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As the youngest generation – Generation Z (Gen Z) – enters the workplace, there is a growing interest in this cohort's career needs and expectations. This paper explores the under-researched topic of Gen Z project management (Gen Z PM) professionals. In addition to shedding light on the factors that positively affect Gen Z PM professionals' early career-development phase, this research aims to identify specific organization-led practices that can foster sustainable early PM careers and so achieve greater workforce sustainability.

Through the lens of the resource-based view (RBV), Gen Z PM professionals are considered critical resources that can help ensure workforce sustainability in project-based organizations (PBOs). Semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 25 Gen Z PM professionals in Australia to explore the professionals' early career experiences and the organizational-support initiatives that facilitate positive experiences. The results were analyzed using thematic analysis.

The results revealed that most Gen Z PMs experienced many challenges and a lack of support during their early career phase: Gen Z value (1) mentoring, (2) time for training and development, (3) showing support and guidance, (4) understand skill-gaps and (5) reasonable workloads. Through catering to these needs, PBOs can ensure better career sustainability for their young Gen Z talent and, therefore, greater workforce sustainability for the project profession.

According to the career sustainability lens, PBOs play a significant role in ensuring that their valuable young PM talent are supported and retained in the profession. This research sheds light on what Gen Z PM professionals value in their early careers, which guided recommendations to better support this new generation of project professionals.

The aim of this paper is to explore the support that project managers receive from construction project-based organisations (PBOs) in their early careers.

Fifty-seven semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with four key stakeholder groups including early career project managers (ECPMs) and employers from Australian construction PBOs, project management professional bodies, and university educators to ascertain (1) what organizations are currently doing and (2) what organizations can do better to support project managers in their early careers.

Thematic analysis revealed that construction PBOs' responsibilities to ECPMs entailed: (1) providing mentoring, (2) offering training, (3) collaborating with universities, (4) giving time and feedback and (5) assigning manageable workloads. However, the findings revealed inconsistencies in companies enacting these responsibilities.

This research is limited to the context of the Australian construction industry, yet the findings shed valuable insights into the current practices of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs. From a strategic resource-based view perspective, ECPMs have the potential to serve as long-term valuable organizational resources. Failure to invest in new professional entrants constitutes an area of untapped competitive advantage.

Construction PBOs looking to better support their ECPMs may use the results of this research as a guide to tailor their early career professional development initiatives.

The study adopts a holistic, multi-vocal approach by interviewing four key stakeholder groups. The findings contribute new insights into the role of construction PBOs in supporting ECPMs and the implications this has on the sustainability of their project management talent pool.

The number of early career teachers leaving the profession continues to be an ongoing issue across the globe. This pressing concern has resulted in increased attention to the instructional and psychological conditions necessary to retain early career educators. However, less formal attention has been paid to the social infrastructure in which early career teachers find themselves. The purpose of this paper is to foreground the role of social capital and its effect on job attitudes and educators’ intention to leave the profession.

Data were collected from 736 teachers within ten secondary schools in Flanders (Belgium). Using social network and multilevel moderated mediation analysis techniques, the relationships between teachers’ social connectedness, job attitudes, and the intention to leave the profession for both novice and experienced teachers were analyzed.

Findings indicate that being socially connected to other educators within the school is associated with a reduction in teachers’ intention to leave the profession, mediated by their job attitudes, for both early career and experienced teachers. However, social connectedness was significantly more important for early career teachers. No significant effects are found for being socially connected to the mentor.

This study provides evidence for the importance of social capital for teachers, particularly early career educators. Moreover, by introducing teachers’ social connectedness as related to intention to leave, this study makes a significant and unique contribution to the literature.

Research on job precarity and job instability have largely neglected the labor market trajectories in which these employment and non-employment situations are experienced. This study addresses the mechanisms of volatility and precarity in observed work histories of labor market entrants using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth of 1997. Several ideal-typical post-education pathways are modeled for respondents entering the labor force between 1997 and 2010, with varying indicators and degrees of precarity. A series of predictive models indicate that women, racial-ethnic minorities, and lower social class labor market entrants are significantly more likely to be exposed to the most precarious early careers. Moreover, leaving the educational system with a completed associate’s, bachelor’s, or post-graduate degree is protective of experiencing the most unstable types of career pattern. While adjusting for these individual-level background and education variables, the findings also reveal a form of “scarring” as regional unemployment level is a significant macro-economic predictor of experiencing a more hostile and turbulent early career. These pathways lead to considerable earnings penalties 5 years after labor market entry.

The purpose of this paper is to describe the origins of a co-constructed peer-mentoring model designed by and for early-career faculty representing historically underrepresented groups in the field of educational leadership. The model, which includes components of the multicultural feminist model of mentoring, pays specific attention to early-career faculty development and well-being and outlines the need for and benefits of peer-mentoring programs.

This qualitative study details the experiences of the development and implementation of a peer-mentoring program based on a review of literature that points out the need to provide mentoring opportunities for early-career educational leadership faculty, from historically underrepresented populations, and further posits peer-mentoring as an avenue to enhance faculty development and well-being.

Faculty representing historically underrepresented groups often experience challenges related to their identities, alongside the general pressures of working toward tenure. Peer-mentoring groups provide support with which to navigate these challenges. Peer-mentor groups are a supplement to other professional groups and interactions within departments and institutions.

The model has implications of being able to prepare institutional leaders to work toward institutionalizing mentoring programs that take into consideration invisible labor while promoting professional growth and personal wellness, thereby increasing the satisfaction and retention of faculty.

This peer-mentoring model can be used as a tool to leverage collective support, rather than emphasize individual success. As a support vehicle, it can foster a cultural change within the field of educational leadership that supports collaboration over competition.

Some of Australia’s most severe and protracted workforce shortages are in public sector community mental health (CMH) services. Research identifying the factors affecting staff turnover of this workforce has been limited. The purpose of this paper is to identify work factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career health professionals working in rural Australia’s public sector CMH services.

In total, 25 health professionals working in rural and remote CMH services in New South Wales (NSW), Australia, for NSW Health participated in in-depth, semi-structured interviews.

The study identified five work-related challenges negatively affecting job satisfaction: developing a profession-specific identity; providing quality multidisciplinary care; working in a resource-constrained service environment; working with a demanding client group; and managing personal and professional boundaries.

These findings highlight the need to provide time-critical supports to address the challenges facing rural-based CMH professionals in their early career years in order to maximise job satisfaction and reduce avoidable turnover.

Overall, the study found that the factors negatively affecting the job satisfaction of early career rural-based CMH professionals affects all professionals working in rural CMH, and these negative effects increase with service remoteness. For those in early career, having to simultaneously deal with significant rural health and sector-specific constraints and professional challenges has a negative multiplier effect on their job satisfaction. It is this phenomenon that likely explains the high levels of job dissatisfaction and turnover found among Australia’s rural-based early career CMH professionals. By understanding these multiple and simultaneous pressures on rural-based early career CMH professionals, public health services and governments involved in addressing rural mental health workforce issues will be better able to identify and implement time-critical supports for this cohort of workers. These findings and proposed strategies potentially have relevance beyond Australia’s rural CMH workforce to Australia’s broader early career nursing and allied health rural workforce as well as internationally for other countries that have a similar physical geography and health system.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the determinants of internal audit workplace learning success for developing early career internal audit professionals in South Africa.

A qualitative research design was used to collect data through focus group discussions and semi-structured interviews from 65 internal audit stakeholders including internal audit employers’ early career; internal auditors’ workplace learning assessors; and presenters and members of the education and training committee of the professional body in South Africa on their experiences of the determinants of workplace learning success for internal auditors.

In line with workplace learning theories, it was found that there are five determinants of internal audit workplace success: the learning environment, management support, the early career internal auditors’ commitment (attitude and motivation to learn) and a relevant, structured and effective formal workplace learning programme.

Internal audit employers, early career internal auditors, workplace learning assessors and presenters as well as the Institute of Internal Auditors globally and in South Africa can use the results of this study as a benchmark for their internal audit workplace learning practices.

This paper provides insight into the determinants of workplace learning success for internal auditors and contributes to the limited body of knowledge in auditing on developing professional competence in the workplace.

Research on patient-centred professionalism in pharmacy is scarce compared with other health professions and in particular with pharmacists early in their careers. The purpose of this paper is to explore patient-centred professionalism in early career pharmacists and to describe reported behaviours.

This study explored patient-centred professional values and reported behaviours, taking a qualitative approach. In all, 53 early-career pharmacists, pharmacy tutors and pharmacy support staff, practising in community and hospital pharmacy in England took part; the concept of patient-centred professionalism was explored through focus group interviews and the critical incident technique was used to elicit real-life examples of professionalism in practice.

Triangulation of the data revealed three constructs of pharmacy patient-centred professionalism: being professionally competent, having ethical values and being a good communicator.

It is not known whether our participants’ perspectives reflect those of all pharmacists in the early stages of their careers. The data provide meaning for the concept of patient-centred professionalism. The work could be extended by developing a framework for wider application. Patient-centred professionalism in pharmacy needs further investigation from the patient perspective.

The findings have implications for pharmacy practice and education, particularly around increased interaction with patients.

The data contribute to a topic of importance to patients and in relation to UK health policy, which allocates more directly clinical roles to pharmacists, which go beyond the dispensing and supply of medicines.

The methods included a novel application of the critical incident technique, which generated empirical evidence on a previously under-researched topic.

Extant research studies document gender differences in career outcomes for middle and advanced career stages. The purpose of this study is to examine potential gender differences in early‐career success with a particular focus on whether educational intervention might mediate any potential differences.

Survey data for recent business college alumni were analyzed using descriptive techniques, linear regression and logistic modeling; the response rate was 25 percent and all data were self‐reported. Both objective and subjective measures were used to assess outcomes. A priori, given similar educational training and expectations for managerial careers, we should expect to find similar early‐career progress regardless of gender.

Differences are apparent out of the starting gate for women in early‐career stages compared with their male counterparts, by both objective and subjective measures. Results also suggest an opportunity to improve outcomes through educational interventions. Limitations of the findings include the use of self‐reported data and a modest response rate.

The findings of this study highlight the importance that integrated leadership development programs may play in supporting women's early‐career success and the need to advise young women to negotiate more assertively for salary and leadership opportunity at the immediate start of their careers. For educational institutions, the findings suggest that concerted focus on support for women students' development may enhance their early‐career outcomes.

By focusing on early‐career outcomes, the paper seeks to contribute to the gender and careers literature by highlighting results that may set up the patterns seen among women in mid‐career and senior level managerial careers. In addition, the paper demonstrates the educational interventions may be of value in reducing the impact of stereotype threat on women's career outcomes.

The current book chapter seeks to respond to the existing literature on early career researchers, using an autoethnographic approach to further unravel the crossroads of identity formation, research politics, and successful promotion through the eyes of early career researchers. Combining autobiography and ethnography, we systematically analyze our own experiences to make sense of wider social and political practices. Ellis, Adams, and Bochner (2010) remind us that autoethnography is not to be dismissed as a form of self-therapy but is to be presented in a rigorous manner as other research forms by carefully justifying the data sources and techniques, analyzing the data and crafting the findings. Our sources were both found texts (e.g., university policies) and created texts (our journal entries and personal communications). Using analytic techniques such as highlighting critical incidents or epiphanies, we structured coherent narratives to illuminate the complexity and uncertainty of the lives of early career academics. This chapter’s focus on early career researcher experiences makes poignant commentary on neoliberalism’s impact on and within higher education. The chapter concludes with the authors’ reflections on the dilemmas of academic and research choices made within the limitations of institutional structures, processes, and systems that shape career trajectories.