If the psychological contract is changing as current research appears to suggest, what are the organisational implications for managing the psychological contract in the future?

The psychological contract needs careful management; although it is unwritten it remains a highly influential aspect of the employment relationship. In flatter, delayered organisations with limited opportunities for career progression and the absence of any guarantee of a job for life, attaining and maintaining employee commitment becomes increasingly more challenging for management. To manage the psychological contract in the future, organisations need to offer ‘realistic job previews’ to new entrants, recognise the impact of change on those remaining and ‘invest in the survivors’, change the management style to push towards cross-functional teamwork, design tasks and structures to allow employees to feel a sense of accomplishment and develop their skills to increase their own ‘employability security’, create a new kind of commitment through the creation of meaning and values between employees, not just from a top-down mission statement, be attentive to the need to balance work and other aspects of life and be continuous in communication with employees.
For further reading, see the work of Jean Hiltrop.