Search results

This study illuminates the assumption that internships facilitate labor market entry and answers the question of why internships have a positive effect on students' self-perceived employability. It is assumed that internships enable more positive employability perceptions by reducing career-entry worries – the worries of not finding a suitable job or not being able to obtain a satisfactory career.

A two-wave study among graduate students currently in an internship investigated these relationships. Data on career-entry worries, perceived employability and an evaluation of the internship were collected from 80 students (mean age: 24.6 years, 68% female) from various fields of study aiming at both bachelor's and master's degrees.

The results showed that positively evaluated internships contributed to graduates' self-perceived employability by means of reduced career-entry worries over an eight-week period.

By considering graduates' career-entry worries – the perceived uncertainty about finding an “appropriate” career in the future – the authors introduce a new concept to the career literature and show that these worries are significant in terms of self-assessed employability.

The aim of this article is to present the development‐oriented Master's curriculum “Global Studies” (GS) at the University of Graz, Austria, as an example of interdisciplinary academic training with the purpose of fostering inter‐“cultural” understanding. It aims to show that scientific disciplines can be understood as “cultures of cognition” producing own views of realities.

Based on a decade of previous experiences, the communication and assessment functions of e‐learning platforms and e‐journals are used to facilitate stepwise approximations among the various “cultures of understanding”.

Despite severe financial limitations, peer‐oriented planning and lecturing efforts since 2004 have resulted in a bundle of electives and in a new Master's curriculum elaborated cooperatively by the faculties of the legal, economic, historic, cultural, natural and communication sciences at Karl‐Franzens‐University Graz. Both the bundle of electives and the Master's curriculum appear to offer a truly “m:n type” interdisciplinary and intercultural design which assumes various stakeholder‐dependent perspectives of multi‐faceted realities.

The wealth of interdisciplinary and intercultural thought and practice can be best “proceduralised” through dialogue‐oriented educational technologies.

In practical terms, hundreds of students may follow these web‐enhanced curricula that are based on the materialised results of their founders' ethical systems.

This is the first paper that outlines the Global Studies curriculum at Graz University.

Interdisciplinarity is necessary to explain or solve complex problems and questions of today's world. Therefore, it's important to analyze the situation within an educational institution to get to know what students think about interdisciplinary work. The purpose of this paper is to try to achieve an insight into how e‐learning technologies (like WebCT) are perceived by students and to what degree information and communication technologies (ICTs) could improve communication and cooperation between students.

On the basis of two online surveys and the attendance of a course, the experiences and approaches of students were analyzed.

The results show that most of the students see the positive aspects of interdisciplinary interchange and the benefit of learning from each other, so most of them are open minded regarding interdisciplinarity – an important requirement is given. Information and communication technologies are a good instrument to strengthen the cooperation and communication between students and can further be a helpful device for an interdisciplinary working approach.

Based on these findings, more accesses to interdisciplinary cooperation can be worked out especially in the master program we have analyzed which sees interdisciplinarity as one of its main goals. Knowing that the openness and readiness from students' side is given, the offer for interdisciplinary ways of interchange could be expanded.

The results show that the students are open‐minded to other students' knowledge and views, which also shows the mutual acceptance and respect for other opinions. This is very important for teamwork and also for multicultural interchange on an international basis.

Not only in social regard but also for complex questions of science and society in general the results of student's experiences and approaches are auspicious for international frameworks.

Previous studies have demonstrated that perceived job insecurity climate denotes an individual-level stressor. The present study reiterated this notion and investigated whether leadership responsibility moderated the association between perceived job insecurity climate and work-related strain about one year into the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic.

A sample of full-time workers (N = 1,399) in the USA was recruited, comprising 663 leaders and 763 non-leaders. Employing a cross-sectional design, the authors hypothesized that perceived job insecurity climate would be associated with work-related strain (i.e. burnout, absenteeism and presenteeism) and that these associations were stronger for employees with leadership responsibilities compared to non-leaders.

Findings revealed main effects of perceived job insecurity climate on burnout but not on absenteeism or presenteeism. Furthermore, leadership responsibility moderated the associations between perceived job insecurity climate and two out of three burnout measures in the hypothesized direction. The findings also revealed interaction effects regarding absenteeism and presenteeism, indicating that these associations are only positive and significant for employees with leadership responsibilities.

Perceptions of widespread job insecurity engender strain among leaders while simultaneously implying a heightened need for effective leadership. Organizations and practitioners should take the present findings into consideration when implementing preventive and restorative measures to address leaders' health and organizational competitiveness when job insecurity increases.

This study found that, as an individual stressor, perceived job insecurity climate is more detrimental to employees with leadership responsibility than to non-leaders.