Delving into promises: Conceptually exploring the beliefs constituting the contemporary psychological contract

The psychological contract is used to examine the dynamics of the employee–employer exchange relationship. The dominant contract conceptualisation is that it is constituted by beliefs about ‘explicit’ and ‘implicit’ promises; however, there is a dearth of conceptual investigation regarding how other research fields understand promising and reconciling this with how the notion has come to be used in psychological contract theory. In particular, the notion of implicit promising remains conceptually and empirically underdeveloped, despite forming a key plank of the contemporary account of the contract. This paper explores these issues by presenting a cross-disciplinary review of promising and applying this to how the notion is used in the contract literature. A conceptual model is also developed to provide avenues to investigate how promise beliefs form in a contract context and their outcomes. Finally, research directions are outlined regarding the roles that beliefs other than promises can play in contract theory.