At first sight of this book, it did cross my mind to wonder quite how 235 pages could be meaningfully filled on the topic of the psychological contract. It has always seemed to me to be an important, but slightly peripheral topic in the field of employee relations, induction and workplace socialisation. Clearly though, there is plenty of worthwhile material on the area and Wellin is convincing, to me at least, in his efforts to upgrade the notion of the psychological contract to something far more central to organisational success.
Wellin starts by acknowledging my view of the somewhat peripheral nature of the psychological contract, by rueing that it is too often implicit, left to chance and thus resulting in misunderstanding, stress, lower commitment and performance. Wellin peppers his assertions with examples and case studies which help to illustrate his idea of the psychological contract being a “personal deal” at work (a deal that can also apply between employees, with team leaders and between colleagues as well as between the employer and employee). In fact, getting across this notion of the personal deal is one of his three objectives for writing this book; the other two objectives are to present case studies of how the personal deal has been used to enhance organisational performance and to provide practical tools that readers can use to enhance personal deals in their own organisations.
Wellin does meet his self‐proclaimed objectives well. Within his introductory material, he explains in detail why the psychological contract/personal deal matters, how they help us understand how people react and behave and the concepts of “engagement” and “alignment” in relation to the whole issue. Chapter 2 moves into more descriptive territory, outlining the various psychological contracts or implied contracts of some well‐known organisations such as Pret a Manger and Ernst & Young. Chapter 3 takes a closer look at the “personal deal” by examining a fictitious encounter with a restaurant waiter.
From Chapter 4 onwards, the book focuses on how the personal deal operates in practice. This includes outlining pre‐employment and recruitment steps as well as socialisation procedures for securing and building a personal deal. Different types of personal deal are discussed, ranging across the dimensions of rational, intuitive, stability and change. The psychological contracts of three real‐life companies are examined and compared before moving on (in Chapter 8) to discuss using the personal deal to improve leadership effectiveness and to change the organisational culture (Chapter 9). The next two chapters look at the practicalities of shaping personal deals from the two perspectives of HR and from a personal point of you as an employee.
The final chapter (chapter 12) views the whole personal deal concept from a very different angle, that of the behaviourist approach and in particular, Transactional Analysis. This turns out to be an excellent framework for understanding personal deals and psychological contracts which ends the book very neatly.
Overall, this is an interesting text for managers or HR practitioners who have some vague notion of the psychological contract but have never, perhaps, fully crystallised their thoughts on the who idea. It is a fairly readable book, though not necessarily good entertainment for a long train journey. But, a must for those who wish to pay more than lip service to the oft‐neglected concept of the psychological contract.
