What do we measure and how do we elicit it? The case for the use of repertory grid technique in multi-party psychological contract research

The psychological contract is a multi-faceted construct and, with the rise of gig work, increasingly the contract extends beyond the conventional employer-employee relationship to encompass multi-party exchanges. Against this backdrop, the question of what should be measured when assessing the contract and how it should be elicited remains a significant issue for scholars. We argue that the potential of psychological contract theory as an explanatory lens in understanding contemporary multi-party working relationships is constrained by two key limitations inherent in conventional measurement approaches. Firstly, such approaches have favoured singular rather than multiparty perspectives, and secondly, they have broadly accorded equal weight and significance to the content dimensions unearthed, despite the fact that they may differ markedly in how they are understood by each party to the employment relationship. In order to remedy these shortcomings, we make the case for adopting repertory grid technique as a methodological framework to address measurement limitations and to more rigorously assess the content of the complex multi-party psychological contract