Understanding Motivation and Satisfaction in Higher Education: Cultural Insights from Croatia and Poland

One of today’s organisational imperatives is to secure a high level of employee motivation and satisfaction. Those represent important organisational factors, focused on the organisational future, because motivated and satisfied employees, besides developing their own careers, contribute to successful organisational results and recognition. Consequently, organisations are striving to recruit and retain not only employees with an exceptional level of knowledge, work experience, or skills and abilities, but also employees who are motivated to work. High educational institutions are the most important resources of future satisfied and motivated employees, current students, who educate and prepare them according to contemporary and everyday increased market demands. Therefore, it is valuable to monitor, evaluate, and increase students’ motivation and satisfaction during their educational process, as they differ, considering their personal and cultural differences, as well as different type and level of their studies. The sample of this research consisted of two separate groups of students, such as a graduate group of Croatian and Polish students, considering students from the same field of studies. The first assumption of the research proposes the correlation between the motivation and satisfaction of Croatian and Polish students. The following assumption aims to reveal the cultural differences between these two groups of students, focussing on the most important satisfaction factors, such as curriculum, professors, administrative staff, and overall institutional satisfaction. Obtained results verifies the correlation between students’ motivation and satisfaction, but also support different levels of their satisfaction, characterised by their different cultural backgrounds.