Organizational Respect as Mediator Between the Ideological Psychological Contract and Workers’ Job Satisfaction: Empirical Findings from the Social Enterprise Sector

Corporate scandals, financial crises, and/or management decisions driven exclusively by shareholders’ interests have led to massive layouts. For-profit organizations and employment relationships based on transactional exchanges have been losing credibility. Hence, non-profit organizations, social enterprises, and ideologically driven work contracts are calling the attention of researchers from different disciplines. This paper presents an empirical research on the psychological ideological contents of the employee–employer relationship. The study was conducted in 19 organizations pertaining to the social enterprise sector. Using an exploratory structural equation modeling, the ideological components of the psychological contract and some of its behavioral and attitudinal consequences were explored. The findings suggest that, within social enterprises, the ideological components of the employee–employer relationship have a positive influence on both perceptions of respect and job satisfaction. Finally, theoretical and practical implications, as well as directions for future research on psychological contracts in the social enterprise sector, are presented.