Francesca Lemme

The aim of this study was to analyze the psychological contracts established by the two largest Italian banking groups: UniCredit Group and Intesa Sanpaolo. Psychological contract is an umbrella expression sheltering a variety of meanings and contents. First coined in the early 1960s, the concept still possesses a remarkable theoretical appeal stemming from the many complex and controversial understandings that inevitably come into play whenever an employment relationship is established. Over the last decades in fact, the idea that an employer–employee relationship could not be simply interpreted in terms of contractual obligations has progressively gained ground, and recent research has brought to light that much more than the strict adherence to contractual rules is at stake in such kind of relationships. The study focused on some documents, reports and dialogue practices with employees that were disclosed through the banks’ official websites. The results indicate that the psychological contract is still a somewhat unchartered and at times mysterious territory. Neither bank, in fact, explicitly declared to have introduced a specific psychological contract even though they both seemed to be aware of the prominence of the concept and implemented some important dialogue initiatives with their employees.

Brian Poliner

Previous studies have identified the need to investigate further the impact of increased employee satisfaction when there is congruence of employee values with their supervisors and management values. Increased satisfaction levels have implications on retention levels within the organization. The Sanctuary Model indicates that it positively affects values congruence between management and employee. The purpose of this qualitative study is to investigate the implementation of Sanctuary into the organization culture and to understand the reaction and impact of the employees within the organization. This qualitative research case study interviewed administrators of the organization, along with a representative of the Sanctuary Institute, the accrediting organization of this management model. It is this researcher’s goal that data collected from these interviews will help to understand corporate culture and values from management perspective. Previous studies have collected data from employees regarding their perspective. This researcher compared data collected from previous research studies to determine congruence between management and employee. A qualitative study was chosen to provide an in-depth understanding of the human side of Sanctuary implementation and the impact on culture change on human emotion that affects behavior. Another of the study’s purposes was to encourage management to share their perspectives of the organization’s culture.