Does psychological contract breach have an influence on organization citizenship behavior? A mediating and moderating role of cynicism and abusive supervision

Article history: Received 21 October 2019 Received in revised form 15 January 2020 Accepted 21 January 2020 The purpose of this research was to examine the impact of perceived contract breach (PCB) on organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and to analyze the mediating role of employee cynicism (EC). We also analyzed the moderating role of abusive supervision on the relationship between PCB and OCB, PCB, and EC as well as EC and OCB. Data was collected from 349 respondents from different industries of service and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan. We analyze the direct effects using regression and Hayes PROCESS macro was used to measure indirect moderation, mediation effects. The results of our analysis supported our hypothesis. We investigated the significant positive influence of PCB on EC and the negative effect of EC on OCB and PCB on OCB. EC partially mediates the relationship between PCB and OCB. The study investigated partial moderation of abusive supervision in the relationship between PCB and EC. Interesting results of partial moderation revealed that AS reduces the negative effects of PCB and cynicism on OCB, which shows that employees were forced to take part in supporting activities other than their job duties. In future researches, this model can be investigated under a longitudinal method of data collected for the robustness of data and other positive leadership dimensions can be used as a moderator to see the influence of negative work experience on citizenship behavior.


Introduction
*The psychological contract (PC) can be explained as a trade of corresponding liabilities, which arises as a result of internally or externally commitments between the boss and employees (Rousseau, 2001). Consequently, PCs were formed when employees believed that future benefits are promised by the organization, workers contribute their efforts, and expecting promised future benefits will be provided. It formulates the present and future relationships between them. It is viewed as a critical build in organizational behavior literature, employees who think that their employer is not fulfilling their obligations, it develops a sense of contract breach (can develop a sense of emotional and affective reaction) in their minds (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). When an employee's experiences increases, their expectations from the organization were also increases (Aziz et al., 2017a). When these expectations or commitments were breached by the organization or employer, it results in the Psychological contract breach. In the past, employers were considered to be a guardian of employee's carrier; they help employees in planning and provide a guideline for a better future. Now due to perceived contract breach, employees become responsible for their carrier. Williams et al. (2002) defined organization citizenship behavior as an intentional involvement of employees besides their regular job duties. They participate when they expect fair treatment in the organization. When employees predict employer's failure of fulfillment of psychological contracts, they less or not participate in helping others (Robinson and Morrison, 2000). It develops a sense of disappointment, which is known as employee cynicism. Cynicism is the feeling of betrayal that rises due to breach of psychological contract by the employer (Özler and Atalay, 2011). Employee possesses cynical behavior can be a barrier in the accomplishment of organizational goals. In organizational behavior studies, one important construct was also investigated named as "Abusive supervision." Abusive supervision was defined by (Tepper, 2000), the participation of the leader in hostile behavior both as verbally and nonverbally.
The research gap was proposed in the study of Aziz et al. (2017a) which suggested to use perceived contract breach as a predictor and abusive supervision as moderator. Moreover, Aziz et al. (2017a) conducted their study on the service sector, and they suggested conducting a study on the manufacturing sector as well to generalize results. In the meta-analysis of Chiaburu et al. (2013), they used cynicism as the mediator between PCB and job satisfaction or with other individual job attitudes and behavior but not explored it as mediator. They mentioned in future research to use cynicism as a mediator to explore it with the help of primary studies. Thus, due to the research mentioned above gap of meta-analysis, we are testing PCB influence on OCB with the mediation of employee cynicism and abusive supervision as a moderator mentioned as a gap in the study of Aziz et al. (2017a) on service and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan.
In this era of modernization, organizations are facing numerous problems like abusive supervision, cultural problems, fulfilling employee's expectations, etc. One of the serious problems is the fulfillment of the employee's expectations. Employment contains a series of continuous expectations and contributions (Morrison and Robinson, 1997). In accordance with Rousseau's psychological contract theory (Rousseau, 1995), there are mutual expectations between employer and employee. When these PCs were not fulfilled, they refrain from helping others. As a result, cynicism occurs. The purpose of this study is to investigate whether infringement of psychological expectations on organization citizenship behavior and to analyze the mediating role of employee cynicism. It helps us to know when employees were not getting their promised benefits from the organization, how this emotion shapes their citizenship behavior in the presence of cynicism. In different studies, cynicism is mostly analyzed as a criterion variable, and we examine it as a mediator between PCB and OCB. We also examine the moderating influence of abusive supervision on the relationship of PCB and AS, PCB and OCB, and AS and OCB. It also investigates PCB as an antecedent of employee cynicism and its impact on citizenship behavior.

Organization citizenship behavior
Organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) is a concept that was first formulated in the 1980s. According to Organ (1988), OCB is a non-compulsory behavior that is not considered by a reward system. It enhances the working system of the organization. In addition, OCB plays a role in the upgrading of organizational culture that enhances its task performance (Organ, 1997). In past studies, the researcher had done work on different taxonomies of OCB, but they were not consistent. Organ (1988) suggested different taxonomies of OCB composed of altruism (e.g., conduct to help specific person in up close and personal circumstances), consciousness (e.g., detached conduct), sportsmanship (e.g., not grumble about little affair), courtesy (e.g., conferring with colleagues before making a move) and civic virtue (e.g., staying aware of issues that impact on institution). Most of the researchers investigate these five taxonomies in their studies (Podsakoff et al., 2000). These are used as the reason for OCB estimation in numerous researches.
According to Williams et al. (2002), employees of the organization involve in OCB when they have a positive perception of equitable treatment of the organization. When employees feel that their expectations are not fulfilled by the organization, they are not more interested in performing extrarole (Robinson and Morrison, 2000). Nevertheless, it is imagined that OCB is identified with job satisfaction, leader collaboration, and unbiasedness (Chiu and Tsai, 2006;LePine et al., 2002). Employees who are satisfied and dedicated towards their job they perform an extra role and help others to complete their tasks (Aziz et al., 2017a).

Perceived contract breech
There is a developing group of studies on Psychological or perceived contract breach (Lo and Aryee, 2003;Robinson and Morrison, 2000). A perceived contract is the belief of employees on the organization for exchange (fulfillment of needs) in return for his/her efforts (Rousseau, 1995). Psychological contract (PC), as a matter of fact, is the impression of the employee towards the organization, what he/she is obligated to organization and organization obligated to them (Robinson, 1996). PCs perform two main functions (Alcover et al., 2017). First, it explains the relationship between concern parties, and secondly, it explains the expectations that both have from each other. So, we can say PC explains the effort that an employer receives, and in return for these efforts, the reward paid to the employees. Morrison and Robinson (1997) investigated that workers of firms are less inclined to believe that bosses are fulfilling their commitment and duties. Conventional psychological contracts are formed on the basis of faithfulness and exertion of employer stability, carrier growth and foreseeable pay framework are said to provide more delicate connection in which corresponding commitments are less sure, and desire of mutual advantages are less prone to be figured it out (Turnley et al., 2003). In condition, where employees feel that their expectations are not consummate by the organization, this feeling can lead to many negative outcomes like cynicism, demolishing OCB, decreasing job satisfaction (Coyle-Shapiro, 2002;Robinson, 1996;Robinson and Morrison, 2000).

Abusive supervision
Scholars are interested in examining the behavior of institution governorships from the top leadership to lower management. It was about 17 years ago when Tepper (2000) first time initiated construct abusive supervision. Tepper (2000) suggested abusive supervision as a construct in which subordinate perceive that their leaders are engaged in threating verbal and non-verbal practices, barring physical contact, and sometimes boss operationalize abusive supervision by doing belligerent acts (abusing employees, shouting at them, staring female employees, undermining workers for their work security and advancement, etc.). Abusive supervision is an individual evaluation that is indicated by their perception. Accordingly, this recognition might be changed by changing conditions and identities. The continuous aggression which came to be a part of supervisor personality is abusive supervision (Aziz et al., 2017a). Temporary negative behavior cannot be considered as abusive supervision. Tepper (2000) investigated that sometimes abusive behavior of supervisor is affiliated to temporary subjectivity. A manager may have an abusive behavior with someone because of its bad mode and sometimes leaders use this behavior to fulfill task given to employees (Tepper, 2007). The absence of pertinent academic regard for this issue is vague, abusive behavior has consequences for outcome that have been connected with one been the objective of bad supervisory conduct.

Employee cynicism
Cynicism is a behavior of cynic employee regarding his working organization and is probably going to affect practices coordinated towards the association. According to Dean et al. (1998), employee cynicism is affiliated with "the expression of strong criticism of the organization." In simple words, a worker who is skeptical about their manager tends to use the bad word about their institution. Wilkerson (2002) investigated employee cynicism as a worker's negative behavior towards the culture, management, policies, and procedures of their working organization. The cynical feelings develop in the employee because he/she feels that all these things are working against his/her interest or his/her work is not valued by the organization (Aziz et al., 2017a;Wanous et al., 2000;2004). According to Dean et al. (1998), cynicism has threelevels. At first, the employee thought that his manager is not honest, then he starts affecting the organization, and lastly, he starts using bad work about the institution. The previous studies also investigated cynicism as a lifestyle, and sometimes it occurs become of stressing job routine (Ozgener, 2008;Wanous et al., 1994). This attitude of employees reduces employee's performance and engages them in politics that can affect the overall performance of the organization (Wanous et al., 1994).

Perceived contract breach and organization citizenship
Perceived contract breach (PCB) was first introduced by Argyris (1960) and Levinson et al. (1962). Now, after 50 years, researchers have taken an interest in PCB. The main reason which was identified as taking an interest in this construct is the changing attitude of workers because of dynamic organizational policies like cost-cutting strategies (Herriot et al., 1997). These organizational changes were viewed as a cause of perceived contract breach that is made by the organization with employees. When psychological contracts were breach, it reduces the motivation level of employees, and as a result, employees reduce their collaboration with others (Herriot et al., 1997). Thus:

H1: PCB has a negative effect on OCB
In previous studies, PCB has opposite relation with OCB (Morrison and Robinson, 1997;Robinson, 1996) and EC has a positive relation with PCB (Chiaburu et al., 2013) and EC has a negative relationship with OCB (Evans et al., 2010). Researchers also investigated the positive effect of EC (Brandes and Das, 2006). These mixed empirical findings need to be investigated further. PCB results in terms of EC and EC have mixed results found in previous studies. It shows that the mediating role of EC can reduce or increase the effect of PCB on OCB. Thus we proposed: H2: EC plays a mediating role between PCB and OCB

Perceived contract breach and employee cynicism
Employees working in an organization have some expectations towards the institution. Every employee wants that their expectations and skills are valued by the organizations. When it does not happen, it develops the feeling of betrayal, and employees think that the organization is short of integrity. As a result, employees have cynical behavior towards the organization (Byrne and Hochwarter, 2008). In previous studies, many researchers have studied the micro and macro effects of institutional changing policies on psychological contracts. These studies use outsourcing and downsizing effect to investigate the psychological contracts (Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald, 2008;Koh et al., 2004). When institutions use these strategies to reduce their cost, it violates the promises made by them with their employees, which becomes a cause of employee cynicism. Thus: H3: PCB is positively related to EC

Employee cynicism and organization citizenship behavior
In the recent history of the corporation, scandals like Enron, WorldCom have developed a cynical perception of employees regarding their working organization. The consequences of these scandals result in massive downsizing, reformulating organizational policies, restructuring institutions. (Ågerfalk and Fitzgerald, 2008;Koh et al., 2004). The repercussion of these strategies may understand to the worker the sort of cerebral contract infringement that Andersson (1996) suggested, is a basic source of cynicism. Employees who have cynical behavior speak badly about the organization's policies, mangers, its culture and not take part in supportive work. This cynical behavior has a negative relation with OCB (Wanous et al., 2000;Wilkerson, 2002). Thus: H4: EC is negatively related to OCB Suazo et al. (2005) investigated the psychological contract role with various constructs. They investigated the negative role of PCB with citizenship behavior and they also found a positive role between PCB and cynical behavior (quit professional obligations). When organizations failed to manage commitments made by them with their employees, it results in the cynical behavior of employees and they don't participate in helping others (Evans et al., 2010). In the relation of PCB and ECN, more abusive supervision hides the effect of cynicism (Aziz et al., 2017b). It is investigated that abusive supervision reduces the effect of PCB on OCB and cynicism effect on OCB. It means that under more abusive supervision, employees were forced to take part in extra work other than their job duties. In previous investigations, abusive supervision (AS) has a positive relationship with employee cynicism (ECN) and perceived contract breach (Zhang and Bednall, 2016). Researchers found the inverse relationship of AS with OCB (Saks and Ashforth, 1997). Thus, on the basis of the above studies, we proposed following the moderating relationship of AS:

Moderating role of abusive supervision
H5: AS have moderating role between PCB and ECN H6: AS have moderating role between ECN and OCB H7: AS have moderating role between PCB and OCB

Hypothetical framework
The main objective of this paper is to investigate the mediating relationship of employee cynicism (Fig. 1)

Population and sampling design
This study investigates the above-discussed construct in the service and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan. The population of this study composed of both sectors, which include firms of various industries like manufacturing, transport, banking, education, telecom, etc. in industrial cities like Lahore, Gujranwala, Sialkot, Rawalpindi, and Faisalabad. The purpose behind including the service sector with manufacturing is its increasing contribution to the economy of Pakistan (MOF, 2016). In this study, we adopted a positivism research paradigm, which shows that outcomes were not transformed. The method of this research is quantitative and to collect a cross-sectional data time horizon is chosen. To conduct this study researcher used a convenient sampling technique because of a lack of time and money and by adopting this technique, sample cases were easily taken.

Participants
In this research, we get responses from professional employees working in a different institution of service and manufacturing sectors of Pakistan. For this purpose, we have collected data from 337 employees out of which 258 (76.6%) were male and 79 (23.4%) were male. In this sample size 86 (25.5%) respondents were less than 24 years of age, 213(63.2%) a large part of the sample were in the age of 25-34 years, 30 (8.9%) respondents were in age group of 35-44 and 8 (2.4%) were above than 44 years. Data we have collected consists of people having different experiences. In this research from 337 respondents, 134 (39.8%) participants possess experience less than a year, 68 (20.2%) have experience of 2-3 years, 49 (14.5%) hold experience of 4-5 years, 42 (12.5%) respondents were of 6-7 experience years, 21 (6.2%) were of 8-10 years of experience and 23 (6.8%) were having experience greater than 11 years. Data was collected from different industries of both sectors to make this study results more generalized. In data collected, 132 (39.2%) persons are from education field, 80 (23.7%) from manufacturing firms, 24 (7.1%) from telecom, 2 (0.6%) from transport industry and 99 (29.4%) from other industries of service sector. We have collected data from a different level of employees, whose detail is given in Table 1. In this sample, out of 337 respondents, 87 (25.81%) were managers, supervisors were 115 (34.12%) and low-level employees were 135 (40.05%).

Instrument and data collection
A questionnaire used in this study was formulated under the supervision of experts. This questionnaire contains two parts. The first one has questions about the demographics of respondents and the second part contain scale items used to measure the four constructs in this study. In the first section demographical questions related to gender, age, experience industry and city were asked. In other parts of 5 items, Likert scale was used to measure abusive supervision, perceived contract breech, employee cynicism, and organizational citizenship behavior. A scale formulated by Robinson (1996) and Rousseau (1989) was used to measure PCB, scale developed by Dean et al. (1998) was used to measure employee cynicism, for organizational citizenship behavior scale of Podsakoff and MacKenzie (1989) was used and scale of Tepper (2000) was used to measure abusive supervision. The instrument of OCB is composed of 16 items, PCB scale contains 8 items, ECN scale made up of 10 items and AS instrument consists of 14 items. The survey research strategy is used to collect data from participants. We performed online and field survey as well. In online survey we sent 437 forms to employees of different organizations. Out of 437, 319 were returned and from these 319 responses 257 were correctly filled. In the field survey we had visited different organizations of different service industries, we distributed 156 questionnaires 80 were correctly filled. In this way sample of 337 is obtained.

Data analysis
To analyze the data, we have used SPSS. It was used to measure alpha chrome, Kaiser Mayer Olkin (KMO) and other descriptive analyses. The PROCESS macro of SPSS was used to measure mediation and moderation among the constructs and simple regression was run to measure the direct effects of constructs on each other.

Results and discussion
In data analysis to measure sampling adequacy and significance KMO and Bartlett's test of sphericity was performed by using SPSS. All the values of KMO test were above 0.89 and Bartlett's test had values less than 0.001.
We had performed an analysis in PROCESS macro by using model 59 to test mediating and moderating relationships among the PCB, OCB, EC, and AS. The first model of analysis is of employee cynicism. The R 2 of the model is .105 and p-value is less than 0.001. It is shown in Table 2. In Table 3, outcome values are of EC variable. The coefficients in Table 3, given below were of PCB, AS and product of these two variables. The next model obtained is OCB shown in Table 4. The R 2 of OCB was .065 and p-value is 0.001. Furthermore, in Table 5, coefficients of EC, PCB and their product in the form of Int-1 and then AS coefficient and its product with PCB can be seen in Table 5.
To make it easy for readers, we have explained finding with reference to hypothesis formulated in this study. The first hypothesis of this study was "PCB has negative effect on OCB". In Table 5 PCB and OCB relation is shown. It was investigated that PCB has a significant inverse relationship with OCB by having a coefficient value -0.766 (t=-1.696, p<0.05). It means that when employee's psychological contracts were violated by the organization, employees reduced their extra roles in organization. This negative relationship between PCB and OCB was also found in the studies (Jafri, 2012;Ng, 2015;Suazo, 2009). When researchers used PROCESS macro to perform their analysis, Hayes (2015) proposed that they should consider upper and lower limit confidence interval. If both the intervals have the same sign either positive or negative, it means that results were significant. However, if one has negative and others have positive signs it shows insignificant results. Hayes (2015) also suggested that if zero was found between the values of LLCI and ULCI its means insignificant findings. In the results of PCB=>OCB both LLCI and ULCI have the same negative signs, which shows their significant relationship. Thus, H1 is accepted. Table 6 shows the indirect effect of X (PCB) on Y (OCB). Second hypothesis of this research was, "EC plays a mediating role between PCB and OCB". The results were shown in Table 6. The value of mediating relation coefficient was 1.817 having the inverse mediating effect of -0.006. The signs of both ULCI and LLCI were negative which found a significant mediating relationship of EC with PCB and OCB. Individual effects of both PCB and EC with OCB were negative having values -0.862, -0.766. The standard error of this mediating relation is 0.498 (1.817-1.319=0.498). When cynicism effect reduced equal to one time of standard error. It increases the effect up to 9.5% and when cynicism effect increases by one time of standard error it also has a little bit increasing effect of -0.012. This result shows that cynicism partially mediates the relationship between PCB and OCB, but its effect is low due to the high effects of direct relations of variables with each other. This finding was supported by a study of Johnson and O'Leary-Kelly (2003) and Suazo (2009). So, as a result, H2 is accepted.
In the third hypothesis of this study, we proposed a relationship, "PCB is positively related with EC". The results of the analysis shown in Table 3. The coefficient value PCB=>EC was 0.916 (t=3.098, pvalue, 0.005). The figures for LLCI and ULCI do not possess zero and their signs were the same as well. It suggests the positive and significant relationship between PCB=>EC, which means that when workers' psychological contracts were not fulfilled by the organization it develops the feeling of betrayal, among the employees (Aziz et al., 2017a;Delken, 2004). Aziz et al. (2017a) investigated that EC is the outcome of PCB. So, we accepted H3.
The fourth hypothesis of this study was," EC is negatively related with OCB." Table 5 shows the coefficient, t, and p-value of the relation. It was investigated that EC has direct (86.2%) negative impact on OCB. It has t=-2.936, p-value<0.005, which asserts a significant relationship between them. The finding suggests that when workers betrayal, disbelief feelings increase it reduces their collaborative participation in the organization. This finding was also supported by the studies conducted by Aziz et al. (2017a) and Jordan et al. (2007). So, we accepted H4. In H5 moderating relationship of AS between PCB and ECN was proposed. Table 3 was related to the hypothesis. It shows coefficients values of PCV=>EC (AS Moderator) -0.479 (t=2.858, p-value<0.005). ULCI and LLCI values were negative having the same signs suggested a significant moderating relationship of AS between PCV=>EC. PCV=>EC possess positive (91%) significant relationship. When AS introduce as a moderator it reduces their direct effect and shown partial moderation of -0.479. It illustrates that PCB has outcome EC. When abusive supervision influences the relation, it reduces PCB impact on EC, which means that when psychological contracts were breech but there is high abusive supervision it will reduce cynicism level among the employees. This means that their work is less affected by the presence of abusive supervision. These findings were supported by the study of Chiu and Peng (2008). So, we accepted H5.
In Table 7, direct relation of PCB and OCB was shown with the effect of AS which is moderator in this research. H6 hypothesis proposed moderating relationship of AS between PCV=>OCB. It was found that by increasing abusive supervision effect (1.319-2.315), it significantly changes the effect of PCB on OCB. It was asserted that when mangers abusive behavior increased to a certain extent. It eliminates negative effect of PCB on OCB and converts it into positive effect (-0.236 to 0.165) which means it forces employees to be collaborative in the working environment. So, we accepted H6. In H7 of this study moderating relationship of AS between EC=>OCB was proposed. Coefficient value was -0.399(t=2.614, p-value<0.001). EC=>OCB has negative 86% significant relationship but due to AS moderating effect, it reduced the negative effect up to 40%. It shows that in moderating effect of AS, cynicism effect reduced and somehow employees take part in collaborative work. These results were similar to previous studies of Aziz et al. (2017b;2017a). It measures partial moderation of AS between EC and OCB. So, we accepted H7.

Conclusion
OCB was an important construct that was determined in this study. OCB was determined by the perceived contract breach with mediating role of employee cynicism and moderating role of abusive supervision. OCB is the extra participation of the employees regardless of any rewards in the organization. Organizations of this era are facing different problems regarding the lack of participation of employees in extra work besides their regular job duties. Employees who are working in an organization have some psychological expectations from the organization. When these expectations were not fulfilled by organization, it develops a feeling of dissatisfaction or betrayal in the employees. It's cynicism. This study investigated the psychological contract violation that has a negative effect on citizenship behavior, which revealed employee contract breach negatively impact on their supportive behavior. Moreover, it is suggested that psychological contract violation increases cynicism significantly and cynicism direct negative effect on OCB was revealed. This study has also tried to cover the gap of AS moderating role in the different relationships of psychological contract, cynicism and citizenship behavior. Results revealed partial moderation, abusive supervision when increases from a certain limit it reduced the cynicism effect as compared to the direct effect and forced the employees to take part in collaborative work other than their job duties. Employees only involved in citizenship behavior because there are fewer job opportunities in Pakistan. As a result, they continue their work under these pathetic conditions. This study examines the partial mediation of EC between PCB and OCB, which shows that PCB has some direct effect on OCB.
Our study also includes limitations. We have collected data through questionnaires, in future studies, data can be collected by both questionnaire and interviews to remove biases of the data. We suggest using of open-ended questionnaire to gain the deep inside of employee's perception. The longitudinal study can also be done to improve the robustness of data. This study was done in Pakistan; it can generalize the results by investigating this model in other countries. In this study, moderating of AS and mediation of EC was significantly partially tested. We suggest testing the mediating role of cynicism between psychological contract and citizenship behavior. It was the second study in nature studying cynicism mediating role. More studies need to test robustness of mediating results. In the next studies by defining new control variables, which can be industries in service and manufacturing sectors, moderation and mediation can be tested. Moreover, in model some personality characteristics of employees can be added as moderators, other leadership dimensions of leadership can also be included as an independent variable.