What is it that differentiates managers who succeed in their attempts to heal the rifts caused by psychological contract breaches and violations in their organizations from those who fail? Discovering the answer to this question is critical in today’s workplace because managers are key in creating (or destroying) the relational ties both between and within institutions. Otherwise, these psychological contract breaches and violations can escalate to the point of moral injury and thereby become a major threat to those individual-organizational ties that are essential for all those with a stake in both the individual and the organization. As such, in this paper we tackle five main tasks: 1. we review the literature on psychological contract breaches and violations; 2. we propose that psychological contract breaches and violations need not be linear but can also co-occur within the offended individual; 3. we show how certain managerial accounts are better than others when it comes to responding to the psychological breach and violation of the offended individual in a way that ameliorates moral injury for both the individual and the organization; 4. we offer a comprehensive accounts typology that points to which accounts are better when it comes to validating a breach and reducing the moral intensity of the violation, and 5. we examine the implications and research imperatives of this new model of interpersonal and organizational communication and sense-making in institutions that can better help in the healing process for individuals, managers, and organizations.
