The Psychological Contracts of Undergraduate University Students: Who Do They See as Exchange Partners, and What Do They Think the Deals Are?

Joshua R. Knapp () and Suzanne S. Masterson ()
Additional contact information
Joshua R. Knapp: University of Wisconsin-Whitewater
Suzanne S. Masterson: University of Cincinnati

Research in Higher Education, 2018, vol. 59, issue 5, No 5, 650-679

Abstract: Abstract The relationship between students and their academic institution is based on exchange. However, we have limited knowledge regarding how many exchanges students perceive, who (or what) the perceived exchange partners are, and what the perceived terms of those exchanges contain. To address this gap, we utilized a mixed-method approach to explore and describe the psychological contracts of two sets of undergraduate university students: newly entering freshman, and experienced university students. Results clearly demonstrated that students perceive numerous psychological contracts relevant to their education with a variety of partners both inside and at the boundaries of the institution. Results also demonstrated that these contracts are qualitatively and quantitatively distinct. The overarching implication of these findings is that students navigate a web of diverse exchange partners, and it would be a mistake for educators and researchers to focus exclusively on one or few relationships presupposed to be most important.

Keywords: Psychological contracts; Expectations; Management; Universities; Social exchange; Reciprocity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s11162-017-9477-8 Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:reihed:v:59:y:2018:i:5:d:10.1007_s11162-017-9477-8

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer.com/journal/11162

DOI: 10.1007/s11162-017-9477-8

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Higher Education is currently edited by Robert K. Toutkoushian

More articles in Research in Higher Education from Springer, Association for Institutional Research
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().