From “getting” to “giving”: Exploring age-related differences in perceptions of and reactions to psychological contract balance

We assess how age relates to the degree of balance in volunteers' psychological contracts (PCs). Research on PCs treating age as a substantive variable remains scarce in the literature. Nonetheless, this seems important in light of the increasing age-diversity in the voluntary workforce, as several theories suggest that younger and older individuals may prefer different degrees of balance in their PC. Moreover, previous studies have empirically shown that age in?uences how people respond to other aspects of the PC, such as breach and ful?llment. We hypothesize that volunteers perceive di?erent levels of PC imbalance depending upon their age. More speci?cally, we argue that older volunteers tend to perceive organization under-obligation while younger volunteers tend to perceive organization over-obligation. In addition, we hypothesize that age moderates the e?ects of PC imbalance on the intention to stop volunteering in an organization. We use polynomial regressions and response surface analysis to examine survey-data of 401 volunteers. Our results support our hypotheses, thus emphasizing the importance of including individual di?erences, such as age, in future research on PC balance.