Lab mission

Our mission is to conduct rigorous research to gain a better understanding of dynamic phenomena at the workplace, in particular psychological contracts. This research is conducted in line with open science practices and aims to help improve the wellbeing and functioning of individual employees and organizations.

This mission statement guides our work in the Dynamic PC lab, from master students’ dissertations to PhD students’ dissertations and more general projects. I will explain some of the key elements in this mission statement here:

  1. Rigorous research: Good research is rigourously performed, using a sound methodological design and appropriate statistical analyses. Moreover, there needs to be a match between the substantive research question and the methodological and analytical choices that are made.
  2. Dynamic phenomena at the workplace: The core interest of this lab and of our research unit WOPs is dynamic phenomena at the workplace. This means that we are mainly interested in within-person processes that unfold over time.
  3. Psychological contracts: We apply this interest in dynamic phenomena mainly to psychological contract theory. However, applications to other substantive topics (e.g., burnout, personality) are also possible. Psychological contracts focus on the exchange relationship between employees and employers; they capture an individual’s beliefs about mutual obligations between that individual and another party.
  4. Open science: We strongly belief in open science practices to improve the quality of our work and the transparency of our research to all involved stakeholders. This means that we strive to follow recommended practices such as preregistering our research, sharing data, analytical scripts, and materials, and making our work openly accessible whenever possible.
  5. Wellbeing and functioning: We want our research to have a meaningful impact in the real world. As such, the final goal of our work should be to help improve the wellbeing and functioning of individual employees and of organizations in general. Wellbeing can involve mental and physical health, but also the quality of relationships between employees and employers. Functioning can involve job performance and extra-role behavior, but also retention of employees.

Core values

Based on this mission statement, we have a couple of core values that define our lab. Working in this lab implies adhering to these values.

  • Commitment: Good science requires commitment. This means setting ambitious but achievable goals.
  • Team work: We try to help each other in the team as much as possible. Doing research is a collaborative endeavour.
  • Transparency: We aim to be transparent about our research to all involved stakeholders. This implies adopting open science practices, but it also means that we try to share research findings in an accessible way with the borader public.
  • Courage: Doing research can be challenging. It requires courage to keep going, despite setbacks and uncertainty. It also requires courage to stay focused on your goals and to stay true to your values.
  • Wellbeing: The wellbeing of all lab members is important to us. This means that we strive for a good work-life balance with sufficient time for recovery from work.

Brief history

This lab was founded in 2014 when Tim Vantilborgh got a tenure-track position at the Vrije Universiteit Brussel. During this period, the research focus of the lab switched from studying exchange relationships between volunteers and non-profit organizations to studying the psychological contract as a dynamic phenomenon in the general workforce. Over time, the lab grew as PhD students and interns joined. We attracted funding to study:

  • Stress and burnout trajectories in the aftermath of psychological contract breach
  • Cross-cultural differences in psychological contracts
  • Individual psychological contract networks

In the future, we aim to continue exploring psychological contract dynamics. However, we will also broaden our horizons to look at the dynamics of other workplace phenomena, such as burnout and personality states.