Accounting Firm Employers' Pre-employment Expectation and Post-employment Satisfaction toward Accounting Graduates in China: The Mediating Roles of Perceived Value and Graduates' University Image

With the rapid development of China's accounting industry and the adoption of emerging technologies, accounting firms are placing higher demands on employees' overall competence (Fedyk et al., 2022; Rahman et al., 2024). Existing studies indicate that both customer satisfaction and corporate performance levels rely on non-monetary factors such as educational attainment and professional experience and age group (Lee, 2022, 2023). However, according to Chaplin (2017) and Elo et al. (2024), university education fails to meet the requirements of hiring organizations, because university education and workplace needs are misaligned thus leading to reduced job suitability and lower employability (Edeigba, 2022). These issues may diminish employers' perceived value of graduates and reduce their satisfaction. The Expectation-Disconfirmation Theory (EDT) developed by Oliver (1980) states that satisfaction for customers develops from how expectations match up against factual results. According to Signaling Theory (ST) Spence (1973) university image serves as a quality signal for graduate performance. The Perceived Value Theory (PVT) established by Zeithaml (1988) concentrates on evaluating the relationship between what consumers receive and how much they invest. Accordingly, this study aims to investigate the impact of employers' pre-employment expectation on their post-employment satisfaction with accounting graduates. It further investigates the mediating roles of perceived value and graduates' university image, with a focus on accounting firm employers in China. JEL Codes: J24, M41, I23 Keywords: Pre-employment expectation, Post-employment satisfaction, Perceived value, Graduates' University image, accounting graduates.