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The transition from higher education to employment is a major life change for many college seniors (currently, the Generation Y cohort). The purpose of this paper is to enhance the understanding of Generation Y and to present new insights regarding Gen Y's retail career expectations, perceptions of retail careers, future psychological contract/entitlement perceptions of retail careers, and career exploration of the US retailing industry.

Utilizing quantitative research methods via an on‐line survey, the authors examined 193 Gen Y college seniors' retail career perceptions and expectations, and explored the influence these factors have on future psychological contract/entitlement perceptions of employer‐employee obligations and retail career exploration from nine US universities.

College seniors' pre‐entry retail job expectations, perceptions of retail careers, and future psychological contract/entitlement perceptions of employee obligations were significant predictors of career exploration; college seniors' preconceived notions of retail careers, combined with what they feel they would owe their future employer, are instrumental in determining retail career exploration decisions.

Findings suggest directions for university faculty, academic advisors, and industry practitioners on facilitating college seniors' transitions from higher education to the world of work by suggesting recruitment strategies that can attract, retain and motivate Gen Y.

The findings provide useful criteria for organizational development strategies to assist with the transition from higher education to the workforce and may also improve the success of recruiting Gen Y employees. In addition, the conceptualization of psychological contracts (i.e. entitlement perceptions) differentiates this study from prior psychological contract research.

This paper investigated the impact a camp on informal science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) had on students' perceptions of STEM fields and careers.

A quasiexperimental design was used to assess students' perceptions toward STEM fields and careers. Secondary students (n = 57) who participated in the STEM summer camp completed STEM projects, went on lab tours and attended panels during the one- or two-week residential camps. Students completed a STEM Semantics survey to assess their perceptions prior to and after attending the camp. Descriptive statistics, Cohen's d effect sizes, paired sample t-tests and Pearson's correlation were conducted to analyze the data.

Results suggested that although there was no significant change in students' dispositions toward each individual STEM field, there was a statistically significant improvement of students' perceptions of STEM careers (p = 0.04; d = 0.25). Furthermore, the results of the Pearson's correlation indicated that there was a statistically significant positive association between perceptions of a STEM career and perceptions in science, mathematics and engineering.

This suggests that various components of the informal learning environment positively contributed to students' perceptions toward STEM careers. Implications from the study indicate that when students are engaged in hands-on science or STEM PBL activities and have opportunities to be exposed to various STEM careers, their perceptions of STEM pathways will improve.

These results may influence future curriculum and the organization of future STEM camps by encouraging teachers and camp directors to integrate practical hands-on STEM projects and expose students to potential STEM pathways through lab tours and panels of STEM professionals.

This study examined the moderating effect of emotion perception – a basic component of emotional intelligence – on the relationship between career commitment and career success. White‐collar employees from a diverse set of occupations and organizations in Malaysia were surveyed. Moderated multiple regression results showed that career commitment predicted objective career success (i.e. salary level) only for employees with average to high emotion perception but not for those with low emotion perception. Emotion perception, however, did not moderate the effects of career commitment on subjective career success (i.e. career satisfaction). Implications of the findings and suggestions for future research are discussed.

The purpose of this study is to investigate patterns in the social construction of occupational jurisdiction and related professional career identity. It examines the agency associated with framing messages that influence perceptions about the professional nature and value of retail management careers. The aim is to identify sources which produce influential messages about perceptions about retail management careers and the content of these messages.

This study utilises a qualitative research methodology (focus-group interviews) to explore the observations of people involved with the monitoring and management of career messages. Two focus groups were conducted with a) nine Canadian retail practitioners and b) seven post-secondary educators from retail management education programmes.

The focus groups identify five sources of influential messages including (1) part-time retail work experience, (2) educational institutions, (3) parents, (4) retail industry/practitioners and (5) media. They also identify three content themes presented by these sources including (1) the importance of educational requirements, (2) the nature of occupational roles and (3) the value of the career.

The significance and generalisability of the results are limited by the size and nature of the sample.

This study makes a practical contribution by identifying potential career awareness strategies.

This research makes a theoretical contribution by expanding understanding of the role of communication with career perceptions and with the related constitution of career professionalisation.

The purpose of this paper is to ascertain the perceptions of New Zealand high school and tertiary students regarding accounting and accountants, as well as the perceptions of high school accounting educators and career advisers who potentially influence these students.

The methodology used here is qualitative, including semi‐structured interviews and focus groups.

The paper finds that the majority of the high school students and first‐year tertiary students have little understanding of the tasks accountants perform, and their image of an accountant was the typical “boring” stereotype. However, the final year tertiary students have a good understanding of what accounting entails and do not have a negative image of an accountant. The high school accounting educators have a favourable view of accounting and are positive about a career in accounting, in contrast with the career advisers who view an accounting career as dull and boring or a backstop to other more exciting careers.

Recently, there has been a decline in the number of New Zealand accounting graduates, which may in part be caused by negative stereotyping and limited accurate knowledge about accountants. The challenge for the local professional accounting body is to attempt to change this stereotype and find new ways of promoting accounting careers to the current generation of New Zealand high school and tertiary students.

The paper integrates the study of students' perceptions of accounting in New Zealand with that of the high school accounting educators and career advisers to provide a comprehensive qualitative study of the current New Zealand situation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore Australasian students’ current perception towards a sales career.

Data were collected through a self-administered survey from 431 students enrolled in a Sales Management unit in a large Australian university and its Asian campuses.

The study reveals a four-factor solution with factors labeled as “exciting,” “deceptive,” “taxing,” and “challenging,” with “exciting” being the only factor to significantly predict likelihood of pursuing a sales career. Although no differences of perception were found between males and females, Asian students were found to perceive sales career as more exciting, innovative and fun than Australian students.

Although significant difference was noted between Australian and Asian students’ perceptions towards sales as an exciting career, it is prudent to interpret and generalize the finding with caution as Asia is the largest continent with different cultures, religions and races.

The four factors that were found to influence students’ perception towards a sales career are novel, psychometrically sound, and are pertinent for businesses conducting graduate recruitment. This study indicates how sales education at university level assist in changing students’ views towards a sales career from negative to positive.

While previous research has reported negative perceptions about sales as a career, this study reveals that students consider sales to be an “exciting” career.

The purpose of this paper is to compare and understand how age, gender and culture affect individual career and work-related attitudes in Chinese and American samples.

Online and printed questionnaires were administered to employees and managers in China, whereas in the USA, faculty, staff and students at a Midwestern university responded to an online survey. Snowball sampling technique was used to collect data. Independent sample t-tests were conducted to test the hypothesis.

The study showed different work values and attitudes in the workplace between Chinese and the US samples, and indicated the specifics influences that national culture has on them. Culture affects generational changes; generational differences in the US sample are bigger than in Chinese sample; work values differ across generations and cultures; traditional gender role differences persist more strongly across generations in Chinese sample than in the US sample.

Generalizability issues; cross-sectional data.

US-based multi-national corporations need to understand these differences and better manage their diverse employees operating in China.

This study compared generation, culture and gender differences simultaneously; parallel groups at similar life stages were used by basing the boundaries of each generation on the distinct cultural events of each nation. This approach is more consistent with generation definitions than by using influential specific events of each country, respectively. Useful to managers, it will provide guidance for understanding work values and attitudes across gender and generations in the USA and China. Most benefit will occur for US based multinational companies that have Chinese operations, and manage employees with cultural, gender and generational differences.

This paper aims to examine the role that auditor’s salary perception has on audit quality and delay. The findings contribute to a greater understanding of the audit employee-level factors that influence audit work outcomes.

The authors use Big 6 employee reviews, salary data and audit and financial data from 2007 to 2017 to measure how to audit employees’ pay satisfaction affects audit quality (small profits and going concern opinions) and audit delay. The authors use a regression approach to analyze this relationship. In subsequent tests, the authors split the sample on high career opportunities to investigate how this moderates the relationship between salary perception and audit quality.

The authors document a discrepancy between pay perception and reality. It is explained, though not completely, by salary level, comparisons to peers and superiors, firm-wide attitudes, cost of living and human capital in the area, work–life balance and perceived career prospects. Surprisingly, the unexplained pay dissatisfaction relates positively to audit quality and audit efficiency (audit delay), after controlling for salary level. Further tests show that an audit employee’s expectation of career opportunities moderates this result.

This is the first paper that empirically tests the relationship between pay satisfaction and job performance in the context of audit employees in public accounting. The authors contribute to an emerging literature that investigates audit employee-level characteristics and attitudes in relation to audit quality.

This qualitative study examined English for Professionals students' experience of the internship programme and their perceptions of the relevance of the internship programme to their current and future courses and to their future career choices.

This study employed a qualitative inquiry in which qualitative data were collected using journal writing. Using purposeful sampling, 40 English for Professionals students in Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM) were selected. Data were analysed using thematic analysis.

This study revealed that the internship programme was beneficial to interns because it helped them to gain real-world experience and knowledge about the environment of real workplace. Interns' negative experience can affect their career selection. The majority of the participants revealed that the internship programme is relevant to most of their undergraduate courses. The participants revealed that the internship programme was effective as it helped them to explore their career choices and to select future courses that match their interests.

Taking into account students' negative experience and their perceptions of the relevance of internship to their courses and career choices, improvement of undergraduate programmes can be done. Unlike samples in previous studies, the sample in this study is English for Professionals students. The study provides significant findings which are related to interns' perceptions of the relevance of the internship programme to their career choices. Unlike all data collection methods used in previous studies, journal writing was used to collect qualitative data in this study.

Earlier work on career choice has identified that career choice involves gendered processes which lead to differentiated career outcomes for women and men. However, this literature remained anaemic in offering career counselling strategies for addressing the negative impacts of these processes. The paper aims to explore the creativity cycle and other tools derived from personal construct psychology (PCP) and other feminist literature as potential means for dissolving gendered perceptions of various professions and organisational practices.

This is a conceptual paper.

The paper argues that PCP can provide a theoretical and methodological framework for discussing how dichotomous and gender identified the perceptions of professions can be and how such perceptions might be challenged.

This theory and its techniques allow us an exploration of the flexibility of one's constructions system, which determines a person's ability to construe alternative views and to develop new ways of understanding oneself and others.

The PCP's potential as a technique to combat gendered perceptions of a career is examined.