1. Introduction
As per the International Labor Organization’s 8th edition report, the global loss of employees’ working time in the first quarter of 2021 was 4.5%, equivalent to 131 million full-time jobs. According to the 9th edition of the report, the total work time loss in the first quarter of 2022 (compared to the fourth quarter of 2019) decreased to 3.8% (approximately 112 million full-time jobs), which was lower than the previous forecasts (2.4%, or approximately 70 million full-time jobs). The situation badly impacted both low and middle-income economies.
Data from the National Bureau of Statistics of China showed that the registered urban unemployment rate at the end of 2021 was 4%, significantly higher than the 3.6% that was present at the end of 2019 when the COVID-19 pandemic hit the Chinese economy adversely. In the presence of economic instability, many companies have to lay off staff in order to alleviate the current downturn or to cut labor costs via implementing a contraction strategy. The layoffs inevitably cause a great disturbance within the organization, causing unsustainability. The retained employees may have doubts about the development prospects of the organization because of the current turmoil and panic, which may lead them to quit the organization. This would, consequently, deplete the country’s talent pool and impede the organization’s performance.
Numerous studies have explored a positive correlation between psychological contract violations and turnover intentions [
1,
2,
3]. Clinton and Guest [
1] believe that exchange fairness and organizational trust are the mediating effects of the two. Aykan [
2] examined the relationship through the mediating role of loneliness perception in employees. In addition, Turnley and Feldman [
3] verified the intermediary mechanism of this relationship, unmet expectations and job dissatisfaction. The psychological contract is an undisclosed and informal mutual expectation between an organization and its employees [
4]. Psychological contract violations occur when employees believe that their efforts are not proportional to the rewards given by the organization. As a result, employees will be dissatisfied and exhausted in the organization, which reduces their work efficiency and leads them to quitting the job. A range of scholars have explored the positive relationship between psychological contract violations and turnover intention under the shadow of social exchange theory [
5,
6], but some gaps are yet to be explored.
Previous studies on the turnover intention of specific groups have mainly focused on the new generation of employees or certain occupational groups, such as medical staff [
7,
8,
9], and have rarely paid attention to the survivors after layoffs. Unscheduled layoffs will cause survivors to develop “survivor syndrome” [
10], which can make employees narrow-minded, encourage them to violate management principles and perform ineffectively for the organization. These changes will affect employees’ trust in the organization, causing survivors to rethink their careers or even look for a better job during current employment [
11]; this negatively impacts organizational performance. Therefore, it is necessary and worthwhile to find out the causes that shape the turnover intention of survivors, in order to create a sustainable work environment.
Prior studies on psychological contract violation and turnover intention have been based on individual emotional perception, such as emotional loneliness, attitude, such as job satisfaction, and employment relationships in the organization [
2,
3,
12,
13]. Previous studies have verified that psychological contract violation has a positive effect on turnover intention through employee loneliness and job dissatisfaction [
2,
3]. The employment relationships in the organization will affect the psychological contract violation of the employees, and then affect employee behavior, including factors such as turnover intention [
12,
13]. Most of these factors play a partial mediating role in psychological contract violation and turnover intention, so there may be some other variables that can act as a “bridge” between them. Organizational commitment is not only affected by psychological contract violation, but also inhibits individual turnover intention [
14]. Therefore, it is appropriate to study this from the perspective of organizational commitment.
In addition, organizational support can promote the maintenance of psychological contracts between employees and organizations, such as compensation and benefits, working environment, etc. Moreover, when individuals perceive that there is more organizational support, their willingness to leave is weakened [
15]. Thus, organizational support may become a functional condition for organizational commitment, in order to mitigate the impact of psychological contract violation on turnover intention; this forms a moderated mediation model, which needs further research.
As for the mechanism of psychological contract and behavioral outcome variables, such as turnover intention, there are some factors that can moderate the effect; this includes the organizational environment (national cultural background) and the content of the contract breach (relational contract breach or transactional contract breach) [
5,
16]. Suazo and Stone [
17] argued that a “breach” is when an individual anticipates that they have not been rewarded as per promised, and a “violation” is a more severe form that causes individuals to be exhausted and depleted easily. Emotional susceptibility is a steady tendency to perceive pain, stress, and threat, resulting in negative emotions that affect an individual’s cognition and behavior [
18]. Therefore, emotional susceptibility may affect the functional mechanisms of employee turnover intention, but there is a lack of empirical research on this matter.
In what follows, based on social exchange theory, we first explore the impact of psychological contract violation on the turnover intention of survivors after layoffs. Secondly, organizational commitment is introduced as a mediating variable, and the mechanism of psychological contract violation and how it affects turnover intention is explored in depth. Finally, considering the different levels of organizational support and individual emotional susceptibility, we explore the changes in the relationship between psychological contract violations and turnover intentions.
5. Discussion
5.1. Results
Based on social exchange theory, we explored the effect of psychological contract violation on turnover intention, the mediating role of organizational commitment, and the moderating role of organizational support and emotional susceptibility. We obtained the following four findings after analyzing 202 samples. Indeed, earlier empirical investigations uncovered the direct linkage between psychological contract violation and turnover intentions [
13,
20], but this study tried to fill the gap by highlighting the special case of survivor’s turnover intentions. First, psychological contract violation positively predicts the turnover intention of survivors. Second, organizational commitment completely mediates the relationship between psychological contract violation and turnover intention. Additionally, the incorporation of a mediator provides a strong basis to understand the theoretical reasoning. Third, the study findings reveal that emotional susceptibility does not moderate the relationship between psychological contract violation and organizational commitment at the first stage. The possible reasons include the fact that empathy can make employees affected by the emotions of others, and such emotions are transient and unreal [
39]. Fourth, the mediating role of organizational commitment on turnover intention is moderated by organizational support. In addition, the data used in our study were collected three months after layoffs, so the effect of susceptibility may be negligible, and it may have little effect on the relationship between psychological contract violation and organizational commitment.
5.2. Theoretical Implications
There are three main aspects to the theoretical contributions of our research: Firstly, our research explored the full mediating role of organizational commitment between psychological contract violation and turnover intention. Existing studies have focused on factors such as the organization and the relationship between superiors and subordinates. Although some studies have explored the relationship between psychological contract violation and organizational commitment, as well as the relationship between organizational commitment and turnover intention, few studies have put these three into one model. Organizational commitment is closely related to psychological contract violation and turnover intention, and it is necessary to explain the relationship among them to develop a sustainable work environment. Our study established and tested theoretical models of these three variables, and the results demonstrate that organizational commitment fully mediates the relationship between psychological contract violation and organizational commitment. It not only enriches the research on the mediating mechanism of psychological contract violation and its impact on turnover intention, but also improves the formation mechanism of turnover intention.
Secondly, we explored the moderating effect of organizational support on the mediating effect of organizational commitment. In previous studies, organizational support was a moderating variable between psychological contract violation and behavioral variables [
17]. A large number of studies have proved that there are mediating variables between psychological contract violation and behavioral variables, but no moderated mediation model has been verified. The establishment of H3 in our study verifies the moderating role of organizational support on the mediating effect of organizational commitment, and improves the mechanism of psychological contract violation and turnover intention.
Finally, we conducted research on survivors after layoffs. Survivors differ from other employees in their psychological state, which will lead to negative emotions, confusion, insecurity and distrust towards the organization due to layoffs [
40]. These changes in survivors will affect their cognition and behavior. The previous theories used to explain turnover intention may not be suitable for explaining the behavior of survivors leaving the organization. Therefore, our study broadens the application of turnover intention research to a certain extent. In addition, there are relatively few studies on the attitudes and behaviors of survivors in China. The research on the turnover intention of survivors not only enriches the research on the turnover mechanism, but it also helps to deepen the understanding of survivors, resulting in a sustainable work environment.
5.3. Practical Implications
The findings of the present study show that there are certain guiding insights for management practice. First, the organization should try its best to completely fulfill its commitments. According to the fairness theory, when employees believe that the reward given by the organization is not proportional to what they pay, they will feel unfairly treated, and then their efforts will be reduced [
41]. From the perspective of the psychological contract, when employees’ feel that the organization has not rewarded them with what they deserve, it will lead to psychological contract violation; this results in negative emotions, such as dissatisfaction and distrust, towards the organization, which will affect an individual’s job performance. When negative emotions reach a “threshold”, the employees cannot work normally and choose to leave. Therefore, it is necessary for organizational practitioners to provide timely incentives to their employees and implement a fair evaluation system for all individuals.
Second, the organization should pay attention to the needs of employees and give them adequate support. When organizations give individuals enough support, they will feel valued and trusted by the organization. Giving a unique identity to the individuals improves interpersonal relationships, which ultimately benefits the organization in the long term. Even if employees feel that the business has failed to fulfill their commitments in some aspects, which lowers their organizational commitment, they will not have high turnover intentions because they will see these “episodes” as occasional and, therefore, the employee will not be driven to leave.
Third, the organization should pay attention to the feelings of the employees. Emotional commitment is part of organizational commitment. Organizations can deepen emotional commitment between employees and the organization by establishing constructive emotional care initiatives to create a sustainable work environment. Organizations stimulate positivity among individuals by providing support from top management in their difficult times. An individual will be willing to stay in the organization and work hard to achieve organizational goals due to this deep feeling. Organizational scholars should arrange friendly talks with employees, in order to listen to their ongoing issues and give them suitable solutions; this ultimately creates a strong bond between the employee and the employer.
Furthermore, for survivors, the organization should adopt a softer and more flexible management method, and redesign employees’ work content and career development plans. In addition, active communication with the staff is necessary, in order to understand their psychological needs and eliminate their negative emotions. Furthermore, it is important to guide individuals to rationally view the changes in pay and remuneration caused by the epidemic. This can create an atmosphere of mutual understanding between the organization and the staff, increase their confidence in the organization, and enhance their willingness to stay.
5.4. Limitations and Future Research
Finally, there are also some limitations in our research: (a) The data used in this study are cross-sectional, which may lead to the results being affected by a common method bias. Future research could use a longitudinal design to verify whether the results change over time. Future studies may collect data from different sources and use a multi-wave approach to remove bias issues. (b) The samples of our study are mainly young women, and we can continue to investigate the generalizability of the test results for middle-aged and elderly samples in the future. (c) The studied framework in this research can be integrated in other industries, regions and countries, which may lead to the uncovering of potential factors that cause negative behaviors i.e., turnover intention in the context of downsizing. (d) The study incorporated only one organization due to a shortage of resources and time; therefore, future scholars may integrate other sectors to generalize the findings.