Career Exploration and Perceived Employability within an Emerging Economy Context

Following four decades of unprecedented economic, social, and cultural change, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) labor market is highly segmented: The native population is almost exclusively employed in the government sector, while the private sector is effectively outsourced to foreigners. This has created an unsustainable situation with growing numbers of young citizens reaching working age and with a public sector that has reached the saturation point. Policymakers repeatedly try to legislate to encourage private‐sector employers to hire citizens. These policies have had limited success. We explored the career attitudes of 2,267 United Arab Emirates citizens prior to their entry into the labor market. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the social contract and resulting expectations toward state employment have strong implications for willingness to work in the private sector. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Executive career advancement in career moves across employers: the role of organization-level predictors

This paper examines the career moves of executives between different organizations and looks at the characteristics of executives employing organizations as a predictor of the outcome of the moves. The paper uses a retained executive search firm's proprietary data set that contains information on the career paths of executives in the financial services industry. The results show that the perceived operational excellence of executives employing organization has a significant signalling power for other employers and strongly impacts the success of executives' moves across different organizations. The data also reveal that executives may use their employment spell at large-sized organizations that are perceived as excellent as a conscious career-building mechanism and accept smaller promotions to join such organizations.     

The status of academic women in the 1990s No longer outsiders, but not yet equals

This paper reexamines the status of women in the academic labor market relative to men to determine how much progress has been made in achieving equity. Two questions will be addressed here: (1) do men and women have equal access to faculty employment in higher education, and (2) are they equally successful with regard to traditional career goals and compensation? Analyses are conducted on the educational attainment of women, their representation among faculty, their time allocation and research productivity, and their success in academia as represented by their rank attainment and earnings. While the results show that women have made considerable strides in entering the academic labor market, there is still an unexplained gap between men and women in terms of their earnings and career progression.     

Who benefits from job placement services? A two-sided analysis

In light of additional information market agents would achieve better outcomes, for example, a lower ask price for the buyer and a higher offer price for the seller. I examine this notion in a labor market, where employers and employees do not possess perfect information about wages, and address the question of who benefits from the information provided by job placement services? The empirical strategy considers the two-sided nature of the labor market. Estimates of employee and employer incomplete information are contrasted between users and non-users of placement services provided by Job Corps, America’s largest and most important job training program for youths. Findings suggest that employees that use placement services don’t have more information about better offer wages, relative to non-users. Interestingly, firms that employed users of placement services are better informed about reservation wages relative to firms that employed non-users.     

Understanding second careers: Lessons from a study of U.S. navy admirals

We examined the career transition of senior executives from a strong bureaucratic organization into a dynamic business environment. In surveying retired, flag‐rank admirals characterized by the need to start a second career, we found significant support for a career transition model. The retired admirals in this study largely enjoyed a smooth transition into civilian careers. Their traditional career was associated primarily with external success, the contemporary protean career with internal success. The role of the organization proved instrumental for a successful transition. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Improving the psychosocial environment for older trainees: Technological training as an illustration

Currently, there is a higher proportion of older workers in the labor force and the applicant pool than there have been in previous generations as a result of the Baby Boomer demographic bubble. Regarding these older workers as a potentially valuable resource and developing their skills accordingly may help employers fulfill their labor needs in an increasingly competitive market. Relative to younger workers, there is limited information in the literature with respect to the design of a psychologically and socially supportive training environment for this particular demographic. Our intent in this review is to provide a research-based framework for understanding the specific psychological and social needs of older trainees. We first examine the impact of ageism and age-related stereotype threat in the learning environment, and ways to reduce their negative influence on training. We then turn to a consideration of the motivational needs of the older trainee, and the unique ways to foster positive levels of training motivation and self-efficacy. At each step of our discussion, we use technological training as a specific example of these training challenges and remedies. This training domain was chosen because of its increasing relevance to job acquisition for older applicants and to the career development of mature employees. Practical implications for theories and practice tailored to older learners are emphasized.     

基于合作博弈模型的企业内劳动力市场运行效率探究

企业内劳动力市场是研究企业内部人力资源配置方式的。这一理论将人力资源的开发、配置、管理的市场分析触角探伸到企业内部,从而在很大程度上避免了古典经济学框架下的"企业质点"的局限。企业内劳动力市场为雇佣双方建立一种合作博弈关系提供了可能,从而在很大程度上避免了短期雇佣中各自的机会主义行为,产生合作双赢的效果。     

Perception of organization's value support and perceived employability: insights from self-determination theory

Perceived employability (PE; i.e. the worker's perception about available job opportunities) is portrayed as the upcoming resource for workers and organizations. However, organizations might particularly want to stimulate perceptions of job opportunities on the internal labor market (i.e. internal PE). In contrast, they may be hesitant in stimulating perceptions of job opportunities on the external labor market (i.e. external PE), as this might foster workers' voluntary turnover. The contextual influences adding to these different types of PE are relatively unknown. Building upon self-determination theory, we argue that the organization's support of intrinsic (e.g. personal growth) and extrinsic (e.g. status) values may play a critical role. In line with expectations, the results reveal a positive association of the perceived organization's support of intrinsic work values and a negative association of the perceived extrinsic value support with internal PE, both in terms of a similar job (i.e. internal lateral PE) and a better job (i.e. internal upward PE). Unexpectedly, perceived organization's support of extrinsic values did not relate negatively to external PE. These results show that employers can invest in the workers' employability without disadvantaging the organization. To arrive at a flexible workforce, the support of intrinsic values is of key importance.     

Career success after stigmatizing organizational events

This article examines the effect of six types of stigmatizing organizational events on employees' career moves to another employer: criticism of the organization in the media; resignation of key individuals from the organization; downsizing; a drop in net income; lawsuits launched by the Securities and Exchange Commission, competitors, or customers; and lawsuits launched by employees. Stigmatizing events that signal the decline of corporate performance are the most devastating for professional career success. Outsiders, on the other hand, are less sensitive to an organization's involvement in lawsuits launched by public authorities or employees. Stigmatizing events affect the career success of every professional in the organization, irrespective of his or her hierarchical level. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

论职业生涯规划与设计

职业研究表明,在职业生涯的起步阶段,由于个人的可塑性强,职业转换成本低,如果在这个阶段就对自己的职业有一个准确的定位和长远的规划,效果极佳,将非常有利于自己今后的成长与发展。职业生涯设计,要做好"定向"、"定点"、和"定位"。职业生涯设计由审视自我、确立目标、生涯策略、生涯评估四个环节组成。在进行职业选择时,首先应充分认识自己与周围的环境,这样才能在选择职业时做到心中有数。要认真进行自我优势分析、自我劣势分析、环境分析、人际关系分析。职业生涯设计做到既知己又知彼,就有了成功的基础。只要脚踏实地地按照设计要求努力去做,就会收获职业成功的喜悦。     

知识经济时代组织职业生涯管理新视角

知识经济时代的职业生涯在外界环境的影响下,发生了深刻而复杂的变化,呈现无边界化和易变性的趋势。新的职业生涯发展中,传统的雇佣契约被打破,职业成功的标准发生了变化,管理的责任从组织转移到了个体。面对新的挑战,组织也要采取对策调整自身的角色和责任,以实现管理的新平衡。     

Organizational career management practices and objective career success: A systematic review and framework

The theorization of the relationship between organizational investments in career development and individual success remains underdeveloped, and empirical tests of this relationship, which have been dispersed among several disciplinary areas, have produced inconsistent results. Addressing these issues, the purpose of this article is to propose a theoretical framework that illustrates why and how organizational career management practices translate into career success and under what circumstances the relationship is effective. Using a systematic review of empirical studies on career management practices and objective success, we identify three theoretical mechanisms - developmental, informational, and relational - and two groups of contingency factors that explain this relationship. Our framework advances the extant literature on organizational career management and provides suggestions to companies for designing effective career management systems.     

The interplay between learning strategy and organizational structure in predicting career success

The institutionalization of management development and the money spent on it is in sharp contrast to the importance attached to what we know about how managers learn and whether it helps them to get promotion, given the specific organizational context in which they work. We therefore examined career success as a complex positive or negative function of the individual's learning strategy and the organization's structure. One hundred and twenty-seven managers from three government-related organizations completed a questionnaire. A deep learning strategy, characterized by a focus on meaning and relations, fosters career success, especially in a lowly specialized context. In contrast, a surface learning strategy, characterized by a focus on instructions and facts, hampers career success, especially in a highly integrated context. The findings strongly suggest that management development programmes need to be made to measure, taking into account both how the manager learns and how the organization is structured.     

Why is an elite undergraduate education valuable? Evidence from Israel

In this paper we compare the labor market performance of Israeli students who graduated from one of the leading universities, Hebrew University (HU), with those who graduated from a professional undergraduate college, College of Management Academic Studies (COMAS). Our results support a model in which employers have good information about the quality of HU graduates and pay them according to their ability, but in which the market has relatively little information about COMAS graduates. Hence, high-skill COMAS graduates are initially treated as if they were the average COMAS graduate, who is weaker than a HU graduate, and consequently earn less than HU graduates. However, over time the market differentiates among them so that after several years of experience, COMAS and HU graduates with similar entry scores have similar earnings. Our results are therefore consistent with the view that employers use education information to screen workers but that the market acquires information fairly rapidly.     

International graduate students' perceptions and interest in international careers

This research developed and tested a comprehensive model of the antecedents of international graduate students' interest in an international career. Based largely on Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT), the model included elements that pertain to perceptions of external constraints (perceptions of the labor market, family pressure to return), international student experience (adjustment in the foreign country during graduate studies, exposure and immersion to the international context) and individual factors (self-efficacy with respect to working abroad and outcome expectancy). Participants were 139 international graduate students in the UK. Individual factors and perceived constraints were directly related to interest in an international career. The factors that comprised current international student experience were indirectly related to interest via their relationship with self-efficacy, while adjustment moderated the relationship between self-efficacy and interest. Although the hypothesized moderating role of family pressure to return did not materialize, the findings suggest that perceptions of constraints play a more substantial role in the formation of interest than has been assumed by SCCT theory thus far. The findings are discussed with respect to their implications for the literature and for the policies of host country stakeholders.     

Career advancement in large organizations in Europe and the United States: do international assignments add value?

We look at the relationship between the number of assignments, the length of international assignment experience, the type of employer commissioning the international assignment, the individual's career stage at the first assignment, and career advancement: the time that the executives took to be appointed to the CEO position from the start of their career. Our sample of 1001 chief executives, based in 23 countries and affiliated with the 500 largest corporations in Europe and the 500 largest in the United States, allows us to examine important individual- and organization-level contingencies that affect the relationship between international assignment experience and career advancement. We find that international experience slows the executives' ascent to the top, longer assignments and a larger number of assignments being detrimental to their speed of ascent to top corporate positions. Further, international assignments at corporations other than the CEOs' current employer and assignments taken at later stages of executives' careers damage career advancement.     

HRM and disenfranchisement: Working beyond organizational boundaries to tackle societal barriers

From a practical perspective, employers have the potential to serve as an important societal mechanism for tackling grand challenges like disenfranchisement because they wield significant financial, social, human, and political capital. We posit that they may also have an obligation to take positive action to help solve issues in the community in which they operate. One of the main ways in which employers interact with society is through the labor market, as represented by the human resource management (HRM) function. We believe that HRM has significant capacity for addressing disenfranchisement beyond the boundaries of the organization through both functional and normative policies and programs. Based on recent ethics-HRM scholarship, we go beyond the typical business case approach to present a moral argument based in utilitarian and universal theoretical perspectives for why employers should seek to mitigate the impact of George et al.'s (2016) four societal barriers that lead to disenfranchisement. We build a 2 × 3 matrix model based on HRM's societal support role (Podgorodnichenko, Edgar, & McAndrew, 2020), as well as pictorial models, that provides practical recommendations related to the HRM responsibility areas of staffing, compensation, and training and development designed to prevent disenfranchisement.     

The role of job assignment and human capital endowments in explaining gender differences in job performance and promotion

We test a job ladders theory of career progression within internal labor markets as developed by Lazear and Rosen (1990). The theory argues that gender promotion gaps are due to sorting of men and women into career tracks with different promotion opportunities based on ex ante quit probabilities. Analyzing US federal government employees using a dynamic unobserved panel data model, we find that job assignment is one of the strongest predictors of gender differences in promotion. We also find that women have to jump higher performance hurdles to promote across grades, but, within grades, their promotion probabilities are comparable to those of men. In this organization, women can be found in both fast- and slow-track jobs, based on their promotion history, suggesting that unobserved heterogeneity is revealed to the firm over the worker's career.     

STEM selves: Women’s identity projects and their assessment of future employers in technical fields

In this paper, we take an identity project perspective on careers to explore how job seekers assess potential employers. Identity projects are individuals’ self-definitions in the light of their career development and personal aspirations and have the potential to further our understanding of careers. Drawing on focus group discussions of women seeking employment in STEM, we find four identity positioning strategies through which the women assess future employers. Our analysis illustrates the role of organizational images for shaping and realizing individuals’ identity projects. We contribute to research on identity projects by extending the concept’s focus to include job seekers as external organizational stakeholders and provide insight into their identity positioning. Furthermore, our study enhances the understanding of organizational image in the context of employee recruitment by outlining how individuals position themselves in relation to the organizational images they construct when reflecting on their identity projects and on the institutional context. Overall, we develop a more nuanced approach to understanding women’s interpretations of organizational identity claims (e.g., gender diversity claims) and thus extend current theorizing on recruiting women to STEM.     

The impact of employment equity regulations on psychological contracts in South Africa

This article will show the impact of employment equity legislation on the psychological employment contracts of the three main employee groupings in South African society. This study is important in that it fills the gap in the literature that identifies labour market regulations as an important shaping influence on the psychological contract. More than 500 managers from across South African industry and from all ethnic groups were surveyed to identify differences in psychological contracts and attitudes towards the social transformation regulations. We found that the legislation has impacted differentially on the three groupings mainly in terms of their loyalty to stay with their organizations, the focus on their career development in terms of the external labour market and the degree to which they felt they had been affected by the legislation. Additionally we find that the perceived linkage between job satisfaction and labour turnover is significantly weakened by labour market legislation in the case of the beneficiaries of the legislation, but that this may not be the case for those negatively affected by the legislation. The findings have significant implications for the HRM practices of multinationals operating in societies with significant labour market regulatory interventions.