The Psychological Contract Comparison between USA and Chinese IT Professionals

This study examine the perceived psychological contract from the perspectives of IT new recruits that are located in USA and China. Psychological contract emphasize the mutual exchange between employees and employers. The results of this exploratory study reveals that IT employees from China and USA hold many similar beliefs on the employer-employee obligations such as employer obligations to high pay, job autonomy, exciting project and long term job security. US IT recruits as a whole hold stronger emphasis than Chinese counterparts when dealing with career development, personal support, motivating boss and providing project milestone bonus. Findings also suggest that although employees can be from the same overarching culture such as Chinese culture that emphasizes collectivism, there exist strong subcultures even in the same country. IT professionals in Shanghai tend to have beliefs that are sometimes close to the US IT professionals than to their fellow IT professionals in Beijing