Entitlement Disconnect: Exploring Management Graduates’ Mental Schema in Their Anticipatory Psychological Contract

Abstract

In this paper, we expanded on the psychological contract theory by exploring the mental schemas of graduates’ anticipatory psychological contract before they start employment. With this research, we aimed to explore and substantiate themes associated with the mental schemas of graduates, so that the psychological contract formation theory can be expanded by investigating the role of entitlement disconnect and its influence on the anticipatory psychological contract. Literature regarding the formulation of the psychological contract is still underdeveloped, especially regarding the anticipatory phase thereof. Entitlement disconnect has also not been focused on in past literature, especially as a component of the anticipatory psychological contract that can have an impact on graduates’ career schema and voluntary turnover intention. A qualitative approach to research was adopted consisting of interviews with 18 final-year economics and management sciences graduate students in the final phase of their degrees to derive themes associated with the mental schemas of graduates’ anticipatory psychological contract. The findings suggest that graduates already have a developed mental schema that was based on their entitlement. It was also confirmed that graduates had a disposition towards voluntary turnover intuition before organisational entry, which was due to an entitlement disconnect perception. The final and most surprising finding was that some graduates already displayed pre-employment violations, where graduates already anticipated psychological contract breach before entering an employment relationship. This research suggests that graduates’ mental schemas in their anticipatory psychological contract play a much bigger role in the development of their psychological contract, after organisational entry than what was initially thought.