Psychological contracting making obligations explicit to support a transformative change partnership

The psychological contract comprises the implicit perceptions of mutual obligations that two parties hold towards each other. We examine the creation and maintenance of an explicit psychological contract designed to facilitate a new relationship between senior representatives of five hospitals and senior representatives of their regulator. This ‘new deal’ was created to implement new routines and practices with the aim of transforming the quality and efficiency of care delivery in the NHS. A co-created explicit psychological contract clarified the behavioural principles which were to guide the collaboration. We build on Rousseau et al.’s (2018) dynamic phase model of the psycholocial contract, and use a sensemaking and sensegiving lens to explore the processes related to creation and maintenance of the explicit psychological contract. We draw upon 53 hours of observation and 52 interviews, observed over a period of twenty-four months. Our data evidences how events can disrupt the established psychological contract and how subsequently, both parties attempt to use the disruption to reinstate the relationship. We propose that these disruptions occur because the explicit psychological contract has become implicit, thereby a disruption can serve to pull the psychological contract back into the consciousness, reinforcing the values orginally agreed.