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This paper aims to examine the skills expected by employers and the skills demonstrated by accounting graduates with data from 160 employers of accounting graduates in Ghana. From the perspective of employers, the authors compare the expected skills to the skills demonstrated by accounting graduates and identify any significant gaps.

One-way analysis of variance, T-tests and factor analysis are used to test significant gaps that exist between expected and demonstrated skills by employers and accounting graduates using survey questionnaires and purposive sampling.

The results reveal that there are significant gaps between the expected skills of employers and the demonstrated skills of accounting graduates. The authors find generic skills to be more expected by employers, while technical skills are demonstrated most by accounting graduates. The top five skills expected by employers are: business ethics and integrity; problem solving and decision analysis; written communication skills; learning skills; and application of accounting principles.

The study focuses only on organizations that use fresh accounting graduates in Ghana. Further studies may consider other business-related fields like finance, human resource management and marketing.

The study provides insights on standards that serve as benchmarks for the conduct of accounting graduates as well as the development of accounting curriculum in Ghana. Accounting education should incorporate work-integrated learning as part of their curriculum to enable accounting graduates to solve problems and make decisions through a practical application of accounting principles, standards and concepts, especially in conducting audit and writing reports.

This study fills the gap in the literature on accounting education from employers’ perspectives in a developing country. It conducts a comparative analysis between the most important skills required by employers and the ones demonstrated by accounting graduates to provide insights on standards that should serve as benchmarks for the development of the accounting curriculum from an emerging economy perspective.

This research study investigates the relationship between management practices and young employee retention in the hospitality and tourism industry in Lebanon. Besides, it examines the moderating role of the workplace context in the relationship between management practices and employment retention in the industry.

Non-probability purposive sampling method was used to collect 421 questionnaires through a survey of young employees. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and Cronbach's alpha test are conducted to test the construct validity, reliability, and internal consistency of collected data. Descriptive statistics are used to interpret the data. Zero-order correlations, multiple regression analysis and Fisher's Z-test are applied to assess the interrelations of the various groups of variables and the determinants of young employee retention.

The findings show that management practices tested in this study have significant relationships with young employee retention in the hospitality and tourism industry in Lebanon. Further, the findings reveal that the workplace context moderates the relationship between three management practices (participation in decision-making, training, and performance recognition) and young employee retention.

The findings suggest that managers in hospitality and tourism businesses must improve their management practices and promote a positive workplace context to retain young employees.

Finally, this study is the only one that tests the moderating role of the workplace context in the relationship between five selected management practices (participation in decision-making, training, performance recognition, remuneration and job continuity) and young employee retention. Previous studies used fewer variables.

The post-pandemic crisis has reshaped work dynamics across industries, leading to a widespread reliance on technology for remote work and business continuity. Operations have shifted to the digital space, altering job requirements and creating new career opportunities. The expansion of the digital industry has generated numerous career choices. The purpose of this study is to determine the relationships between self-efficacy, social media, career outcome expectations and career choices among fresh graduates in Malaysia amid the pandemic crisis.

Research data were collected from a sample of 318 fresh graduates from both public and private universities in Malaysia. Partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to analyze the data in this study.

The empirical findings revealed significant correlations between self-efficacy, social media usage and career outcome expectations and the career choices of Malaysian fresh graduates.

The present study offers an empirical framework to explain career choices among fresh graduates in Malaysia during the pandemic crisis, based on a review of related literature on careers. This research contributes to the body of knowledge on career choices among Generation Z fresh graduates and provides practical implications for organizations and individual employees. It suggests developing relevant Human Resource Development (HRD) interventions to retain the young workforce within organizations.

This study enriches the existing literature on self-efficacy, social media and career outcome expectations in the context of a pandemic crisis. It offers a new interpretation of how individual and contextual factors impact career choices, shaping the career management attitudes of fresh graduates in the post-pandemic era. The empirical findings also give valuable insights into higher education institutions, organizations and government authorities in Malaysia to develop relevant interventions to assist undergraduate students in their career choice exploration.

Several disciplines and thousands of studies have used, developed and supported technology adoption theories to guide industry and support innovation. However, within the past decade, a paradigm shift referred to as the fourth industrial revolution (4IR) has resulted in new considerations affecting how models are used to guide emerging technology integration into business strategy. The purpose of this study is to determine which technology adoption model, or models are primarily used when assessing smart technologies in the 4IR construct. It is not to investigate the rigour of existing models or their theoretical underpinnings, as this has been proven.

To achieve this, a systematic literature review based on the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis methodology is used. From 3,007 publications, 125 papers between 2015 and 2021 were deemed relevant for thematic analysis.

From the literature, five perspectives were extracted. As with other information and communication technology studies, the analysis confirms that the technology acceptance model remains the predominantly used model. However, 105 of the 125 models extended their theoretical underpinnings, indicating a lack of maturity. Furthermore, the countries of study and authors’ expertise are predominantly clustered in the European and Asian regions, despite the study noting expansion into 16 different subject areas, far beyond the smaller manufacturing scope of Industry 4.0.

This study contributes theoretically by providing a baseline to develop a generalisable 4IR model grounded on existing acceptance trends identified. Practically, these insights demonstrate the current trends for strategists and policymakers to understand technology adoption within the 4IR to direct efforts that support innovation development, an increasingly crucial factor for survival in the digital age. Future research can investigate the additional constructs that were impactful while considering the level of research they were applied to.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of technical skills, soft skills and social mobility skills on the perceived employability of Malaysian undergraduates in energy-focused universities. This study also aims to investigate the moderating effects of academic performance on such relationships.

To accomplish these objectives, this study employed partial least squares-structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) to analyse data obtained from 247 Malaysian undergraduates from public and private energy-focused universities across Malaysia. The Human Capital Theory served as the overarching theoretical framework for the study.

The study reveals that even if an undergraduate has stellar grades, they will not help him/her to land a job if they lack basic technical and computing skills. This study also indicates that undergraduates’ current academic performance affects their perceived employability despite already possessing the necessary soft skills. Along with academic performance, social mobility skills can be a determining factor in how graduates see their own employability. This is because social mobility has a significant impact on graduates’ chances of finding gainful employment.

This study provides insights into how technical skills, soft skills and social mobility skills influence the perceived employability of Malaysian undergraduates, especially in energy-focused universities, and the role of various parties involved. These parties, such as higher education institutions, are the key players that can initiate strategies to enhance specific skills and steer a public conversation towards a more methodical strategy for boosting graduates’ employability for future employment. This research also sheds light on how to better prepare for emerging job opportunities in the energy sector.

The study examines the effect of technical skills, soft skills and social mobility skills on the perceived employability of Malaysian undergraduates in energy-focused universities for future employment among Malaysia’s universities’ graduates. By providing a multidisciplinary viewpoint, this study paves the way for future research partnerships among experts in higher education, researchers in related fields and career researchers.

The effect of vicarious learning during clinical or medical internships on graduates' adaptive career behaviours has attracted scant attention from healthcare researchers, particularly, in the developing world context. Drawing upon the social cognitive career theory model of career self-management (SCCT-CSM), the current study examines how vicarious learning influences the clinical graduates' adaptive career behaviours (i.e. career exploration and decision-making) via career exploration and decision-making self-efficacy (CEDSE) and career intention.

Data were collected from 293 nursing graduates undertaking clinical internships in 25 hospitals across Nigeria who willingly participated in this study as they were also assured of confidentiality at two-waves. The proposed hypotheses were tested using a path analysis.

The findings showed that vicarious learning during clinical internship had a direct effect on career exploration, decision-making and career decision self-efficacy among graduate trainees. Also, the findings revealed that the effects of vicarious learning on the graduates' career exploration and career decision-making were significantly mediated by career decision self-efficacy and career intentions.

The findings of this study have important practical implications for higher education institutions and industries that send and receive clinical graduates for clinical internships to gain more skills. More emphasis should be on encouraging learners to learn vicariously in addition to other forms of learning experiences available during clinical internships.

The study explains that the graduates' higher engagement in clinical career exploration and decision-making was based on a higher level of vicarious learning during internships. The results suggest that higher education institutions and healthcare service providers can derive greater benefits from more emphasis on promoting vicarious learning during clinical internships.

The role of women in the architecture and design industry is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which aims to increase the participation of women in the Saudi construction sector. Saudi female graduates from architectural and design schools are currently working in most of the mega projects underway in Riyadh; however, they face certain challenges at the beginning of their working lives due to the gap between the skills acquired during an architectural and design education and those needed for employability.

This study evaluates the employability skills of Saudi female cooperative education (COOP) students and graduates from architectural schools in Riyadh. A quantitative approach is taken, and two questionnaires are administered: one for female COOP students and graduates from the college of architecture and design in one of the private universities in Riyadh and the other for employers from different architectural firms and governmental organizations in Riyadh. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the research data.

The research findings suggest that practical experiences and on-site observation activities should be provided, and sustainability solutions and applications should be incorporated into the curriculum to bring architecture education closer to the architectural profession and highlight the role of universities in supporting graduates' skills development.

It is worth mentioning that the results of this study were based on the survey distributed to architecture and interior female students in a private university in Saudi Arabia. The number of students surveyed in this study is not large enough to generalize the survey results to the entire population of architecture and interior design students in the kingdom and in the world. The study will be extended to include more participants from male and female students in other universities in Saudi Arabia to investigate the gaps in employability skills in the field of architecture and interior design in the Kingdom.

The study has practical and policy implications for further development and upcoming challenges as the labor market seems to improve and innovate every day. The study suggests providing practical experiences and onsite observation activities and incorporating sustainability solutions and applications into the curriculum.

The originality of this study is that it focuses on the importance of some employability skills, such as research and budgeting aspects, Sustainability solutions and applications for students that have not been mentioned in the previous studies.

The current study intends to synthesise the prior studies on employability skills among work-ready professionals in higher education through bibliometric and network visualisation tools. This study also identifies the gaps in the existing literature that still need to be filled and maps the course for future investigation.

The current study examined research papers on employability skills among work-ready professionals in higher education to evaluate global patterns and the top authors, institutions, journals, and nations contributing to this field. The authors analysed eight hundred eighty-five papers from the Scopus database between 1982 and 2023 for the study. Open-source bibliometric tools like Biblioshiny were used in the study to examine the body of literature and to spot new directions for future research.

The study’s findings indicate that since 2008, researchers, academics, and policymakers have paid more attention to employability skills among work-ready professionals, and 2019 is the year seeing the highest no. of publications. Across the globe, 2077 authors contributed to the articles, papers, and journals published in the particular domain. Regarding location, the United Kingdom is the world’s most productive nation, with 342 articles produced. Similarly, Australia, India, and Malaysia are the leading nations that have contributed to the field. Both keywords significantly contribute to scientific knowledge.

The gaps in this study will serve as a reference point for researchers conducting future studies in this field. Additionally, the result of this analysis offers a roadmap for higher education to enhance graduate employability by embedding necessary skills into them.

There has not been a bibliometric analysis concerning employability skills among Work-ready professionals in the existing literature; hence, this article is innovative. This study is the first attempt at integrating the concept. The study also gives an overview of potential directions for future research in this discipline.

Employers increasingly require students to possess competences that go beyond theoretical knowledge and academic expertise, such as lifelong learning skills. To equip students with these competences, higher education institutes have introduced coaching as part of their teaching programs. The present study qualitatively evaluates a career coaching practice in higher education.

We conducted semi-structured interviews with graduates who had participated in career coaching activities at a Dutch university (N = 12). The interviews were conducted between February and May 2022. Atlas.ti version 9 was used to analyse the interviews.

Results revealed that graduates believed that career coaching helped them to adjust to the workplace. They indicated that the coaching practice helped them to acquire reflection skills, which was considered the main mechanism for adjustment to the workplace.

These results add to the transition-related literature by identifying one way that graduates successfully adjust to the workplace.

The results also provide insight into how higher education can best prepare students for their transition to the workplace.

As the education-to-work transition does not end upon graduation, this research focusses on graduate employees’ work adjustment as an important phase in the transition process.

Success in the transition between the university and the labor market is an important indicator of the adaptation of newly graduates to the worker’s role in life. This study aims to describe the validity and reliability of the University-to-Work Success Scale based on its internal structure and relationship with measures of career success, protean career orientation and life satisfaction in newly Portuguese graduates.

Using an online protocol, responses were collected from 576 graduates for less than twelve months (74.1% women), aged between 20 and 64 years (M = 25.8, SD = 6.693). Instruments included a socio-demographic questionnaire and measures of transition success, career success and life satisfaction.

The internal structure of the scale was evaluated through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses that supported a four-factor hierarchical structure with a good fit. The reliability of the factors evaluated by Cronbach’s Alpha was satisfactory. The scale consists of 29 items divided into four subscales (professional insertion and satisfaction, confidence in the future of career, income and financial independence and adaptation to work).

These results support the use of the scale as a valid and reliable measure to assess success in the transition between university and the labor market in newly Portuguese graduates.

This study is very important because this measure can serve as a basis for both preventive and corrective career interventions and policies. The preventive approach can help graduates in their transition to the labor market by promoting career resources. The corrective approach can include re-evaluating organizational integration practices after employment, with an emphasis on promoting gender equality.