“Influence of psychological contract fulfillment on job outcomes: A case of the academic sphere in Jordan”

Changes in the economy, politics, competitors, customers, and even the weather affect the trust relationship between employers and employees. Most organizations are striving to strengthen such relationships by focusing on psychological contract fulfillment that allows for trust leading to job stability and career advancement. An integrated framework was used to investigate the role of psychological contract fulfillment on academic employees in two Jordanian universities (Yarmouk and Jadara Universities). The research area is determined in universities due to a breach of psychological con- tracts. Using a quantitative method, responses from academic employees were collect-ed to examine their perception of the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on job outcomes. Hypotheses were tested using the partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) method on data gathered from 90 academic employees. The findings indicated that psychological contract fulfillment positively influences both employee productivity and satisfaction. In addition, the results revealed that psycho- logical contract fulfillment negatively influences employee turnover. Furthermore, the study findings have managerial implications through enhancing organizational citi- zenship behavior that leads to increased employee productivity and satisfaction.


INTRODUCTION
Psychological contract fulfillment (PCF) refers to the expectations in the relationship between employer and employee, such as reciprocal pledges and obligations, expectations of gains and duties, and sanctions and incentives connected with such expectations (van Den Heuvel et al., 2017). It is also defined as promises of self-commitment to a future transaction required to maintain the employer-employee relationship (Conway et al., 2011). Unfortunately, the concept of psychological contract is an aspect that has been frequently disregarded by firms (Shi & Gordon, 2020). Moreover, such firms are sometimes apprehensive since the correct implementation of psychological contracts can be costly, and determining a specific ROI is challenging to evaluate. Therefore, organizations must review their employees' psychological contracts to effectively attain their goals (Herrera & Las Heras-Rosas, 2021).
Psychological contract fulfillment depends on employee wishes and expectations regarding promotion, remuneration, training, job stability, and career advancement. It can also influence to a greater extent if an employee is willing to work extra hours, volunteer, or be patriotic at work (Birtch et al., 2016). An employee's psychological contract can assist a corporation in examining con-

Psychological contract fulfillment
Psychological contracts refer to a written contract that consists of a set of obligations between employees and the organization to which both parties are supposed to owe each other (Turnley et al., 2003). The fulfillment of a psychological contract is one of the main issues influencing employee behavior, where better fulfillment of the psychological contract in the relationship between employer and employee leads to a positive influence on employee performance (Al-Gasawneh et al., 2022; Sachdeva, 2022). Thus, fulfillment of a psychological contract is related to behavior toward the organization more than a behavior of citizenship toward their colleagues (Bataineh et al., 2017;Wibowo, 2022). Furthermore, such fulfillment can occur through management tools like performance evaluations that help continuously improve employees' performance through a periodic review of individual achievements (Newaz et al., 2021).
On the other hand, several empirical studies reported that breaching a psychological contract is one of the primary reasons influencing workers' performance (Amoah et al., 2021; Gulzar et al., 2021;Said et al., 2021). The breach of a psychological contract occurs when the fulfillment of one of the obligations interferes with a psychological contract between employer and employee, which leads to adverse consequences influencing satisfaction and mutual trust (Jayaweera et al., 2021). It also negatively affects the behavior of workers through continuous absenteeism and neglect of job duties, which may lead to increased employee turnover (Hammouri et al., 2015;Liu et al., 2020).
This study examines the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on employee turnover, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity. Therefore, the paper adopted the social exchange theory, as several empirical studies confirmed the effectiveness of such a theory in explaining the relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and the three proposed constructs. ). In addition, the breach of the psychological contract is negatively related to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, confidence in the organization, task performance, and citizenship behavior. It is positively related to employee turnover intentions (Ampofo, 2021).
Most organizations are striving to meet their employees' expectations. Therefore, if there is a high commitment from the employer in relation to its employee in terms of promises, employees will feel that they are obligated to fulfill the terms of the contract, and the employer will also feel that they should be obligated to fulfill the terms of that contract (

Impact of psychological contract fulfillment on employee satisfaction
Workers feel a sense of work insecurity when they believe they may lose their jobs in the future (Almaaitah et al., 2021; Hammouri & Abu-Shanab, 2017). Employees concerned about job security have a stressful existence at home and work (Soelton et al., 2019). Two types of job insecurity include quantitative and qualitative job insecurities (Hellgren et al., 1999). Quantitative job insecurity relates to the loss of a job, whereas qualitative job insecurity refers to the loss of specific employment characteristics (Long et al., 2022). Quantitative job insecurity is concerned with the construct's overall conceptualization. In contrast, qualitative job insecurity is concerned with the perceptions of potential loss in the employment relationships, such as deterioration of working conditions, lack of career advancement, and low levels of salary improvement (Fischmann et al., 2021).
The psychological contract fulfillment is an effective strategy that has a favorable impact on the employee-employer relationship. As a result, a psychological contract between an employee and employer must be activated (Rao, 2021). This would overcome many of the consequences employers may face in dealing with employees so that it goes beyond just employees' job satisfaction to the employees' organizational engagement. In this regard, Milanović et al. (2018) found that fulfillment of psychological contracts between employees and employers leads to a positive impact on employees' behavior, as it increases the probability of their satisfaction with their organization. It also drives them to achieve their duties effectively (

AIM AND HYPOTHESES DEVELOPMENT
The aim of this study is to explore the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on academic employees in Jordanian universities. Based on the literature review, the current study formulated the following hypotheses: H1: Psychological contract fulfillment negatively affects employee turnover.
H2: Psychological contract fulfillment positively affects employee satisfaction.
H3: Psychological contract fulfillment positively affects employee productivity.

METHODOLOGY
This study explored the literature and attempted to demonstrate the factors influenced by the psychological contract fulfillment. The previous discussion explained the relationship between the fulfillment of a psychological contract and job outcomes, including employee turnover, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity. To va lidate the proposed research model of this study, a self-administered questionnaire was employed to collect data. The questionnaire comprised three sections. It begins with an explanation for the respondents about the objectives of the study. The second section is developed to collect respondents' demographic data. The last section included 18 items to collect data about the independent and dependent variables. Respondents were asked to evaluate the level of agreement with the proposed items based on a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1 = strongly disagree to 5 = strongly agree. All the questionnaire items used for predicting the research constructs were adopted from previous studies (Nayak et

Demographic data
Of the total respondents, 70% were men, and 30% were women. The majority of them were between the age groups 35-45 years (51.2%). In addition, most participants (78.9%) have completed a bachelor's degree. Table 1 shows the demographics of the sample used.  The Fornell-Larcker and cross-loadings criteria were applied to measure the constructs' discriminate validity. According to the Fornell-Larcker criterion, the value of square root of AVE should be greater than the correlation values among all constructs, while the cross-loading stipulates that the loading of each construct must be greater than all cross-loadings (Fornell & Larcker, 1981). Table  3 shows that all values support the discriminant validity of the measurement based on the Fronell-Larcker (in bold) and cross-loadings.

Structural model
The structural model results are shown in Table 4 and graphically described in Figure 1 and Figure 2. The psychological contract fulfillment was found to be a significant predictor of minimizing the rate of employee turnover (β = 0.679, p < 0.05). Therefore, H1 was supported. Both employee satisfaction (β = 0.620, p < 0.05) and employee productivity (β = 0.650, p < 0.05) were affected positively when the fulfillment of the psychological contract by organizations. Thus, H2 and H3 were supported.

DISCUSSION
The study's findings suggest the following two significant findings. First, there is a significant relationship between psychological contract fulfillment and employee turnover in Jordanian universities. Thus, H1 was supported. Moreover, Table 4 demonstrated that the relationship is statistically significant, where the t-test and p-value of 3.072 and 0.000, respectively. The result depicts that psychological contract fulfillment influences the intention of employees to sustain in working within their organizations, thus leading to minimizing employee turnover. Second, the findings indicated that both employee satisfaction and employee productivity were positively influenced by the psychological contract fulfillment. Therefore, H2 and H3 were supported. Such findings are statistically confirmed where the p-values in both relations were 0.000 and the t-test of 3.974 and 3.915, respectively. These findings correspond with previous empirical studies conducted by Ahmad and Zafar (2018) and Rubab et al. (2021). This result supports the suggestion that when employees recognize that an effective psychological contract fulfillment meets their needs, it will make them more satisfied and improve their job productivity.

CONCLUSIONS
This study aims to explore the influence of psychological contract fulfillment on employees' turnover rate, employee satisfaction, and employee productivity in Jordanian academic institutions. Psychological contract fulfillment has a negative impact on employee turnover. Such a finding implies that Jordanian universities should implement their obligations promise to their academic employees to decrease turnover rates. In addition, the findings indicated that the fulfillment of psychological contracts has a positive and significant effect on employee satisfaction and employee productivity. These results provide recommendations for university management to adhere to the fulfillment of psychological contracts that drive academic employees to be more satisfied and productive. Therefore, decision-makers should endeavor to show high-level fulfillment of psychological contracts that ensure organizational citizenship behavior and boost the opportunities for workers to use their skills to attain organizational objectives. Finally, such outcomes will help the universities through a higher degree of job satisfaction and favorable organizational citizenship behavior, which in turn will help in employee retention and increase employee productivity.