Bouncing back from psychological contract breach: How commitment recovers over time

The post-violation model of the psychological contract outlines four ways in which a psychological contract may be resolved after breach (i.e., psychological contract thriving, reactivation, impairment, and dissolution). To explore the implications of this model for post-breach restoration of organizational commitment, we recorded dynamic patterns of organizational commitment across a fine-grained longitudinal design in a sample of young academics who reported breach events while undergoing job changes (N = 109). By tracking organizational commitment up until 10 weeks after the first reported breach event, we ascertain that employees may indeed bounce back from a breach incidence, albeit that some employees do so more successfully than others. We further demonstrate that the emotional impact of the breach and post-breach perceived organizational support are related to the success of the breach resolution process. Additionally, we reveal a nonlinear component in post-breach trajectories of commitment that suggests that processes determining breach resolution success are more complex than currently assumed.