Final Year University Students’ Beliefs about Future Employment Relationships

Abstract

Psychological contract is important construct to understand continuing changes in employment relationships. In that way, anticipatory psychological contract (APC) presents valuable framework to understand graduate students’ beliefs about future employment relationships. Accordingly, the aim of this study was to examine ACP content, i.e. beliefs about employee contributions and employer inducements in the employment relationship. The sample consisted of 271 final year university students form Macedonia and from Serbia enrolled following study programs: psychology and medicine philology/literature and technology and informatics. Questionnaire with 48 statements was administered to measure ACP content. Two-way ANOVA and loglinear analysis were conducted for data analyzing. It was found that students preparing for various occupations from two countries significantly differ in the expressed beliefs about their contributions in the future employment relationship and in their belief about employer inducements in that relationship. In general, surveyed students reported stronger beliefs about employer inducements than about their contributions at work.