Current evidence concerning the psychological and employment contract of sport coaches in South Africa

Abstract

The entire contract spectrum that governs the employment relationship ranges from being strictly legal, as governed by the employment law and more specifically the employment contract, to purely psychological, where scholars refer to the psychological contract. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between sport coaches and their employer; and their experience of employer obligations, employee obligations, state of psychological contract, violation of their expectations and its impact on sport coaches' intention to quit. A non-experimental research design utilising a quantitative research approach was adopted to investigate the psychological contract coaches experienced in their current positions. The sample consisted of 151 sport coaches in the Gauteng province of South Africa. The Psycones (employer obligations, employee obligations, state of the psychological contract) and Intention to Quit scales were used. Cronbach alpha coefficient and Pearson correlation were used to analyse the data. The findings reveal that employer obligations showed practical significant correlations with fairness and trust, but a negative relationship with violation of the psychological contract. Furthermore, the findings indicate that temporary employees tend to trust the employer more than permanent employees, and permanent employees perceive violation of their psychological contract more than temporary employees. Despite a number of serious conceptual and empirical limitations in the literature on sport and psychological contract, the idea of a psychological contract remains extremely popular. In itself, this is an important phenomenon to acknowledge in terms of both theory and practice.