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Changes in the workplace have raised serious concerns about the future of work and the effectiveness of undergraduate academic programs to sufficiently prepare students for business. The purpose of this paper is to address this concern by exploring how internship employment (placement) is implicated in the young business graduates’ employability prospects.

This research explored the students’ perceptions regarding their degree of “work readiness” after completing an internship program. The concept of “work readiness” is conceptualized in terms of role clarity, ability and motivation. An institution of higher education in Greece provided the sampling frame for this research. Online survey data have been used.

Students who attend internship programs assessed positively all aspects of the work readiness construct. They knew what it was expected by employers from them to do at work. They were able to effectively apply basic academic skills, high-order skills and professional skills required by employers on the job and placed greater importance to the intrinsic rewards than the extrinsic ones.

This is an exploratory study and is designed as a foundation for future empirical studies. Further research could examine the dimensions of the work readiness concept in other geographic contexts and validate the scale measurement with larger samples.

The integration of scattered pieces of literature on graduates’ employability through the lenses of “work readiness” is a novel theoretical approach to explore the effectiveness of internship programs on employability prospects in the Greek context.

This study aims to provide a systematic literature review (SLR) of extant research on talent management (TM) in hospitality and tourism (H&T). The objectives are first, to offer an empirical mapping analysis of TM research in H&T; second, to identify and discuss key research topics; and third, to recommend avenues for future research.

The authors conducted a SLR of TM literature in the context of H&T by analysing peer-reviewed papers published between January 2000 and October 2020. Following the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis process, three independent coders undertook a content analysis of 74 papers for the SLR.

The authors found that TM in H&T offers contextualised evidence consistent on five key research topics: TM practices; conceptualisation of talent and TM; TM antecedents and outcomes; key TM stakeholders; and talent education and graduate careers. The analysis indicated that most studies are qualitative, focussed on Europe and North America and that primarily examine hotels. The small number of TM studies in H&T along with the lack of strong theoretical groundings show that the field is at the early stages of the growing stage, yet the sharp increase demonstrates an exponential growth in interest.

This study highlights the importance of TM and indicates that businesses in the sector need to reconsider the definition of talent, their approaches to TM and the bundling of TM practices to improve their effectiveness. It also calls for partnerships among the industry’s key stakeholders and a revisiting of agendas for educators.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study that offers a holistic examination of research on a wide range of TM topics within various H&T sectors over the past 20 years. It clarifies the conceptualisation of talent and TM in this field and provides insights, as well as context-specific evidence on the management of H&T talent. This study is the first to argue that the research stream is moving towards a growth stage and offers recommendations on advancing the field.

This research expands the scope of the exploitation/exploration literature which has generally embraced a firm-level perspective by showing the theoretical and practical relevance of this framework for the study of entrepreneurial behaviour from an individual-level perspective. The study exemplifies specific instances where explorative or exploitative aspects of behaviour are likely to be manifested as a response to specific types of shocks that precede and impact the decision to quit and start one’s own business. Different types of shocks or entrepreneurial events displace the individual from the inertia of existing behaviour and pave the way for the consideration of a new set of opportunities; a new set of opportunities where entrepreneurial initiatives are perceived to be both feasible and desirable (exploitation–exploitation). Drawing upon 80 semi-structured and longitudinal interviews with entrepreneurs who quitted their ‘salaried job’ in order to start their own business, the study: (a) provides an inventory of events/shocks found to precipitate the interviewees’ decision to quit, and (b) links the various types of shocks with the prospective explorative and/or exploitative entrepreneurial initiatives. In this respect, the dynamics that underlie the effects of shocks on entrepreneurial behaviour are illustrated, while blurriness and interrelatedness of exploitative and explorative aspects of entrepreneurial behaviour are exemplified. Such a detailed list of shocks may serve as reference tool for both prospective entrepreneurs who wish to make an entrepreneurial shift in their career, as well as managers who wish to be proactive in avoiding or encouraging entrepreneurial employee turnover.

Despite a growing body of research on exploration and exploitation, scholars have tended to study the phenomena from a narrow perspective mostly within larger, well-established organizations. However, it is still far from obvious how top management within small-to-medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are to address the liability of newness and seek access to resources and capabilities relevant for the pursuit of exploration and exploitation. Resource sourcing and allocation decisions are particularly critical in SMEs and must be aligned with the firm’s fundamental strategic intent and growth model. For example, organizations following a stage model by first developing a domestic market and then expanding globally will require different bundles of resources and capabilities than organizations that are designed to conquer the global arena. Indeed, management systems will likely need to adapt across the firm life cycle such that it can fulfill an explorative function in the earlier stages and an exploitative function in later ones. Hence, early-stage ventures have to master the resource reallocation process which is contingent on their access to capital. Across the firm life cycle, venture capitalists can tap into the growth potential of early-stage ventures is a key factor behind their successful short-term innovative performance as well as long-term survival.