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In today's challenging markets, organizations need to explore new ways to maximize employees' effectiveness and job satisfaction. Within this context, employed fresh graduates are a special group, which requires attention. Recognizing its needs in job design is one of the keys. The aim of the study is to determine the mediating role of experienced psychological states in the relationship between job dimensions and personal/work outcomes (motivation, satisfaction, effectiveness and commitment).

The new “modified job characteristics model” (MJCM) was implemented, where the focus was on testing if experienced psychological states play a mediating role. An index for summarizing core job dimensions (modified motivating potential score (MMPS)) was also developed in the study. For the empirical testing of the new modeling framework, a sample of 630 employed fresh graduates in Lebanon was selected. Various statistical analyses were performed, including partial correlation and multiple regression analysis.

Results showed that for those core job dimensions that significantly affected fresh graduates' personal/work outcomes, the relation was not direct causal, but was mediated by “experienced meaningfulness of the work”, “experienced responsibility for outcomes of the work”, “knowledge of results”, “self-confidence” and “prestige inside outside”. Further, MMPS was verified as a valid score reflecting the “motivating potential” of a job.

The findings demonstrate the importance of effectively designing and redesigning jobs: employers should focus on the core job dimensions and adopt an adjusted strategy to enhance fresh graduates' affective and behavioral responses.

The current study innovatively examines fresh graduates' psychological states and their role as a mediator in the relation between job dimensions and job satisfaction or commitment. A new modeling framework is used and an index for summarizing job dimensions is developed.

The study's objective was to address the factors impacting the employability attributes of fresh graduates in the Kingdom of Bahrain while considering the various challenges. This study used a quantitative approach which employed the questionnaire tool, and data were collected by using a convenience sampling method. The study sample comprised n = 385 respondents from different industries, including manufacturing, banking and finance, hospitality, healthcare, oil and gas, and real estate sectors of Bahrain. Data gathered from questionnaire were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS), where descriptive and inferential statistics was used to analyze the data. The results of the study showed for the major Hypothesis 1 that the demographic variables have no significant statistical impact on employment attributes of the new fresh graduates. Moreover, findings suggest that null hypothesis for major Hypothesis 2 has been rejected as applied academic skills and critical thinking skills have no significant impact on employability attribute of fresh graduates in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Null hypothesis for major Hypothesis 3 has been accepted as findings suggest that technology use skills (β ₁ = 0.080), system thinking skills (β ₂ = 0.210), communication skills (β ₃ = 0.402), and information skills (β ₄ = −0.100) which are an antecedent of workplace skills, have significant statistical impact on employability attribute of fresh graduates in Kingdom of Bahrain. Lastly, null hypothesis for major Hypothesis 4 has been accepted as findings suggest that interpersonal skills (β ₅ = 0.229) which are an antecedent of effective relationship have significant statistical impact on employability attribute of fresh graduates in the Kingdom of Bahrain.

The aim of this research is to attempt to reveal the difference between what fresh graduates expect and their actual experiences pertaining to the working environment.

Using a set of self‐administered questionnaires, data were collected from 128 graduates. They were asked to indicate their preferences on organizational culture, leadership, communication, decision making, team working, motivation, and development. Using the same dimensions, the respondents then reported their actual experiences, thus enabling gaps to be determined.

The results from paired‐sample t‐tests suggest that significant expectation gaps exist in all the areas surveyed. While communication, decision making and motivation are found to be significantly related to job satisfaction, none of the seven variables is found to be significantly correlated to organizational commitment.

The study focuses only on a rather limited sample size of Malaysian graduates; therefore it cannot ensure generalization of results obtained.

The resulting expectation gaps, and their influence on the graduates' job satisfaction and organizational commitment, have implications for the important roles played by employers, higher learning institutions, and graduate themselves.

This study makes significant contributions in three key areas. First, it is perhaps one of the earliest studies to comprehensively address the issue of expectation gaps using a myriad factors. Second, it is also one of the few that examines the influence of the expectation gaps on job satisfaction and commitment. Third, instead of focusing on employees as a whole, which has been the practice of prior research, this study concentrates only on fresh graduates who have been in the workforce for less than two years.

This study aims to examine the ICT skills needed by a fresh accounting graduate when first joining a tax firm; to find out usage of electronic tax (e‐tax) applications in tax practice; to assess the rating of senior tax practitioners on fresh graduates' ICT and e‐tax applications skills; and to solicit tax practitioners' opinion regarding integrating ICT skills and tax software into a tax course.

An online survey method was used to collect the data. An online survey was distributed to 385 tax practitioners who worked in the accounting/tax firms that participated in the university's internship programs. A total of 112 usable questionnaires were analyzed.

The survey found that the three most important ICT skills with which fresh graduates should be familiar before graduating were spreadsheet software, word‐processing software, and e‐mail. The result shows that the usage of e‐tax applications is still not pervasive in tax practice. Overall, senior tax practitioners rated fresh accounting graduates' ICT skills as “average”. Both senior (75 percent) and junior (73.7 percent) tax practitioners agreed that ICT skills and tax software should be integrated in the tax course offered by the universities.

This study has provided insights to policy makers and tax educators to revamp the existing tax curriculum, and to introduce learning tax software in classes, and to place more emphasis in imparting ICT skills in tax education.

Scholarly study on tax education and ICT is scant. Little is known about whether the existing tax education is adequate in meeting the needs of the employers in the job market. This paper has emerged to fill a knowledge gap.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the gap between skills expected by managers and skills possessed by business graduates employed by banking industry.

A questionnaire-based survey was conducted with bank officers under whom fresh business graduates were working. They were asked to indicate the importance of 12 employability skills in the industry and to rate business graduates working under them against these skills. Results are achieved by applying paired samples and independent samples t-tests on data collected from 121 bank officers.

Results prove that overall employability skills of the graduates are lesser than expected by the managers. Significant skill gaps were found for listening, problem solving, communication, leadership, interpersonal, analytical, self-management, numeracy and critical thinking. Results also reveal that problem-solving skill of male graduates is superior that that of females.

The study makes business graduates clear in what skills they are to learn and how it relates to the expectations of managers in banking industry. It helps business schools to revise and improve curriculum of some specialized banking programs according to the needs of the industry.

This is the first study that investigates the skills required by the banking industry out of business graduates. It also identifies the skill gaps for fresh business graduates from managerial perspective in banking industry of Pakistan.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the differences between labour market requirements in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) in the 21st century and university graduates’ level of knowledge, skills and aspects of competence (KSAs) qualification benchmark.

The study used a discourse analysis methodology, which is a qualitative and interpretive method of analysing texts. The content for the analysis was extracted from Scopus, Ebscohost, Proquest, Google Scholar, Web of Science, news, publications, thesis papers, dissertations and other research papers. A narrative approach for analysing the content was adopted.

The findings reveal that new graduates often encounter difficulties in searching for jobs due to a lack of awareness of how to conduct an employment search that best aligns their KSA with the requirements and needs of the labour market. The study concludes that to increase the employability of graduates, higher education institutions should reduce the KSAs gap by collaborating with the private sector and providing students with relevant, industry-based job experience before graduation.

This study investigates the gap between graduate KSAs and labour market requirements in the 21st-century UAE. The findings of the study encapsulate the weaknesses and shortcomings of the current educational systems amid the reform agenda in the UAE. It also deliberates upon the state-of-the-art recommendations regarding making the country a knowledge-based economy and society.

Describes and compares the objectives and content of the graduate training programme conducted in Japan by a Japanese retailer and by its Hong Kong subsidiary. The case company uses different approaches to train the Japanese graduate trainees in Japan and the local graduate trainees in the Hong Kong subsidiary. Like the Japanese female graduate trainees, the local graduate trainees are not expected to work for the company on a long‐term basis; are regarded as peripheral employees; and are not expected to be the primary contributory element for organizational learning within the company. Notes various negative factors related to the training provided at the Hong Kong subsidiary, citing factors such as the fact that it is aimed at meeting short‐term needs rather than long‐term development.

Casting employers as customers, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the association between expectations, perceptions and disconfirmation beliefs with the satisfaction of employers regarding the competencies possessed by fresh engineering graduates hired by such employers in the Indian context.

Using data collected from 284 employers, the authors have hypothesized and examined a partial mediation model in which disconfirmation beliefs mediate the relationships between expectations and perceptions, and employer satisfaction. Furthermore, the authors have tested if this mediated relationship is moderated by the age and sex of respondents representing employers.

Results indicate that employers’ satisfaction can be explained from the framework of the expectancy-disconfirmation theory. Employers’ expectations and perceptions are established to be associated with employers’ satisfaction with new hires, and positive disconfirmation mediates these relationships. Results also indicate that age moderates the effect of predictor variables employers’ expectations and employers’ perception on the mediator disconfirmation. Sex, however, did not moderate any relationship.

The results demonstrate the usefulness of the expectancy-disconfirmation theory for studying employer satisfaction with competencies of recent engineering graduates in India. Findings are relevant to multiple stakeholders including employers hiring engineering graduates, engineers and technical institutions.

Expectancy-disconfirmation theory has been successfully applied to measure customer satisfaction in consumer behaviour research, while satisfaction of employers has been studied in the field of organizational behaviour. The paper stands out in the literature as one of its major implications is to extend the expectancy-disconfirmation theory to predict employers’ satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to identify and gain recent insights into the extent to which skills expectation gap exists from the perspective of employers in a Pacific Island country, including the competencies perceived essential within the work context of accountants and the support provided by employers to accounting graduates to address the skills expectation gap.

Using the expectation–performance gap framework developed by Bui and Porter (2010), this study collects and analyses data via semi-structured interviews with employers at chartered accounting firms, large- and medium-sized commercial and industrial firms in Fiji.

Majority of the employers indicated that graduates from the Fijian universities are adequately prepared and have acquired the necessary attributes to perform at the workplace. However, employers expect universities to do a little more in terms of developing confidence and improving ability to apply theoretical knowledge to practice. The findings also outline that the institutional-, social- and student-related constraints directly affect the quality of graduates, which are not in control of academics.

It is noted that graduate capabilities are developed over two different learning environments. This study focused on how universities prepared graduates to perform at the workplace from the perspective of employers. This serves as a basis for future research to investigate effectiveness of trainings provided by employers to graduates to enable them into becoming successful accounting professionals.

This study adds clarifications to the debate on academic–practice gap by providing recent insights into the extent to which graduates demonstrate capabilities to perform in the accounting profession, the prevailing issues with graduate capabilities and the employers’ contribution towards strengthening graduate capabilities.

The role of women in the architecture and design industry is aligned with Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030, which aims to increase the participation of women in the Saudi construction sector. Saudi female graduates from architectural and design schools are currently working in most of the mega projects underway in Riyadh; however, they face certain challenges at the beginning of their working lives due to the gap between the skills acquired during an architectural and design education and those needed for employability.

This study evaluates the employability skills of Saudi female cooperative education (COOP) students and graduates from architectural schools in Riyadh. A quantitative approach is taken, and two questionnaires are administered: one for female COOP students and graduates from the college of architecture and design in one of the private universities in Riyadh and the other for employers from different architectural firms and governmental organizations in Riyadh. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to analyze the research data.

The research findings suggest that practical experiences and on-site observation activities should be provided, and sustainability solutions and applications should be incorporated into the curriculum to bring architecture education closer to the architectural profession and highlight the role of universities in supporting graduates' skills development.

It is worth mentioning that the results of this study were based on the survey distributed to architecture and interior female students in a private university in Saudi Arabia. The number of students surveyed in this study is not large enough to generalize the survey results to the entire population of architecture and interior design students in the kingdom and in the world. The study will be extended to include more participants from male and female students in other universities in Saudi Arabia to investigate the gaps in employability skills in the field of architecture and interior design in the Kingdom.

The study has practical and policy implications for further development and upcoming challenges as the labor market seems to improve and innovate every day. The study suggests providing practical experiences and onsite observation activities and incorporating sustainability solutions and applications into the curriculum.

The originality of this study is that it focuses on the importance of some employability skills, such as research and budgeting aspects, Sustainability solutions and applications for students that have not been mentioned in the previous studies.