’ PC on OC and the direct effect of employers’ PC on OC is statistically significant. Figure (ii) depicts the mediation result of Bootstrapping method in pictorial form. The result indicates that the employers’ psychological contract obligations do not mediate the relationship between the employees’ psychological contract obligations and the organisational commitment of the employees.

Figure 2: Bootstrapping method

It is clear from the results that the organisations in the aviation sector must create a culture of affective commitment to make the employees committed to their organisations. It can be concluded that having a better psychological contract between the airline employees and their organisation enables to have positive employee outcomes in the form of job satisfaction, voluntary commitment and involvement. Itleads to more consistent fulfilment, when compared to what results from coercion. A flexible psychological contract also has lesser violations. The findings of the study would help the airline operators to identify the key dimensions of psychological contract that affect their organisational commitment and take suitable measures to improve their commitment to their employees. The instrument developed for this study can act as a key reference point for the airline companies operating in the country.

Replication of the study in other sectors using more multi-characteristic descriptions can be carried out to test the applicability of the model. A study could be done using more factors that influence Psychological Contract and Organisational Commitment such as Work Environment, OST, leadership, work behavior and attitude to get more inferences. The future research could include employees at the higher level to capture their perspective in enhancing HR practices in organizations.

CONCLUSION:

The concept of psychological contract emphasizes on the ‘soft’ issues that have hard repercussions for today’s organizations. It also indicates on the major changes that organizations are experiencing in their relationships with the employees. An organization’s capacity to get the best from their employees’ (their knowledge, skill and ability) and using them for strategic advantage lies in the strength of the psychological contracts. Analysing and building strong psychological contracts, therefore, is of focal importance for the aviation industry. Employees’ contributions can no longer be extracted by coercion. Motivation, assistance in relocation, choice of work location, flexi-time options, involvement in decision making, trust, pay-performance relationship, opportunities for advancement, fair treatment, fair pay, job variety, loyalty and commitment are a few critical factors that influence the relationship and commitment of the airport employees. In a highly competitive and turbulent environment, today’s Aviation industry should build processes and practices that focus on commitment, rather than on compliance. Further, it should motivate employees to comply with the contracts. It is observed that fair treatment, good faith and fair dealings are derived from the values of a larger society.

CONFLICT OF INTEREST:

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

REFERENCES:

1. Aggarwa, U., and Bhargava, S. (2009). Exploring psychological contract contents in India: the employee and employer perspective. Journal of indian business research, 1(4), 238-251.

2. Anderson, N., and Schalk, R. (1998). The psychological contract in retrospect and prospect. Journal of organiztional behavior, 19, 637-647.

3. Argyris (1960). Understanding Organisational Behavior, Homewood, IL: Dorsey Press, Inc

4. Chaudhuri and Bowen (2008), Running Head: A Decreasing Affective Commitment in Today’s workplace, UFHRD, 1-11.

5. Dabos, Guillermo E, and Denise M (2004), Mutuality and reciprocity in the psychological contracts of employees and employers, Journal of Applied Psychology, 89, (1) 52-72.

6. Denise M. Rousseau (1989). Psychological and Implied Contracts in Organisations. Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal. 2(2). 120-139

7. Denise M. Rousseau (2000), Psychological Contract Inventory. Technical Report, 1-53

8. Denise M. Rousseau (2004), Psychological Contracts in the Workplace: Understanding the Ties That Motivate. The Academy of Management Executive, 18, 120-127

9. Feldheim, Mary (1999). Downsizing. Paper presented at the South-eastern Conference of Public Administration, St. Petersburg, FL

10. Hair J. F Jr. Anderson, R E, Tatham and R L, Black W. C (1995), Multivariate data analysis(3) Newyork, Macmillan.

11. Hair JF (2003), Essentials of Business Research Methods, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons.

12. Hair JF (2007), Research methods for business, Chichester, John Wiley and Sons.

13. Hair JF (2010), Multivariate data analysis, Pearson College Division.

14. Harold Andrew Patrick and Shiju Sebastian (2012), Human Resources Management Practices’ Influence On Faculty Commitment In Higher Educational Institutions,Asian Journal Of Management Research, 3, 1, 126

15. Harold Andrew Patrick, (2008), Psychological Contract and Employment Relationship, The ICFAI University Journal of Organizational Behaviour, Vol. VII, No. 4, 7-21

16. Harold Andrew Patrickand Saradha (2011), Employee engagement in relation to organizational citizenship behavior in information technology organizations,Proceedings published by International Journal of Computer Applications®(IJCA) Third Annual Global Business, IT and Management for Economic Development Conference (BITMED)2,2, 74-90.

17. IBEF (2018), Indian Aviation Industry, retrieved from https://www.ibef.org/archives/detail/b3ZlcnZpZXcmMzc5MzQmNDk5 on 10.1.2019.

18. Jaros,S.J., Jermier,J.M., Koehler, J.W., and Sincich, T., (1993), Effects of continuance, affective, and moral commitment on the withdrawal process: An evaluation of eight structural equation models Academy of management Journal 36, 5, 951-995

19. ManoramaYadav, Vinod Kumar Yadav. A Study of Challenges and Practices Related to HRM in Software Industry. Asian J. Management; 2017; 8(4):1233-1236.

20. McDonald, D.J., and Makin, P.J. (2000), The Psychological Contract, Organisational Commitment and Job Satisfaction of Temporary Staff, Leadership and Organisation Development Journal, 21(1) 84.

21. Meyer, J and Allen, N (1991), A three-component conceptualisation of organisational commitment, Human Resource Management Review, 1, 61-89.

22. Meyer, J and Allen, N (1997), Commitment in the Workplace: Theory, Research, and Application, Sage Publications.

23. Meyer, J. P., Allen, N. J., and Gellatly, I. R. (1990), Affective and continuance commitment to the organisation: Evaluation of measures and analysis of concurrent and time-lagged relations, Journal of Applied Psychology, 75, 710–720.

24. Natalie, J., Allen, N.J., and John P.Meyer, (1996), Affective, Continuance, and Normative Commitment to the Organization: An Examination of Construct Validity Journal of Vocational Behaviour, 49(3), 252-276.

25. Rajesh U. Kanthe, (2012), Challenges in Indian aviation industry in chaotic phase, Innovative Journal of Business and Management, 1 (3), 54– 56.

26. René Schalk and Denise M. Rousseau (1995), Psychological Contracts In Employment, Handbook Of Industrial, Work And Organisational Psychology, 134-142.

27. Richa Aishwarya Jogi, A.K. Srivastava. Role of Employee Engagement in Work Outcomes: A Comparative Study on Public Vis-à-Vis Private Banks. Asian J. Management; 6(2): April-June, 2015 page 135-140.

28. Roehling, M. V. (1997), The origins and early development of the psychological contract construct, Journal of Management History, 3(2), 204-217.

29. Schein, Edgar H. (1965), Organisational Psychology, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

30. SonaliMalewar, Prerna Nair. Are Customers Really Satisfied with the Service Quality offered by the Aviation Sector (with special reference to Chhattisgarh State). Asian J. Management 5(2): April-June, 2014 page 277-280.

31. Tekleab A.G., Takeuchi R.,Taylor M.S.,, (2005). Extending the chain of relationships among organizational justice, social exchange, and employee reactions: The role of contract violations, Academy of ManagementJournal, 48 (1), 146-157.

32. Turnley, W. H., and Feldman, D. C. (n.d.). Re- examining the effect of psychological cntractvioalation:Unmet expectations and job satisfaction as a mediators. Journal of Organizational Behavior, 21, 25-42.

33. Turnley, W. H., Bolino, M. C., and Bloodgood, J. M. (n.d.). The impact of psychological contract fulfilment on the performance of in role and organizational citizenship behavior. Journal of management, 29(2), 187- 206.

34. VakulaKumari, S.V.S. Chauhan. HRM Practices and Employee Retention: A Study on Literature Survey. Asian J. Management 4(1): Jan.-Mar. 2013 page 54-59.

Received on 12.04.2019 Modified on 10.05.2019

Asian Journal of Management. 2019; 10(2):109-114.

DOI: 10.5958/2321-5763.2019.00018.0

Hypotheses	Relationship	Empiricalsupport
H₁	There is a direct relationship between employers’ psychological contract and employees’ psychological contract.	Not supported
H₂	There is a direct relationship between employer’s psychological contract and Organisational commitment .	Supported
H₃	There is a direct relationship between employee’s psychological contract and Organisational commitment.	Supported
H₄	Type of the Organisation will act as a moderator between employer’s psychological contract and employees’ psychological contract.	Government-owned airlines – not supported Private airlines – supported
H₅	Type of the Organisation will act as a moderator between in employer’s psychological contract and organisational commitment.	Supported
H₆	Type of the Organisation will act as a moderator between an employee’s psychological contract and organisational commitment.	Not supported
H₇	Work experience will act as a moderator between employer’s psychological contract and employees’ psychological contract.	Not supported
H₈	Work experience will act as a moderator between employer’s psychological contract and organisational commitment.	Not supported
H₉	Work experience will act as a moderator between an employee’s psychological contract and organisational commitment.	Not supported
H₁₀	Employers’ psychological contract will act as a mediator in the relationship between employee’s psychological contract and organisational commitment.	Not supported