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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.

Resilience development during university can increase the likelihood of positive employment outcomes for project management graduates in what is known as a stressful profession where the prevalence of project failure, job insecurity, and burnout is high. However, a focus on student resilience in project management education is scarce. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by establishing a baseline profile of resilience for project management students, identifying priority areas of resilience development and exploring the relationship between resilience and well-being.

In total, 292 Australian students undertaking project management studies completed a survey comprising of the Resilience at University scale, the Short Warwick–Edinburgh Mental Well-being Scale and an item assessing sleep adequacy.

A resilience profile for undergraduate, postgraduate, male and female project management students was calculated. The resilience profile identified differences according to gender, and between undergraduate and postgraduate students. Mental well-being and adequate sleep were found to be significantly related to resilience.

Findings support the call for a greater emphasis on resilience development in the project management curriculum for undergraduates and postgraduates. One priority area likely to facilitate resilience is the ability to maintain perspective. As well as supporting academic achievement, it will assist graduates to navigate through complex, uncertain and challenging project environments.

This is the first known study of resilience for students undertaking project management studies in higher education.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the ways in which external subject-specific mentoring can influence the professional identity construction of early career physics teachers (ECPT).

The methodology evolved from the evaluation of a mentoring project, involving semi-structured interviews with a number of early career teachers. Responses from 18 teachers, which related to the impact of the mentoring relationship on their professional identity development, were subject to a process of iterative thematic coding in the context of interpretative repertoires via a collaborative “developmental dialogue” between the managers of the mentoring project and its external evaluators.

The analysis of participants’ responses suggested that the nature of the relationship between early career teacher and mentor played a role in the emergence, or suppression, of their professional identities as physics teachers at the start of their teaching careers. In some cases, mentoring provision was little short of a “lifeline” for the teachers.

Mentors need the opportunity to develop their professional practice and identity through contact with the community of teacher educators. The practice of training, mentoring and coaching teachers should be valued at least as much as teaching itself and should be recognised as its own professional practice.

This study builds on a number of well-established pieces of research and concepts relating to the challenges facing early career teachers and their professional identity construction. It provides insight into the challenges facing ECPTs specifically, which includes the risk of isolation and unrealistic expectations from colleagues. It not only confirms the merits of external mentoring, but also demonstrates the significant responsibility, which comes with the mentor’s role and the negative impact on teachers’ professional identity construction caused by deficiencies in mentoring.

Construction managers face many work-related stressors induced by unrealistic schedule expectations, tight budgets, and long hours. Over time, these stressors can result in both mental and physical exhaustion, a condition referred to as burnout. Early-career managers are a key worker demographic, as they represent the near-term future of the construction industry, yet they have a high risk for burnout. The purpose of this study is to explore the prevalence of burnout in new construction managers, and to identify which individual or work-related factors are associated with feelings of burnout.

Using the Maslach Burnout Inventory General Survey (MBI-GS), data from 146 early-career professionals (less than 10 years of experience) with construction management degrees in the USA were collected and analyzed using correlational and best subset regression techniques.

The results show that the early-career demographic in the USA experiences both the Emotional Exhaustion and Cynicism dimensions of burnout at comparable levels to prior studies with more mid-to-late career respondents. However, the Professional Efficacy dimension was significantly higher in early-career professionals than any other sample. No individual factors, such as gender, marital status, or number of children, were predictive of any dimension of burnout. Instead, only work-related factors including co-worker friendliness, opportunities for personal development and promotion, and the ability to control the work pacing were strongly associated with one or more dimensions of burnout.

This study is the first to explore burnout in the key early-career demographic for construction managers in the United States construction industry. This work provides evidence that organizational policies and culture have a greater efficacy in alleviating burnout in this demographic, when compared to the work–life balance of the individual.

The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of job, organizational and personal factors on exhaustion (EXH) in early career construction professionals in India.

A survey questionnaire was developed and circulated among early career construction professionals in India. The responses on job, organizational and personal demands (role ambiguity, stakeholder management and work-family conflict respectively) and job, organizational and personal resources (job autonomy (JA), perceived organizational support and emotional intelligence respectively) were sought using standard measures. The valid data (N = 187) thus collected, was analysed using structural equation modelling (SEM).

The study finds that in terms of demands, stakeholder management and work family conflict have a significant positive effect on EXH. In other words, EXH level increases with the increase in these two. With respect to resources, JA has a negative effect on EXH. This implies that as JA increases, the EXH level goes down.

This study is the first to examine factors causing EXH in early career construction professionals in India. This study is significant on two counts. First, it proposes a comprehensive theoretical model based in job demands-resources (JD-R) theory customized for construction sector. Second, the empirical examination is situated in the Indian context, which remains underexplored despite its economic and demographic significance.

There is a need for project management practitioners to adapt and thrive in today's volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) project-based workplaces. In this paper, the linkage between work readiness and career resilience is developed, presenting both concepts as critical for effective strategic responses and adaptation to the changing labor market in organizations.

The resource-based view (RBV) and integrated dynamic capabilities (IDCs) are the theoretical lenses that are used to link the concepts of work readiness and career resilience across the individual and organizational levels.

A framework and model are proposed to establish a holistic understanding of catalysts for addressing the VUCA context that organizations face. The proposed conceptual linkage adds a chronological dimension to the formation of the interrelated dynamic capabilities during the early career phase of project management practitioners.

The contribution to the project management literature includes a theoretically driven conceptual framework that links two complementary concepts to address the career challenges faced by project managers. Work readiness is positioned as an enabler of career resilience and together they constitute vital attributes which foster talent retention in the current VUCA work environment.

Work readiness and career resilience are underexplored topics in the project management literature, both individually and in conjunction. Specifically, there is a research gap in view of linking these two concepts to present them as a catalyst for project management talent sustainability, and the proposed framework is an initial step in addressing these gaps.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how early career professionals “do gender” in their new professional context. Specifically, it explores how two groups of graduates, psychologists and political scientists, “do gender” as early career professionals with a particular emphasis on how they acquire legitimacy in relation to their colleagues and clients.

Drawing on a qualitative research methodology, graduates from two Master's programmes in Sweden were interviewed after 30‐34 months of professional work. Analysis of the interview data is located within a “doing gender” perspective with special reference to Acker's conception of employment and organizations as gendered processes influencing individual action.

The paper identifies two different ways in which participants “do gender” in their professional practice in order to acquire legitimacy: “self‐presentation” and “strategy”. This finding suggests that female and male early career professionals acquire different kinds of legitimacy, which could, in turn, be derived from the gendered processes that exist in contemporary organizations. The paper will also report that when they “do gender” participants also produce and reproduce a gendered notion of a professional project that influences their subsequent professional practice as well as how they position themselves as knowledgeable and competent.

The perspective of “doing gender” contributes an alternative understanding of graduate employment and the encounter with working life. It especially enables us to capture gender as an important influence on individual action in the organizational context.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

陰陽 (yinyáng in Pinyin) is about interconnectedness rather than opposites. The purpose of this paper is to highlight how collaboration connects and strengthens the efforts across the sector and reinforces how the sum of the parts is greater than any one university alone. This paper shares the experience of conducting a collaborative project with three universities. It illustrates the fine balancing act of collaboration (yin) with competition (yang) amongst three of Australia ' s higher education institutions at a national level, with the aim of contributing to the career development of professionals in the fields of library services and eResearch.

Bond University, University of Western Australia and Griffith University have collaborated to develop a career mapping toolkit which builds on an earlier commissioned project completed by Council of Australian IT Directors (CAUDIT) focusing on enterprise information technology roles. This tri-institutional collaborative project reviews in detail the skills, knowledge and abilities of library and eResearch management roles in the respective organisations.

This project has been hugely rewarding for the initial three project partners who worked and collaborated well together, successfully completing project goals within agreed timeframes. Looking forward, career pathing will become more widespread as managers receive the requisite training, take ownership of these activities and grow to fully realise the value and potential of active career management to team performance. Ultimately, the use of the career pathing toolkit will enhance career satisfaction of the individual which in turn will lift the productivity of the organisational unit.

To ensure the ongoing viability of the career pathing toolkit, it is necessary to measure its relevance and effectiveness: each institution is confident in adopting/modifying the final product for internal use. This demonstrates confidence in the quality of the work produced by the other collaborators; adoption of the product by institutions which were not part of the initial collaboration; and willingness of another institution (not originally involved) to join the collaborative project and make a contribution.

The catalyst for collaboration between the three universities was realised when the authors saw an opportunity to address the important and pressing issue of career and workforce planning as a partnership project. The main objective for collaboration was to achieve a more comprehensive and speedier project outcome.

This paper shares the outcomes of the project which illustrates the fine balancing act of collaboration (yin) with competition (yang) amongst three of Australia ' s higher education institutions at a national level, with the aim of contributing to the career development of professionals in the fields of library and eResearch.

The aim is to develop a toolkit that: catalogues and maps the core professional roles needed in the next two to three years in the respective institutions; and specifies the knowledge and experience required in each core professional area including where there is overlap. In essence, the career map provides a toolkit for identifying the knowledge areas and skills, abilities and competencies required for each core area (organised by career streams) and professional role.