The Power of Reciprocity: Horizontal Psychological Contracts and Group Functioning

This study examines a horizontal psychological contract (HPC) perspective to clarify the relationships between group members. By studying new forms of organizing through collaboration in the farming industry, we collected interview data from 12 joint operations (groups) to investigate three research questions about HPCs: their content, state, and outcomes. First, we found that the content of HPCs is both task and relational oriented, with several sub-themes pertaining to each dimension. Second, we found that the state of HPCs in terms of breach and fulfillment is related to HPC content—that is, task-oriented HPCs are typically breached more often than relational-oriented HPCs. Finally, we found that relational-oriented (vs. task-oriented) contracts and fulfilled (vs. breached) contracts are both strongly associated with good cooperation, high commitment, high team viability, and, to some extent, high performance. We discuss the results and the potential implications of the HPC perspective.