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Drawing on the concept of psychological contract and organizational justice, this exploratory case study seeks to examine how companies' attempts to handle layoff pressures with alternative HR arrangements are perceived and experienced by the affected employees.

The study draws on 19 interviews of employees affected by job loss. The interviewees were employees in a case organization that had implemented a HR practice called the “Competence pool” as an alternative to layoffs.

Although contract breach occurs, alternative HR arrangements can mitigate the negative effects of job loss for the affected employees and help restore the psychological contract. Such arrangements have to be implemented with care in order to avoid injustice perceptions.

As HR arrangements are by nature unique and company‐specific, this study is limited by its focus on one organization and national context. It however provides future directions for research on layoffs and their consequences.

By exploring how the affected employees perceive an alternative to layoffs, this study has several implications for organizations interested in managing layoff pressures with alternative HR arrangements.

By investigating the experiences and perceptions of employees whose jobs were terminated but whose employment relationship continued under specific conditions, this study provides new insights into layoff and HR literatures from psychological contract and justice perspectives.

A small number of psychological contract studies have explored the cognitive processes that influence employees' evaluation and reactions to perceived contract breach. The aim of this paper is to extend this reseaerch with a qualitative study on breach using a sense making perspective.

In total, 15 interviews employing critical incident technique to examine employee sense making processes were carried out.

The findings highlight the variety of ways employees perceive contract breach and the processual nature of the experience. Emotions and actions were intertwined in the process of attributing responsibility and finding an explanation for the breach.

Contract breach is not necessarily a discrete event and reciprocity is integral to the sense making process. The findings provide a basis for future research that could explore the role of time, contextual factors and various employer representatives as sense‐givers in psychological contract evaluations.

Employer representatives can aid employees to make sense of critical events that occur in organizations to minimize the effects of breach.

The paper provides an under‐researched sense making‐perspective on psychological contract breach. Through a qualitative inquiry, the complex nature of the employees' experience of and reaction to breach, is highlighted.

It has been hypothesized that perceived contract fulfilment is positively associated with affective commitment, leading also to reduced turnover intentions, and with mental health, and that these relationships are fully mediated by work engagement. Employing the job demands resources (JDR) model, the purpose of this study is to examine the motivational and health‐enhancing properties driven by perceived employer psychological contact fulfilment.

The hypotheses were tested in a sample of 178 Finnish employees using structural equation modelling.

The hypotheses were supported. Perceived psychological contract fulfilment had both motivational (psychological contract → work engagement → affective commitment → reduced turnover intentions) and health‐enhancing (psychological contract → work engagement → mental health) effects.

The findings highlight the centrality of perceived psychological contract fulfilment to employees, and the importance of work engagement as a positive affective‐cognitive state at work.

The purpose of this study is to examine what employee agency entails for psychological contract theory. The paper aims to explore how employee agency manifests itself, how it is reflected in employees' perceptions of their psychological contract obligations, and what it implies for psychological contract theory.

The study draws on a qualitative interview study of employees from the mobile phone content production industry in Finland. The analysis is based on 15 semi‐structured employee interviews, which were supported by a discussion of the interviewees' weekly agendas.

This study reveals that employee agency manifests itself as self‐actualisation, action, influence and creativity, all of which have implications for employees' psychological contracts. Employees emerge as active parties to the psychological contract, consciously modifying and constructing it instead of simply reacting to employer behaviour, as is assumed in current research.

This study contributes to psychological contract theory by providing one of the few empirical attempts to demonstrate how employees actively manage the exchange relationship captured by the psychological contract. It highlights the importance of acknowledging employee agency in future psychological contract research.

The primary purpose of this article is to raise awareness about the need for additional research on job loss. It also aims to provide an introduction to the special issue, and a description of the articles in it.

The article highlights some of the important research on job loss since the early 1990s.

Additional theory and research is needed to assist the well‐being and the job search process of the unemployed.

This article offers suggestions on advancing new research ideas that can be used to assist individuals who have lost their jobs and to organizations that have been involved in a layoff.

The article argues that knowledge related to the effects of job loss can be used to assist organizations in promoting programs to enhance the well‐being of laid‐off individuals.

Research on job loss is needed to address the problems of laid‐off individuals.

The article provides a contribution to the social issues literature as it raises awareness of the need for additional research on job loss.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

Businesses are starting to come to terms with the reality that employee engagement is not the same as employee satisfaction; satisfaction is the minimum required, engagement brings a person to life, unleashing their talents and delivering measurably improved performance. What once might have been considered “fluffy” or “out there” has become much more main stream. Research conducted by Towers Perrin‐ISR for Human Resources magazine of 50 financial services companies has put the cost for just these firms at $1 billion per year in lost productivity. It is an eye‐catching number, and one that can be multiplied many, many times if it was to be scaled up for the global economy.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to‐digest format.