This research examines how non-financial breaches of psychological contracts affect the migration intentions of healthcare professionals via employee well-being, considering emotional resilience as a moderating factor in this indirect relationship.
The survey design adopted (explanatory quantitative survey) was used to sample 572 healthcare providers in three teaching hospitals in Ghana. The hypothesised relationships were analysed using partial least-squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM).
Psychological contract breach has a significant positive effect on migration intentions, with this relationship operating indirectly through reduced psychological, social and workplace well-being. Furthermore, emotional resilience buffers the adverse effects of psychological contract breach on well-being and attenuates the indirect relationship with migration intentions.
This study represents one of the first to empirically test a multidimensional well-being mediation model that relates non-financial psychological contract breaches to migration intentions in the context of a health system in Africa. The study combines a detailed analysis of well-being decomposition with conditional process analyses of emotional resilience and uses data from teaching hospitals across three ecological zones in Ghana to provide new theoretical evidence and cost-effective interventions that could inform retention strategies in similar low-resource settings.
