Psychological contract and wellbeing of the UK Higher Education academics during the covid-19 prompted remote working

Abstract

The main aim of the research is to examine the psychological contract of the remotely working Higher Education academics during the pandemic restrictions imposed in the UK. More specifically, the research revealed the psychological contract content for the educational context and expanded the concept by introducing the hypothesis of value-based relationships within the psychological contract construct under the study. In addition, the wellbeing implications during the enforced lockdown measures are also studied in conjunction with the PC concept. Thus, the research addresses an identified gap to study the impact of the enforced remote working on the academics’ psychological contract. The unprecedented impact of the COVID-19 on accelerating the digital transition of the education substantiates the originality and novelty of the paper. The psychological contract theory offers a relevant and comprehensive framework for investigating the impact of this sudden and forced immersion with technology-enabled forms of working within a HE setting which has never been undertaken before. The study adopted phenomenological approach and used 30 qualitative semistructured interviews as the dominant method of data collection. This method has been enhanced by the Likert-scale questionnaires which allowed, among other things, to explore the topics in advance to facilitate deeper examination during the interviews. The methodological strategy utilised corresponds to the underlying phenomenon, which is also individual in nature, and therefore fits perfectly with the PC framework. The research provides empirical insights into the remote working arrangements and the changes they can bring about in the psychological contract of the academic employees. The findings suggest that the academics’ PC must be considered through the expanded ideology-infused framework as the traditional transactional and relational approaches are not able to reflect the depth of the PC revealed which is being established to have an ideological nature. The other major conclusions can be summarised by the detailed PC content developed as a result of the qualitative inquiry and wellbeing implications for the PC.