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The purpose of this paper is to examine how young women understand and make meaning of their status as early-career women (ECW) in the creative communication industry, which is typically dominated by male leadership. It explores how professional relationships influence their transition into full-time employment and influences their career trajectories.

Interviews with 31 women in the first five years of their communication careers provided insights into how they experience professional relationships in the workplace in relation to leadership advancement. Inductive coding, a feminist organizational communication lens and literature on mentorship and role modeling was used to explore the standpoint of these young women.

Young women understand that professional relationships are necessary for acclimation and professional development. Our analysis revealed an intersection of three distinct ways these relationships help young women cultivate a strong career foundation, positioning themselves for leadership opportunities.

This study provides insight into the experiences of ECW, a group significantly overlooked by industry and research as a way to increase career equity. Findings from this study guide programmatic and socialization practices to help young women overcome barriers.

Developing a deeper understanding of women worker’s realities, this research encourages industries to regard the entire career path, emphasizing the importance of beginning socialization experiences in the workplace. It offers actionable managerial practices, and it drives a new scholarly focus on a demographic critical to closing the leadership gender gap.

This study aims to explore organizational factors that impact women’s career advancement. Knowledge of organizational practices that promote or obstruct women’s career progress is vital for women, firms and governments.

A total of 237 women participated in the study from the service sector in Johannesburg (South Africa). Participants were selected using a convenient sampling approach. Researchers used a questionnaire, consisting of demographic and open-ended questions, to gather data. Comments were analyzed using a thematic content analysis approach.

Findings reveal that prioritizing women, offering skills development opportunities, providing growth opportunities, assisting women in managing their careers, offering mentorship and having work-family support initiatives are practices that promote women’s career advancement. Conversely, practices that foster stagnation of women’s careers, distrust in women’s leadership abilities, preference for external candidates, people–related malpractices, male domination/preference, lack of role models and work-family balance support, hamper women’s career advancement.

The findings of this study will contribute to women’s empowerment. Organizations should provide a conducive atmosphere by instituting practices that promote their female employees' career advancement. Firms also should intentionally take practical steps to address practices that impede women’s career progression. The results of this study will also help the government to design appropriate policies that will promote the career progression of women employees.

This study presents findings from an analysis of qualitative data collected from 237 women to provide insight into the experiences of women working within the service industry in Johannesburg, South Africa.

Motivated by the organizational challenge coined the great discontent, employees are dissatisfied with their jobs, see minimal opportunities for growth and are actively searching for new roles. This research aims to take a novel approach to internal communication strategy by introducing employability culture and leadership empowerment as mechanisms for supporting employees' career growth and additional positive workplace outcomes.

An online survey was designed and administered in the United States. The final sample size includes 425 full-time employees working in a variety of roles, industries and work arrangements.

Findings point to the inherent need for revised internal communication strategy that goes beyond managing and disseminating information. Organizations must develop cultures and their leaders in ways that empower employees and help them understand the meaning of their work. Employability culture, or an organization's support for developing employees' adaptive skills as work roles change, positively predicted employees' perceptions of their career growth opportunities at their current place of employment, employee loyalty and engagement, and job satisfaction. Leadership empowerment behaviors also positively predicted all previously listed workplace variables. These perceptions as influenced by work arrangement (onsite, hybrid, fully remote) and younger versus older generations were also analyzed.

Research findings offer new strategies for internal communications. Internal communication teams can partner alongside executive leadership to develop a culture that helps employees envision how their skills and expertise translates to different areas of the organization, empowering them to find meaning in their work, and be driven to support organizational growth.

The paper aims to clarify the relationship between problem-solving skills and socialization of first-year university students and propose talent management strategies for university management, course instructors and administrators. Thus, this paper identifies three student clusters among the first-year bachelor students. This paper aims to propose a talent management framework and makes recommendations for course instructors and administrators.

In this paper, a Simulated Work Experience is applied to collect data on problem-solving skills and demographics of first-year business students. Based on the anonymous competency and demographic data of 546 students, 3 clusters were identified with a hierarchical K-means clustering method and linked with talent management and curriculum design strategies.

The paper provides empirical insights about how the demographic background of the first-year students affects the students' problem-solving skills. This paper identifies three clusters – laggers, unpolished diamonds and drivers – and proposes a talent management framework to support the students' personal and professional development. The proposed talent management framework is based on the direction of upskilling and type of talent management incentives and outlines four distinct categories: extracurricular reward, tutoring and catching up, perform-or-punish and up-or-out systems. This paper makes suggestions to course administrators and instructors how to incorporate talent management and competency mapping aspects into the curriculum and syllabus design activities.

The research is limited to problem-solving skills and focused only on first-year business students.

The paper includes practical implications for business school management, course administrators and instructors about competency mapping, talent management strategies, curriculum and syllabus design.

The research is based on the competency mapping of 546 first-year students at Budapest Business School. The data were collected via a Simulated Work Experience, where the students were participating in a virtual business project.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how mentors affect the career satisfaction of protégés. Drawing from the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM), the authors propose a dual processing model that considers both cognition and emotion in the relationship between mentoring and the career satisfaction of protégés.

The study employed a three-stage questionnaire survey to collect data from employees in Chinese enterprises, resulting in a total of 329 valid responses.

The results showed that mentoring had a significant positive impact on protégé career satisfaction. Additionally, role clarity and positive affect of protégés played dual-mediating effects between mentoring and protégé career satisfaction. Moreover, as a non-mentoring behavior, mentor advice-seeking behavior strengthened the positive impact of mentoring on role clarity and positive affect.

In the study, the authors utilize the ELM as a new perspective to construct a dual-mediating model of protégé role clarity and positive affect to illuminate the mechanism of mentoring on protégé career satisfaction, advancing the literatures of mentoring relationship and career development. Further, the authors put forward the moderating effect of mentor advice-seeking behavior by considering it as a non-mentoring behavior of mentors to deepen the understanding of mentorships. Moreover, the authors attempt to propose the long-term cumulative effect of the dual processing to expand the application of the ELM in interpersonal processes.

The aims of this critical review are to identify the mentor characteristics that lead to superior mentoring outcomes and to provide human resources development (HRD) professionals with evidence-based suggestions for recruiting, selecting and training mentors to improve mentorship programme effectiveness.

The authors conducted a critical review of existing quantitative research on mentor characteristics that have an impact on effective mentoring.

The authors identified five key categories of mentor characteristics linked to successful mentoring outcomes: competency in context-relevant knowledge, skills and abilities; commitment and initiative; interpersonal skills; pro-social orientation and an orientation toward development, exploration and expansion.

There is limited research on the characteristics of ineffective mentor characteristics, exclusion of articles that used qualitative research methods exclusively and how technology-based communication in mentoring may require different characteristics. Most of the included studies collected data in the United States of America, which may exclude other important mentor characteristics from other non-Western perspectives.

To ensure that there is both a sufficient pool of qualified mentors and mentors who meet the desired criteria, focus on both recruitment and training mentors is important. Incorporating the desired mentor characteristics into both of these processes, rather than just selection, will help with self-selection and development of these characteristics.

Despite the ongoing interest in identifying effective mentor characteristics, the existing literature is fragmented, making this challenging for HRD professionals to determine which characteristics are crucial for mentoring relationships and programme success. Addressing this practical need, this critical review synthesises the research literature and identifies patterns and inconsistencies. Based on the review, the authors provide evidence-based recommendations to enhance the recruitment, selection and training of mentors.

The paper aims to address the increasing issue of teacher shortages and the lack of diversity in America’s educators. Highly diverse communities need ways to support community members interested in careers as teachers. This article explores one promising approach to reach and inspire high school students considering the teaching profession. Camp ExCEL (Exploring Careers in Education and Leadership) provided a pathway allowing rising high school seniors an opportunity to explore the teaching profession. This pathway utilized the Grow Your Own framework, recruiting students from a diverse community and providing them resources and information that would further efforts to become an educator within their community.

The current study examined outcomes from an education summer camp, using qualitative thematic analysis to reflexively interpret participants’ (n = 29) feelings and beliefs about effective teaching, culturally responsive teaching (CRT), project-based learning (PBL) and their camp experience. Data were collected using Google documents and surveys. The four connected themes that emerged were obstacles and barriers to teaching, qualities of an effective teacher, the impact of culturally responsive teaching and project-based learning on classrooms, and the importance of mentorships within education.

The paper provides insight about how an education camp can support high school students as they explore a career in education. Results suggest that focus on high-quality pedagogy can support student understanding of the career. Students also suggested their perception of effective teaching that includes acknowledging the needs of the whole student, modeling high-quality teaching practices and displaying positive professional dispositions.

Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalizability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to conduct and examine education camps further.

The paper includes implications for the development of other education camps, especially in areas with highly diverse populations.

This paper fulfills an identified need to increase the number of persons pursuing a career in education. The focus on a highly diverse community is also an area of need in education. This article details the description of an education camp and the curriculum used, along with findings from data collected during the first year.

The study aims to determine the outcomes of mentorship in an online game system, as well as the characteristics of good mentors.

A combination of anonymized survey measures and in-game behavioral measures were used to power longitudinal analysis over an 11-month period in which protégés and non-mentored new players could be compared for their performance, social connections and retention.

Successful people were more likely to mentor others, and mentors increased protégés' skill. Protégés had significantly better retention, were more active and much more successful as players than non-protégés. Contrary to expectations, younger, less wealthy and educated people were more likely to be mentors and mentors did not transfer their longevity. Many of the qualities of the mentor remain largely irrelevant—what mattered most was the time spent together.

This is a study of an online game, which has unknown generalizability to other games and to offline settings.

The results show that getting mentors to spend dedicated time with protégés matters more than their characteristics.

Good mentorship does not require age or resources to provide real benefits.

This is the first study of mentorship to use survey and objective outcome measures together, over time, online.

This study aims to identify the critical barriers to women’s leadership in Indian corporate sector using the interpretive structural modeling (ISM) approach.

Through data obtained from extant literature and the expert opinion of women seeking higher managerial positions in the Indian corporate sector, this study identified total 18 barriers to women’s leadership. Thereafter, this study used the Delphi technique to identify the most critical barriers and ISM to understand the causal relationship among them, and then ranked them based on relevance.

Of the 13 critical barriers identified, corporate policies, conscious organizational bias and family responsibilities had the highest driving power. By contrast, inadequate career opportunities and the lack of risk-taking ability and assertiveness had the highest dependence power. Unconscious organizational bias and occupational segregation were other prominent barriers.

This study establishes the interrelationships between women’s leadership barriers. It provides a well-defined model which helps to get theoretical insight considering barriers for women leaders in their career progression in the Indian context. Based on the ISM model, these findings can help academicians and researchers gain deep insights into the barriers to women’s leadership in the Indian context, as no studies have been found in the literature concerning the given subject.

Based on the findings, corporations and policymakers can design inclusive leadership policies to support women as they climb the corporate ladder and to enhance their contribution to organizational success.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to identify barriers to women’s leadership in India using ISM analysis.

Through the lens of professional identity (PID), this paper aims to examine what matters to women when reflecting on their professions in hospitality. The purpose of this examination is to understand to what extent these PIDs are shared among women in hospitality and to include women’s voices into the workforce.

An exploratory sequential mixed-methods approach was used. The qualitative step included 24 in-depth interviews with female middle and senior managers in hotel management in the USA. The results of the interviews informed the design of a quantitative survey completed by 330 women hospitality professionals in managerial and non-managerial positions in the USA.

The qualitative analysis derived three super-ordinate and ten sub-themes. These themes were then quantitatively measured for validity and generalization. The mixing of qualitative and quantitative data indicated the relevance of work environment, social evaluation and perception of work and demonstrating professional competence as a woman in hospitality as significant drivers in establishing women’s hospitality PIDs.

This paper is the first to address women hospitality professionals through the lens of PID. By providing a different gender perspective on hospitality PID, this paper contributes to the expansion of diversity, equity and inclusion research and practices.