The anticipatory psychological contract among university students: How to balance between obligations and inducements?

Anticipatory psychological contract (APC) defined as individuals’ beliefs about their prospective employment, including obligations to the future employers and in ducements they expect to receive in return might be seen as a valuable framework to understand graduate students’ expectations about prospective employment rela tionships. Accordingly, the aim of this paper was to explore how final year university students from two study groups, technical and psychology, perceived obligations to future em ployers and inducements they expect to receive in return. The sample consisted of 138 participants (psychology=82 and technical studies=56) from RN Macedonia and Serbia. To assess APC content questionnaire with 48 statements was applied. Cron bach alpha reliability of the employee contributions and employer inducements sub scales was 0.71 and 0.91, respectively. Independent t-test revealed that technical studies students had significantly high er expectations concerning relational and transactional obligations in the prospec tive employment relationship than psychology students. Paired samples t-test was performed to analyze differences in anticipated relational obligations and relational inducements, as well as, transactional obligations and transactional inducements. Results showed that students hold higher expectations about inducements from the prospective organization than to their own contributions in the working environ ment. Results are discussed in light of their importance for HRM practices in orga -nizations.