Search results

NORMAN TOMLINSON'S article on publicity for International Book Year (NLW October), touches on a theme that is becoming more and more urgent in librarianship. As he so rightly points out, many isolated attempts are made to publicise one or other of the multi‐faceted aspects of librarianship today, but how many fellow librarians, let alone the public, have heard of these events. (Have you heard of IBY?)

The stressors, and subsequent mental health sequelae, associated with being a part of the frontline, patient-facing healthcare response to the COVID-19 pandemic have been clear from the very start of the pandemic. However, a broader group of workers, perhaps typically not considered to be part of the frontlines of a public health emergency response, have also been deemed essential to the response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Protective service workers, including law enforcement and emergency services, those working in food production, processing, and dietetics, maintenance and environmental service workers, and laboratory workers are among those unable to work from home, yet potentially unaccustomed to the stressors of being an essential workers during a public health emergency. Changes to many systems – including health insurance and other benefits, provision of personal protective equipment, and prioritizations for vaccinations and other pharmaceutical and nonpharmaceutical interventions – are needed going forward to retain and protect essential workers during future public health emergencies.

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has created a challenging, yet opportunistic, environment in which to conduct transformative service research (TSR) and assess research methodology. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and gain important new insights of a group interviewing method with vulnerable people and their support group, adapted and transferred online during COVID-19.

This research examines the experiences of 35 participants (nine family groups composed of parents and young people), involved in a research project that explores a sensitive topic, youth alcohol consumption and family communication, that was moved online during lockdown. Researcher reflections on running group interviews face-to-face prior to COVID- 19 and online during lockdown are included in the data.

Thematic analysis of participant interviews and researcher reflections reveals four key benefits and three limitations of online group interviews with vulnerable people and their support group. The benefits include being comfortable, non-intrusive and safe; engaging and convenient; online communication ease and easy set-up. The limitations relate to lack of non-verbal communication, poor set-up, and privacy and access issues.

The global environment is uncertain and being able to implement effective qualitative research online is essential for TSR and service research in the future. This paper provides a step by step procedure for an innovative online group interviewing technique that can be used by TSR and qualitative service researchers.

Conducting research during a pandemic has provided unprecedented insights into qualitative research approaches and methodology. This paper contributes to literature on service and TSR methodology by providing a framework for researchers to investigate vulnerable groups online in an effective, safe and non-intrusive way. The framework also has the potential to be applied to other service contexts.

Many master’s students enrol in coursework-based programmes to improve their professional knowledge and skills for the job market. Most studies of employability in higher education focus on undergraduates rather than master’s students, although the number of master’s students worldwide has increased significantly in recent years. This study explores the factors involved in the perceived employability (PE) of master’s students in Hong Kong.

The authors first proposed a conceptual model of PE based on the social cognitive career theory. Using survey data from 786 master’s students in Hong Kong, the authors applied descriptive statistics and an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression to address the following research questions: How do master’s students gauge their PE? How do person, learning and environment variables influence the PE of master’s students?

The authors found that PE is influenced by students' approaches to learning and their institutional career support.

Few studies examined whether students' learning experiences during the master’s programmes influence their employability. This study highlights the importance of learning experiences and career support in coursework-based master’s programmes for enhancing graduate employability.

The objective of this research is to examine the mediating role of employees' well-being in the workplace in the relationship between the dimensions of social capital, namely structural, relational and cognitive social capital and knowledge sharing, as well as the moderating role of enterprise social networks between knowledge sharing and employees' well-being.

A quantitative approach was performed within a sample of 168 middle managers working in knowledge-intensive firms in Tunisia. The Partial Least Squares method was used to analyze the data collected.

Results highlight the importance of the dimensions of social capital as a lever for boosting knowledge sharing. It also reveals that employees' well-being plays a mediating role in the link between structural and relational social capital and knowledge sharing. Moreover, findings show that while enterprise social networks use does not moderate the relationship between employees' well-being and knowledge sharing, it has a positive and significant effect on knowledge sharing.

On the basis of a socio-technical perspective of knowledge management, this research pioneers the examination of the mediating effect of employees' well-being in the link between dimensions of social capital and knowledge sharing and the moderating role of enterprise social networks use within knowledge-intensive firms. Findings of this study may help managers of knowledge-intensive firms in boosting knowledge sharing within organizations, in improving knowledge workers' well-being and thus in motivating and retaining these talented employees.

The field of careers studies is complex and fragmented. The aim of this paper is to detail why it is important to study careers, what we study and how we study key issues in this evolving field.

Key theories, concepts and models are briefly reviewed to lay the groundwork for offering an agenda for future research.

The authors recommend ten key directions for future research and offer specific questions for further study.

This paper contributes to the development of the theoretical underpinning of career studies.

The authors hope that the proposed agenda for future research will help advance the field and encourage more research on understudied, but important, topics.

This paper presents a comprehensive view of research on contemporary careers.

This study aims to investigate whether strategy pillars have a positive direct effect on organizational productivity performance (OPP) in the Indonesian HEI (Higher Education Institutions) research setting and, if so, whether the effect is mediated by a performance management system (PMS).

This study used quantitative research employing partial least square structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) to test the hypotheses. A mediation model of the research framework was developed to investigate the mediating role of PMS.

Using a sample of 182 Indonesian HEI managers, the results indicate that strategy pillars have a positive effect on OPP. Further analysis shows that PMS partially mediates the strategy pillar–OPP relationship.

This study has limitations. Firstly, the sample size used was relatively small and this may raise the issue of generalization. Secondly, it used a Likert scale and therefore may raise the issue of judgment bias. Lastly, this study is context-specific for Indonesia and caution should be used when generalizing it to other countries.

To enhance the HEIs productivity performance, the HEI managers should develop strong strategy pillars for the purpose of effective strategy formulation and execution.

This study provides a model showing how to improve the HEIs productivity performance by employing strategy pillars and a PMS. The better the performance of the HEIs, the better the quality of life of society in the era of the knowledge economy.

Strategy pillars have rarely been researched. This study is therefore one of the few studies on strategy pillars. This study also provides new elements related to measuring strategy pillars, PMS and OPP in the context of HEIs in Indonesia as an emerging economy.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the concept of graduate work readiness (GWR) from a stakeholder perspective. The research attempts to pull together the various multidisciplinary themes from the literature into a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between graduates and the labour market, considering the international dimension of what is a global phenomenon.

The critical review is divided into four distinct sections, the first is to contextualise the concept of GWR and graduate employability taking into account recent academic discussion, particularly in the EU and ASEAN; second, to explore the different perspectives of stakeholders in the “triple helix” of universities, governments and the corporate world; third, critically to assess the arguments that educational provision is poorly aligned with labour market needs; and finally, to investigate the implications of the fourth industrial revolution for graduate jobs and skills and propose an agenda for future research.

Despite the apparent consensus between stakeholders over the central importance of graduate employability, there is considerable diversity in how each imagines GWR is best assured.

Any review is limited by the extant literature and whilst it is not uncommon that most research has been done in North America, Western Europe and Australasia, this is a serious limitation. GWR is a global concern and this review shows the need for more research that extends beyond the dominant geographical focus and its attendant paradigms. The implication is that geography is important and local research is needed to develop solutions that fit specific cultural, economic and institutional contexts.

The paper highlights the need to reconcile different stakeholder perspectives on GWR and ensure that they work together on shared agendas to improve graduate transition to the labour market. At the same time, the profound changes being brought about by the fourth industrial revolution suggest that more attention should be paid to the employability of existing employees.

This review should prove useful to both academics and practitioners because it emphasises the need to treat GWR as a concept that varies according to context and stakeholder interests, rather than a homogeneous phenomenon.