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Drawing on human capital and sustainable career theory, this paper aims to explore university students' views regarding their self-perceived employability following participation in a mandatory module titled “The Global Marketing Professional”.

Overall, 80 students studying a full-time postgraduate master's degree in international marketing management at a northern Russell Group university participated in a two-wave study by completing a questionnaire during Weeks 1 and 9 of the module in the 2021/2022 academic year. Descriptive statistics, paired samples t-tests and quantitative content analysis were subsequently applied to the data set.

Students' confidence in their self-perceived employability rose from 37.5% to 92.5%. This was supported by the paired samples t-tests’ findings of increases at the item and composite scale levels. The quantitative content analysis found benefits of the module to include increased confidence, interactive classes, skills development, knowledge of the recruitment process, CV development, proactive career ownership, interview guidance and networking. Suggestions for improvement included increasing the amount of lecture time provided, increased accessibility via subtitles and opportunities for real-world experience.

The contribution comes via the advancement of human capital and sustainable career theory by identifying empirically informed strategies for enhancing students' self-perceived employability within the university curriculum. Implications subsequently extend to universities, organisations and national economies.

Drawing on a framework of conservation of resources theory, the purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between self-perceived academic performance and individual entrepreneurial intention and consider the potential moderating role of (1) participation in serious leisure, (2) perceived stress and/or (3) gender.

A total of 405 UK-based undergraduates completed the questionnaire, with a representative gender split of 57% women and 43% men.

The positive relationship between self-perceived academic performance and individual entrepreneurial intention was moderated by serious leisure (stronger when participation in serious leisure increased) and by perceived stress (stronger when levels of perceived stress were lower). However, contrary to our expectations, gender had no statistically significant moderating role.

The practical contribution comes from informing policy for universities and national governments to increase individual entrepreneurial intention in undergraduates.

The theoretical contribution comes from advancing conservation of resources theory, specifically the interaction of personal resources, resource caravans and resource passageways.

By adopting a Social Exchange Theory (SET) lens, this paper aims to integrate the often-fragmented literature streams of Vocational Behavior (VB), Career Development (CD), and Human Resource Management (HRM) to offer a conceptual model for framing sustainable careers.

A conceptual approach is taken whereby eight propositions are developed to integrate the fragmented literature streams of VB, CD, and HRM.

We posit that external factors and career counseling moderate the positive relationship between employability capital and self-perceived employability. We also argue that self-perceived employability is positively associated with career success and that career crafting moderates this relationship. Finally, we propose that career success is positively associated with a sustainable career, which, in turn, is positively associated with a sustainable organization.

The practical contribution comes from informing VB, CD, and HRM policies and practices to maximize sustainable outcomes for individuals and organizations. The paper concludes with recommendations for future research.

The theoretical contribution comes from integrating the three literature streams to offer a conceptual model as the basis for further interdisciplinary collaborations.

Drawing on a theoretical framework of sustainable career ecosystem theory, our paper aims to consider how domestic and international postgraduates can enhance their employability through participation in a landscape of practice.

The study employed an exploratory, longitudinal case study design to capture students' lived experiences on an 18-month Master of Professional Practice course at a higher education institution in New Zealand. The data collection procedure involved field note observations (months 1–4), a focus group (month 13) and narrative frames (months 16–18). The sample was domestic students from New Zealand (n = 2) and international students from Asia (n = 5).

One’s participation in multiple communities of practice represents their landscape of practice and a commitment to lifewide learning. Through participation in various communities of practice, domestic and international students can enhance their employability in three ways: (1) boundary encounters to develop social capital, (2) transcending contexts to enhance cultural capital, and (3) acknowledging the development of psychological capital and career agency.

Our work offers one of the earliest empirical validations of sustainable career ecosystem theory. Expressly, communities of practice represent various contexts whereby employability capital is developed over time. Additionally, the postgraduate students themselves are portrayed as interconnected and interdependent actors, presenting a novel framing of such dependencies at the micro-level of the ecosystem. The practical implications come from informing universities of the value of a landscape of practice to enhance the employability of domestic and international students in preparation for sustainable careers and to promote the sustainability of the career ecosystem.

This study aims to explore the impact of engaging in serious leisure (SL) on the well-being (WB) and self-perceived employability (PE) of university students while also considering the role of career adaptability (CA) as a mediator.

A total of 905 domestic undergraduate students from China completed an online survey.

The findings reveal that participation in SL positively influences WB and PE. Additionally, the results indicate that CA mediates the SL-WB relationship but not the SL-PE relationship.

The theoretical contribution of this research comes from advancing our understanding of sustainable career theory through empirical testing of SL, PE, and CA on WB outcomes within a higher education setting. The practical implications of this study involve providing universities with strategies to support domestic Chinese undergraduate students in enhancing their WB and PE through active engagement in SL pursuits and the development of CA. Moreover, our findings serve as a foundation for future research investigating whether insights gained from domestic Chinese undergraduate students can provide solutions on a global scale to address the persistent challenges of improving student WB and PE.

Drawing on a framework of person-organisation fit (POF) theory, this paper aims to understand how organisations can establish and maintain sustainable early-career talent pipelines. Research question one asks, “How do graduates feel that organisations can attract early-career talent?” Research question two asks, ‘What can employers learn from graduate perspectives about the retention of early-career talent?

Twenty-eight graduates from UK universities participated in semi-structured interviews in early 2022. Cohort one was composed of 15 individuals who graduated in 2008. Cohort two was composed of 13 individuals who graduated in 2020.

The findings identified two themes associated with attracting early-career talent: “Company Culture” and “Supply and Demand”. However, 2020 graduates prioritised the job role and job security, whereas 2008 graduates prioritised job location and commute duration. Three additional themes were related to the retention of early-career talent: “Career Progression”, “Health and Well-being” and “Remuneration”. Findings also highlighted how POF could evolve over time, whereby retention can be beneficial or detrimental to either party.

The study identifies pragmatic approaches to attracting and retaining early-career talent and understanding how graduates' views on POF evolve over time.

The study extends POF research and bridges the shared sustainability themes of “person”, “context” and “time” from vocational behaviour and HRM literature streams.

Bosco, Liu, and West's chapter on underground lotteries in rural China is one that begs permission to cross the boundaries between parts of this volume, for it deals with the integration of the Chinese economy with others, and it also poses certain moral questions about the nature of markets and rationality in economic exchanges (see also Suarez, this volume). But the authors, after reviewing the evidence, ultimately conclude that China's underground lotteries must be viewed in relation to that country's phenomenal economic development in recent decades. They show that the rise of illegal underground lotteries in China is tightly connected to the development of the modern capitalist economy there, and that although it seems at first glance to be powered by irrationality and superstition, it actually functions according to capitalist principles – at least as viewed by the participants. They also argue that rural villagers who place bets in them are not mere victims of nonsensical beliefs or of opportunistic “outsiders,” but rather that they are participating in their own way in a system in which luck clearly plays a very large role, but one over which they have little control, and one that is grounded in the historical commercialized economy of China (see also Richardson, 1999). It is interesting to note the way that participants rationalize the lottery and their actions through their assumption that it is rigged – their approach to it is markedly different from that of someone from, for example, Japan or the United States, where such a lottery is assumed from the start to not be rigged. Bosco and co-authors well demonstrate here the importance of viewing a cultural phenomenon as part of a greater whole, and one in a constant state of flux.

The performance construct may be one of the most elusive in organization theory. Health care organizations are particularly complex owing to their dual lines of accountability, i.e. professional and administrative. This article examines the factors affecting performance indicator development and use at the technical/managerial and institutional levels, including the accreditation process and the relationship between levels. Using institutional and rational/goal theory, the motivations behind performance measurement behavior at different organizational levels was explored. Results show that the institutional level is motivated by legitimacy while the technical/managerial level is motivated by rationality. Tensions exist between the two levels and between indicator development and use.

The study aims to ratify skills necessary to bridge the gap between the existing models and emerging needs of a technology-enabled workspace; especially in the Indian context.

This paper extends the ongoing debate on a relevant employability framework suitable both for higher education institutes and corporates. To remain resilient to future catastrophes similar to the ongoing pandemic, the relevancy of established employability skills to suit the changing scenario needs to be established.

The partial least squares (PLS) technique has been used to present a framework confirming the importance of digital competencies, business fundamentals and behavioral skills. In-depth discussions with specialists ratified the proposed framework and recommended potential changes in curriculum and pedagogy.

This study validates an explicit and comprehensive employability skill framework and useful recommendations in teaching strategies, which may provide a broad skill base for graduates to prepare for the volatile business environment in the long run.

The study has been able to put forth significant employability skills as deemed significant by the three stakeholders. This will provide guidance to higher educational institutions (HEIs) to come up with a broad skill-base for the fresh graduates and prepare them for the volatile business environment and encourage life-long learning to remain productive in the long run.

The study is unique as it incorporates the perceived importance of the competencies assumed by each stakeholder, namely, employers, faculty and management graduates, which was unfortunately lacking in earlier researches.

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.