Abstract:

As the relationship between employees and organizations transitions from standard employment to mutually beneficial and symbiosis, organizations can no longer demand employees to obey organizational goals. Consistency and standardized human resource management practices based on organizational goals are challenging in satisfying employees' increasingly personalized and dynamic individual goals. Organizations face the dilemma of recruiting, employing, and retaining employees. Improving the relationship between individual and organizational goals has become essential in organizational management.

Idiosyncratic deals, as a leading-edge construct in organizational behavior, offer rational approaches to express and satisfy employees' personalized and differentiated needs within the current framework of human resource management. Nowadays, the underlying assumption that employees are limited to passively accepting or rejecting organizational arrangements is challenged. When faced with conflicts between individual and organizational goals, employees express their needs while actively seeking cooperation with their organization. Similarly, organizations consider employees' individualized and differentiated needs to achieve their goals. More and more employees take the initiative to communicate or negotiate with their organization and obtain arrangements that satisfy their specific needs, referred to as idiosyncratic deals. Therefore, this study explores how employees can proactively enhance the relationship between individual and organizational goals through idiosyncratic deals based on cognitive-affective system theory.

Firstly, this study identifies the speech strategies of idiosyncratic deal requests, which refer to employees actively articulating their requirements to organizations, and the conditions of idiosyncratic deal receipts, which refer to employees achieving personalized and differentiated human resources arrangements within the organization. As the employment relationship becomes more equal, employees not only imply their needs but also dare to put forward various requirements directly. Moreover, the relationships between different speech strategies (explicit or implicit) of idiosyncratic deal requests and receipts are affected differently by employees' human capital and social capital.

Secondly, this study clarifies the function mechanism of idiosyncratic deals between the perception of individual-organizational goals conflict and integration. When employees face conflicts of individual-organizational goals, they attribute the cause to either self-responsibility or organizational responsibility, leading to the intention to seek help or the violation of psychological contracts. When employees face integration of individual-organizational goals, they can integrate their self-worth with their work and have harmonious relationships with organizations, leading to a sense of work psychological ownership and a harmonious employment relationship climate. Idiosyncratic deals can not only promote the transformation of individual-organizational goals from conflict to integration but also deliver constructive results of help-seeking intention and alleviate destructive results of psychological contract violation.

Finally, this study explores the dynamic impact of idiosyncratic deals. As individual goals change or a deeper understanding of organizational goals is gained, conflicts between individual and organizational goals inevitably arise. However, when faced with these conflicts again, employees' past experiences of individual-organizational goals integrating stimulate more positive psychological perceptions. Furthermore, the successful experiences of idiosyncratic deals in the past also make employees more willing to express their needs and more likely to obtain new human resources arrangements. Thus, idiosyncratic deals provide an effective way to improve the relationship between individual and organizational goals continuously.

The anticipated results of this study support the application of idiosyncratic deals in improving the relationship between individual and organizational goals. These promote the relevant research that shifts perspective from organization-centric to employee-centric and emphasizes consideration for employees' personalities and differing needs rather than solely demanding their commitment or identity. Additionally, this study delves into the mechanisms and dynamic impacts of idiosyncratic deals processes on improving the relationship between individual and organizational goals. These provide new approaches and suggestions for organizations to enhance individual-organizational goals relationship and promote organization-employee collaborative development.

Key words: idiosyncratic deals, individual-organizational goals relationship, organization-employees collaborative development, cognitive-affective system theory