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Prompted by the enlarging skills gap between the university graduate and the desired employee in Mauritius, the Charles Telfair Institute embarked its students on the #NuKapav project for an authentic work integrated learning (WIL) experience which endeavours to fight for the societal inclusion of Persons with Disabilities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of this service-learning project on the students from professional, civic engagement and social justice perspectives.

This research used a focus group methodology, allowing the 23 students who participated on the #NuKapav project to share their experiences.

This paper recommends that universities in Mauritius and other regional countries consider incorporating service-learning into their WIL programmes to reinforce graduate employability skills and encourage good citizenship through lasting allegiance to community causes.

The higher education system in Mauritius operates within a broader context facing constant mutations influenced by socio-economic and political factors. As such, research on service-learning cannot be conducted in isolation but should instead include the perspective of various stakeholders on both the demand and supply side of community learning projects. The main limitation of this research relates to its focus on capturing student participants’ perspective alone. Further research is, therefore, recommended to examine how other stakeholders, including employees, employers and community service project supervisors, value service-learning for a more comprehensive view.

The main contribution of this paper is the examination of how service-learning can help equip graduates with crucial career skills, while bringing an enduring mind-set shift in the future workforce for sustained commitment to social change and inclusion.

This paper investigates the effect of diversity management on employees' innovative work behavior (IWB) through human resource management (HRM) and affective commitment (AC).

Data were collected from 358 employees of small- and medium-sized enterprises in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. The hypothesized model has been evaluated using structural equation modeling.

Findings suggest that workforce diversity management directly and significantly affected HRM and AC. Furthermore, findings revealed that HRM significantly influenced both employees' IWB and AC, while AC had a significant positive influence on IWB. Moreover, concerning the indirect effects, AC and HRM significantly mediated the relationship between DM and employees' IWB.

A cross-sectional single source dataset is used to evaluate the hypothesized model.

Grounded in the social exchange and institutional theories, this research fills the gap in the literature by addressing the “black box” of how workforce DM influences employees' IWB while examining the mediating role of employees' AC and firm HRM policies.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the key global challenges relating to youth employment and consider some ways that they may be addressed to allow their inclusion in the contemporary workplace. Also, the paper provides a brief introduction and rationale for the other five articles comprising this special issue volume.

The approach concerns a review of the relevant literature and reports on the topic.

The challenges outlined in this paper and the others in this special issue volume emphasise the need for much more work to be done to address the current global challenges relating to youth unemployment. It points to: the difficulties many young workers face in taking the first step towards gaining employment; the need for stakeholder collaboration towards future policy investment as well as strategy implementation and integration.

To date, much of the research that has been conducted on the challenges of youth employment and inclusion appears to have focussed on Europe and the USA. This special issue volume includes countries that have been less researched to date: Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Singapore and the United Arab Emirates, thus adding to current understanding of the topic in those contexts.