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Employees need a sustainable career to prolong their working lives. The ability, motivation and opportunity to work form an important basis for sustainable careers across the lifespan. However, over the lifespan of their careers employees are likely to experience several career shocks (e.g. becoming chronically ill or being fired) which might result in unsustainable trajectories. This study aims to contribute to the literature on sustainable careers by unraveling the process through which careers shocks relate to career (un)sustainability and what role perceptions of human resource practices play in the process.

Thirty-three in-depth retrospective interviews with participants of 50 years and older were conducted and analyzed using a template analysis.

Results showed that career shocks influence career sustainability through a process of changes in demands or changes in resources, which in turn, relate to changes in person–job fit. When person-job–fit diminished, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working decreased, whereas when person–job fit improved, the ability, motivation and opportunity to continue working improved as well. Organizations appear to be able to diminish the negative consequences of career shocks by offering job resources such as HR practices in response to career shocks.

A limitation of this study is the retrospective nature of the interviews, which could have resulted in recollection bias.

This study gives HRM practitioners insight into the HR practices that are effective in overcoming career shocks.

This study extends existing literature by including career shocks as possible predictors of sustainable careers.

The aim of the current study was to develop and validate a measure for identifying talent in the workplace. This is a gap long identified by researchers in this field.

Hinkins methodology was adopted for the establishment of a psychometrically sound measure. A 16-item scale for assessing the construct was developed. The reliability and validity were established by analyzing content adequacy, convergent validity, divergent validity and external validity. Primary data were collected from employees signaled as talent by their organization.

The study yielded a six-factor structure scale for the construct. These factors accounted for 66.8 percent of observed variance. All six dimensions, namely, calling orientation, critical insight, continuous learning, collaboration, cohesiveness and challenge drive established acceptable reliability and validity.

The research provides a precise definition of the talent construct. Identification and retention of individuals with a high talent quotient is a critical challenge to organizations. Identifying talent is made possible through this measurement scale.

This research made an attempt to develop a reliable and valid measurement scale for the talent construct. The scale provides a precise definition of the talent construct. This simple sound scale could be useful at both the individual and organizational levels. It helps individuals to identify and focus on critical areas for achieving talent status. Organizations benefit through better human resource management practice. Identification and retention of talent are essential to career management. Overall, it also satisfies the urgent need in talent management research for a clear definition of the talent construct.

The use of Active Learning (AL) techniques can significantly improve the teaching–learning process, as the content is explored in a more interactive, participative, and relaxed way. Although expositive classes are still broadly used in Brazil, in this chapter we present some AL techniques, as well as experiences of their application, used in Brazilian K-12, undergraduate, and graduate Information Systems courses. As a result, we have noticed learning has been more effective, and students have been motivated by the use of these AL techniques. Although used in the context of Information System courses, the techniques could be adapted to other scenarios.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceptions of primary education (PE) teachers with respect to evaluation within the framework of Total Quality Management (TQM) and their readiness to engage in the process of quality improvement. Within this context, a relevant measurement instrument is developed and empirically validated.

The instrument developed herein included 30 items distributed across seven dimensions. It was disseminated among public PE units in Greece, yielding a substantial 2,088 responses. Several tests were performed, including principal component analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and structural equation modelling.

The findings supported the validity and reliability of the instrument, confirming that the proposed measures encapsulate actual dimensions that are most suitable for exploring evaluation perception and readiness in the context of TQM in PE. The study explored several correlations between the validated dimensions and independent variables such as gender, level of education, years of teaching experience and age. These analyses yielded additional valuable insights, enriching the depth of understanding provided by the present research.

The fields of TQM and PE lack empirical evidence. However, this study offers valuable insights into teachers’ perceptions of evaluation and broader quality improvement efforts. This can help school managers, policymakers and practitioners refine their implementation strategies for educational excellence.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the examination of evaluation as a key aspect of TQM within the context of PE. Through the development and validation of a real-time measurement instrument, it bridges a significant research gap, providing practitioners and researchers with a vital tool to understand and improve educators’ evaluation perceptions, enabling targeted interventions for enhanced performance.

Is liberalism premised on an unrealistically individualist anthropology? In one regularly told story about modernity, the earliest liberals grounded their arguments for political liberty in a picture of human nature that centered on our moral autonomy, perhaps epitomized best in Kantian thought. However, a range of critics have now compellingly argued that such accounts of our agency are descriptively inaccurate, and that normative social projects beginning from such flawed foundations are thus unstable. While this paper accepts this criticism of individualist anthropologies, it proposes that this need not identify a problem with liberalism overall. To make this case, this paper turns to Adam Smith, who grounded his early advocacy of liberalism in an anthropology grounded in natural theology that depicts us as morally interconnected, rather than as autonomous, and as always morally impressionable. As it will explain, Smith presumed an account of character as integrally related to and influenced by the agent’s social context, for both better and worse. Furthermore, he wove his attentiveness to this complex interaction between the agent and their context into both his economic analyses and political proposals. Smith’s social vision thus illustrates how a strong regard for individual liberty is fully compatible with a sophisticated anthropology that recognizes our malleability as moral agents – and even with political proposals that capitalize upon this malleability. Smith’s thought thus offers useful resources for contemporary proponents of liberalism who wish to value the dignity of individuals without basing that valuation in unrealistic abstractions, or ignoring the responsibilities engendered by the fact of our ongoing moral formation by our social contexts.

This contribution introduces sequence analysis to higher education research, an explorative technique aiming at detecting patterns, regularities and resemblance in time-ordered data. Thereby, it enables a holistic perspective on over-time developments and processes such as educational pathways or academic careers. In this contribution, the foundations and general logic of sequence analysis will be described. As an example, referring to the life course as a framing paradigm, sequence analysis is applied to reconstruct the study trajectories of a cohort of bachelor students in Germany. The potential of sequence analysis in three specific higher education research areas is outlined, that is, to study post-secondary education trajectories, academic careers and the development trajectories of higher education organizations. The conclusion discusses advantages and disadvantages, challenges and practicalities.

THINGS have travelled full circle. There was a time when the Swedes were busy learning from our enterprise and experiences, especially in the fields of industry and commerce; now the position is somewhat reversed and we are eager to profit from them in such diverse fields as social welfare, labour relations, modern design generally, and what is more relevant here, librarianship. Sweden has also much to offer from its cultural life through its novelists, poets, artists and musicians, many of whom deserve wider audiences both here and in other countries.