When Employees’ Violated Psychological Contracts Drain Their Inner Psychological Positivity: The Mediating Role of Organizational Cynicism

One type of contracts is psychological and cannot be documented in a written form; however, the failure of their fulfillment is deeply sensed and may lead to drastic psychological implications. In this respect, the current paper attempts to shed light upon the impact of psychological contract violation on psychological capital through the mediating role of organizational cynicism. The paper is an empirical investigation of mixed model based on the psychological contract theory, the negative bias theory, and the appraisal theory, adopting a survey-based design and a quantitative approach of data analysis on a sample of 361 academics working in Egyptian private universities. The results confirm the alternative hypotheses, demonstrating that psychological contract violation impacts psychological capital through the mediation of organizational cynicism. Such evidence delineates the essentiality of attaining psychological contracts for promoting positive psychological repertoires and reducing organizational cynicism.