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The purpose of this paper is to examine human resource management (HRM) innovation programs in the early stages of employment for workers with an intellectual disability (WWID).

The first case study was carried out at a large national courier company where a film innovation programme was used to enhance the socialisation process of WWID. The second case study was at a five-star hotel situated in a large city where a buddy system innovation programme was used in the induction and training process of WWID.

The overarching “life theme” created through these innovation programs was one of enhanced and creative opportunities for social inclusion. The participants displayed more confidence and independence in their ability and exhibited aspirations to advance and succeed in their roles.

The study argues that HR professionals need to be more proactive in finding innovative ways to engage WWID in the early stages of employment.

The qualitative study is underpinned by socialisation and career construction theory which provides the framework to discuss the ways in which socialisation and socially inclusive HRM practices enable participants and other WWID achieve success on their career paths. The key message of our research is that early vocational socialisation innovation programs can make a positive difference to the work experiences of WWID.

Although nowadays more women occupy leadership roles, they still are a minority. Because aspiration is a precursor of advancement, examining conditions fostering female leadership aspiration is important. A neglected perspective is the impact of organizational identification. Identification can be argued to foster leadership aspiration because the essence of leadership is the pursuit of collective interests, and identification motivates such pursuits. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

A cross-sectional survey design with an n=400 fulltime employed men and women, working for various organizations was selected.

The initial prediction was that identification is more important to women’s leadership aspiration to the extent that gender is associated with communal orientation, because women tend to have stronger communal orientation with associated greater affiliation needs, and organizational identification can be expected to cater to those needs. The communal orientation by organizational identification interactive influence on leadership aspiration was supported. Also, the indirect effect of gender on leadership aspiration via this interactive influence of communal orientation and organizational identification was supported.

Due to the selected survey approach the data are correlational and as a result no reference to matters of causality can be made. Thus (field) experimental data is needed to confirm these findings.

Within the paper the discussion focuses on the importance of creating an environment that is more conducive to organizational identification and as such speaks to the communal orientation – being more pronounced among women – to act in favor of the organization by aspiring leadership positions.

The presented results depict an important step toward understanding how organizational identification and communal orientation interact and how they interact with women’s leadership aspiration.

This chapter considers adolescents' migration aspirations in Kyrgyzstan. The discussion is based on the data obtained from 14 semi-structured interviews with adolescents as part of a qualitative study devoted to changes and continuities in biographic projecting across three generations. The study reveals the tendency towards having aspirations to move abroad for studies, work and/or life. Thus, the objective of this chapter is to consider the adolescents' motivation and to trace opportunities and challenges which may promote or hinder the realisation of individuals' migration projects. Special attention is paid to the role of an adolescent's family in this process. Adolescents' aspirations oriented towards future life in foreign countries are analysed with the help of two theoretical concepts – the concept of intergenerational solidarity and the concept of individualisation.

The analysis has shown that in Kyrgyzstan, adolescents' plans concerning going abroad are often framed by their extended families' interests and expectations. Adolescents' migration aspirations become a collective project of every family member for the sake of the family's future well-being. Parental expectation of care and support in their older age is one of the main limitations on adolescents' aspirations to move abroad. Those adolescents whose migration aspirations do not correspond with parental expectations may experience strong ambivalence, when they face the conflict between their individualised biographic projects oriented towards promising global opportunities and intergenerational solidarity norms.

The authors investigate the role of people-related Total Quality Management (TQM) practices, specifically metaperceptions, in hearing care students' vocational decision-making. In Italy, audiologists are health professionals and must hold a degree in hearing care. They operate according to clinical principles but must also develop marketing and commercial skills. While employers take these aspects for granted, the expectations of hearing care students often differ from reality. Thus, the authors aim to investigate the vocational expectations of hearing care students.

A survey was distributed to 600 hearing care students. Multiple regression analysis with bootstrapped confidence intervals was employed to test the hypotheses.

Students who perceived audiology as their calling were more interested in the clinical aspects than the marketing and commercial aspects of audiology. Moreover, those desiring a meaningful career path in audiology were more interested in becoming a store owner or franchisee.

Universities and recruiters should consider the influence of relevant others' metaperceptions on students' self-perceptions of their aptitudes for different careers. Universities should assist students to identify aptitudes that are relevant to career-related decision-making. In this context, people-related TQM can help students avoid incorrect aspirations and expectations.

This study is the first to investigate the role of metaperceptions from a people-related TQM perspective. Metaperceptions play a crucial role in determining the correct course of study as well as job satisfaction and expectations.

Very little work has been published on teaching for social justice in the Middle East. This paper demonstrates how a group of Arab women’s reading and writing of their world was facilitated by using a social justice pedagogy based on Gutstein’s (2006) model. The study involved 20 Middle Eastern women (ages ranging from 16-36). The findings suggest that the students have developed significant abilities to use mathematics as a tool to read and write their world. In addition, the findings show that, like their counterparts elsewhere in the world, these young women are also interested in social justice issues. This is particularly significant because of current ongoing social developments in the Middle East.

Governments and organizations worldwide are concerned over the declining number of young people choosing to study Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM), especially after the age of 16. Research has foregrounded that students with positive attitudes toward science are more likely to find it relevant and aspire to a science career. This study aims to understand the factors shaping students’ attitudes as these are pivotal in promoting science learning.

This study uses the framework of science capital to understand what shapes young people’s engagement with or resistance to science. The authors conducted four Computational Thinking making-based workshops with 106 children aged 15–16 years, of which 58 filled in a questionnaire and 22 were interviewed. Statistical and content analyses were performed respectively.

The results indicate that children who are more exposed to science-related activities and contexts are more likely to have higher self-efficacy, and that those with higher prior coding experience scored higher in their self-efficacy and science capital. Six themes emerged from the content analysis, highlighting the diverse factors shaping students’ attitudes, such as teaching methods, stereotypes and the degree of difficulty encountered while engaging with science in and out of school.

By combining qualitative and quantitative methods with the use of science capital, the authors found a number of aspects of the school experience that shape students’ attitudes to science learning in and out of school, as well as their science career aspirations.

This paper details how we adapted a critically informed third-year career management and development course to address an identified gap in our Human Resource Management students learning at both practical and theoretical levels. In order to address this gap, we explored and challenged the aims of our critically informed pedagogy, and alongside our campus career development services, collaboratively redesigned the course to enhance theoretical and practical learning outcomes of students.

We detail changes made through three stages of curriculum redesign and provide an exploratory analysis of 106 student reflections on the third iterative redesign. This exploratory analysis focuses on student learning outcomes resulting from their engagement with the career practitioner and the revised course content.

Students found the course theoretically challenging and practically relevant and were readily able to incorporate career theory into descriptions of their own careers. However, more significantly, students were also able to situate themselves within a wider critique of the context of careers, demonstrating the development of critical reasoning skills and moving towards practical and critical action, demonstrating praxis.

Our experience provides an example of bridging the seeming paradox of critical pedagogy and practice. Specific details of curriculum design may be of interest to those looking to improve both theoretical and practice engagement.

The world of work is changing and creating challenges and opportunities for the employment inclusion of young people with disabilities. In this article, the perceptions held by young adults with disabilities regarding participation in the future of work are examined.

One-on-one interviews were conducted with Canadian young adults (ages 18–36 years) living with a disability. Participants were asked about their thoughts regarding the impact of the changing nature of work on their labor market involvement and career aspirations. A thematic analysis was performed to identify and examine emergent salient themes.

In total, 22 young adults were interviewed; over half held secure employment. Career aspirations and work-related decisions were primarily shaped by a participant's health needs. The future of work was seen as a more proximal determinant to employment. Digital technologies were expected to impact working conditions and create barriers and facilitators to employment. Participants who indicated being securely employed held positive expectations regarding the impact of digital technology on their work. Participants working precariously held negative appraisals regarding the impact of digital technologies on employment opportunities. The role of technological and soft skills was critical to participating in a labor market reliant on advanced technology. Participants reported barriers to developing job skills related to their disability and their work arrangements.

This research highlights the importance of considering changes in the future of work, especially the digital transformation of the economy, in the design of initiatives which promote the employment inclusion of young adults with disabilities. Despite the significance of the changing nature of work, supporting health needs and encouraging access to secure work arrangements also remain paramount.

The primary purpose of this study is to examine hospitality and tourism undergraduate students' attitudes to work and career expectations as they prepare to enter the workforce in the hospitality industry in both the United States and South Korea.

The measurement instrument was developed from previous studies (Chen and Shen, 2012; Kong, 2013) and included questions related to job attitudes, job satisfaction, job motivations, job involvement, and career expectations and aspirations upon graduation. T-tests were conducted first for the mean values of the constructs between the United States and South Korea to ensure the comparison of two different cultural groups.

First, students from the United States (US) have more and better work attitude than those students from South Korea. Second, students from South Korea appear to be less motivated to work and less satisfied with their current jobs and earnings than students from the US. Third, the results also have managerial implications for both countries. It is very important to know that higher grade point average is not an answer to find the right person but more likely, positive attitudes to work and higher levels of job involvement are more likely to have higher job expectations and aspirations for employment in the industry.

This study adds to the hospitality literature by examining the different perspectives of hospitality and tourism undergraduate students from the US and South Korea, specifically examining their attitudes toward work, job satisfaction, work involvement and job expectations as they prepare for careers in the industry. The results of this study help stakeholders (i.e. students, educators and practitioners) in the hospitality and tourism industry gain a better understanding of their undergraduate students as they prepare for careers in the industry. In addition, the study contributed to understanding cultural differences present among hospitality and tourism students from individualist and collectivist cultures.

While women are increasingly in senior positions in accountancy firms, a century after gaining entry to this once exclusively male field, they are still struggling to achieve career success. The concept of possible selves and a model of career crafting are activated in an analysis of how a set of New Zealand professional accountants have pursued their careers. This paper aims to focus on how people actively craft career selves in the context of organisational and gendered constraints, some of which are self-imposed, and therefore, can be modified and revised.

Interviews with 36 male and female accounting professionals in New Zealand – 21 working in private firms and 15 in academia identify how careers are shaped by contexts, cultural understandings of gender, organisational structures within which accountants are located and wider environmental factors.

Women accountants in this study are both agential and responsive to a range of constraints they encounter. These women challenge the notion that professional achievement requires single minded allegiance to a career; their strategic career crafting demonstrates how career and family commitments are not irreconcilable but can be skilfully integrated to nurture multiple selves. Their strategies are considered alongside those of a comparable set of male accountants.

This paper contributes to the literature on possible selves and the complexity of gendered lives through the application of a career crafting matrix to explore how accounting professionals forge careers and construct multiple selves.