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The purpose of this paper is to explore non-technical skills from the perspective of Australian business graduates who had recently made the transition from higher education into full-time employment.

A mixed-methods approach was applied through the use of an online survey containing closed and open-ended questions pertaining to graduates’ perceptions of the relative importance of non-technical skills, as well as graduates’ overall confidence levels in displaying these skills within the workplace. Data were analysed and further explored through 12 follow-up qualitative semi-structured interviews by using a constant comparative approach to identify common themes and factors.

The study revealed that the non-technical skill of self-management was reported as the most important skill for graduates who were managing the transition from higher education into the workforce. The non-technical skills which were classified to be associated with workplace socialisation and familiarisation were rated higher than those which were classified as being related to task completion.

Graduates commencing employment within a new workplace environment can benefit from the strategies reported, which assisted with the processes of workplace socialisation and familiarisation.

Perceptions of non-technical skills, from the perspective of graduates who are managing the transition process from higher education into full-time employment remains a relatively unexplored area within existing literature. This study reveals new insights into the experiences of graduates who are likely to be engaged with the issues surrounding the disparity between the expectations of higher education, industry, and the graduates themselves.

The purpose of this paper is to provide an update on a longitudinal research study that examines the content delivery of courses provided by private training providers (PTPs) for first level managers (FLMs). It measures, against a contemporary soft skill model, the relevance of “off the shelf” training which is aimed at FLMs managerial soft skills, as opposed to “technical” or “hard skill” training. The research has been carried out over three phases. The paper will critically compare and contrast the results and determine if there are any prevailing management paradigms in the content of the courses.

There were three key phases undertaken during the research. Phase 1 involved developing a multi-dimensional best practise core soft skills framework for professional managers. The second phase involved a pilot study conducted as desk research using various online and direct marketing channels in researching 45 PTPs first line manager courses in the UK over a period of two months during October to November 2011, and this exercise was repeated in phase 3 during February and March 2015 using a sample (20) of the same 45 PTPs. Both exercises involved comparing and contrasting the Core Soft Skills Framework to the PTP courses using thematic and coding techniques.

The studies have revealed surprising omissions and contrary positions when it comes to teaching FLMs non-technical skills. On some PTP courses there appeared contrary positions taken up on key managerial concepts such as leadership. In both research phases, “delegation” is an area which FLMs receive significant training. The activity of delegation is an example of top down management used to demonstrate command and control paradigms within the workplace, and fails to take into account todays cultural behavioural shifts. There is also a total lack of acknowledgement on the impact technology is having on a younger generation of managers interpersonal and intrapersonal skills.

The best practise core soft skill framework is based on three key soft skill models which do not take into account soft skills for FLMs. These models do not presently exist. Both the initial study and 2015 follow-up are undertaken by desk research and the content marketing collateral as promoted by the PTPs. What actually happens on the courses themselves: broader management discussions, role play, sharing experiences, etc. cannot be evaluated as part of this research. No distinction has been made in the research with regard the length of the courses.

PTP FLM training is not irrelevant; it is necessary for managers. An issue is the training is pitched at concepts and skills which are too advanced for the FLM who are missing out on the basic non-technical skills. Without this fundamental introduction, it is teaching FLMs to run before they can walk. Of all the FLM courses now researched, there has only been one which covers all the soft skills identified in the framework. With so many core soft skills from the framework omitted from PTP FLM courses, how can FLMs be expected to grasp the basics of soft skills and apply them?

By breaking down the findings, this research can have considerable impact with regard the provision of training for new managers. It informs HR departments about the inconsistencies of new manager training between the providers, but it also highlights areas to new management which are not covered by the courses. For training providers it will act as a reminder that training courses need to be continually reviewed and redesigned to remain relevant as culture rapidly changes from a personal interaction society to a technology interaction society. As a result more emphasis needs to be placed on communication, teamwork, interaction type activities to build intuition and “nous”. Today’s young people are “streetwise” – in technology but not in personal relationships….

Existing research infers that in the information systems (IS) and information technology (IT) fields, a shift may occur between technical and non-technical skills. However, relatively little research has focused on going changes in terms of key skills in the IS suppliers sector. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by investigating these skills evolution in the IS suppliers domain and discusses their impacts on IS and IT curricula.

This paper uses a qualitative method based on 15 semi-structured face-to-face interviews, with highly dedicated operational managers in senior positions in the field.

This study identifies, for the IS suppliers, the critical skills, which are basically non-technical, and peripheral skills, which are primarily technical. It then considers the consequences of this change and the necessary adaptations it requires for businesses and training for this field.

The findings suggest the need to redesign the educational curricula for future managers, and the adaptations required to the work organization, human resource management and business models of firms in the field.

The paper’s value is twofold. First, it focuses on IS service suppliers, an understudied area (most research examines IS outsourcing from the customer’s standpoint); second, it reveals the shift away from technical toward non-technical skills in a field that is intrinsically technical – a change that may occur more slowly than in other less technical sectors – and the consequences of this change for firms, education and society.

This paper aims to assess the perception of the Ghanaian construction industry of the performance of entry‐level building technology graduates. Also, other non‐technical skills or attributes expected from building technology graduates are to be compared with the actual proficiency of the graduates.

The findings in this paper are based on a series of interviews and structured questionnaire survey of randomly selected contractors and consultants in the Ghanaian construction industry.

The overall performance of the graduates was considered acceptable by the construction industry. However, much more needed to be done in “coordination” and “scheduling” of site activities by graduates who work as site managers, and in “coordination of site activities” and “issuance of site instructions” for those who work as project managers for contractors. There was a considerable gap between the expectations of the construction industry practitioners and the actual proficiency of building technology graduates in “initiative and creativity”, “practical building knowledge”, “ability to define and solve problems”, and other equally important attributes. The graduates, however, met the expectations of contractors in “computer literacy”, “communication skills”, and “interpersonal skills”, and consultants in “computer literacy” and “leadership capability”.

The results of the study enable entry‐level graduates to realize their deficiencies for continual improvement, and the training institution to develop training curricula responsive to the needs of the industry.

Even though results from this study generally show a disparity in the expected and actual proficiency levels of building technology graduates, as frequently reported in the literature, it provides a new insight into this problem by providing evidence to the effect that the problem is only manifest in some specific non‐technical skill requirements.

Most of the studies carried out on human factor in software development concentrate primarily on personality traits. However, soft skills which largely help in determining personality traits have been given comparatively little attention by researchers. The purpose of this paper is to find out whether employers' soft skills requirements, as advertised in job postings, within different roles of software development, are similar across different cultures.

The authors review the literature relating to soft skills before describing a study based on 500 job advertisements posted on well‐known recruitment sites from a range of geographical locations, including North America, Europe, Asia and Australia. The study makes use of nine defined soft skills to assess the level of demand for each of these skills related to individual job roles within the software industry.

It was found that in the cases of designer, programmer and tester, substantial similarity exists for the requirements of soft skills, whereas only in the case of system analyst is dissimilarity present across different cultures. It was concluded that cultural difference does not have a major impact on the choice of soft skills requirements in hiring new employee in the case of the software development profession.

Specific studies concerning soft skills and software development have been sporadic and often incidental, which highlights the originality of this work. Moreover, no concrete work has been reported in the area of soft skills and their demand as a part of job requirement sets in diverse cultures, which increases the value of this paper.

This paper aims to apply a mixed-methods approach to redefine essential work skill sets, propose components of these skill sets that are necessary for workers in the contexts of emerging market economies (EMEs), examine potential selection tools that should be applied across firms and explain implications for the labour process theory (LPT) of work.

During the first phase of this study, qualitative data was collected from methods, including semi-structured interviews with human resources (HR) experts from the Personnel Management Association of Thailand, top and HR executives and managers of firms across industries in Thailand. Non-participant observations were made during the pre-interview, interview and post-interview stages. Analysis of archival documents and Web-based resources was then conducted. The authors used the qualitative data obtained from the first phase to develop survey instruments for conducting quantitative research during the second phase of this study.

The empirical findings demonstrate that essential work skill sets are “soft skills” that help workers survive and thrive in the business arena in EMEs. These essential work skill sets have implications for the LPT of work in that they play an important role in transferring the power of negotiation from employers to workers in the labour market. Essential work skill sets here can be divided into eight skill domains: (1) ideation and system thinking, (2) information and digital literacy, (3) social skills with appreciation for diversity and inclusion, (4) communication and language, (5) creativity and innovation, (6) emotional quotient (EQ) for self-management and development, (7) growth/outward mindset and (8) cognitive skills for the job role. Within each essential work skill set, there are several skills that workers in the current world of work need to possess (42 skills in total). Additionally, potential selection tools include behavioural observation, behavioural-based interviews, STAR (Situation, Task, Action and Results) interviews, role plays, case studies and simulations, high-pressure interview questions, project assignments, assessment centres, in-depth interview questions and special methods, such as face reading and fingerprint reading. Top and HR managers across industries strongly agree that the eight essential work skill sets and 42 skills are necessary for workers to survive in the business arena in EMEs. They also strongly agree that talent selection tools, especially behavioural-based interviews, are used by their firms to select high-skilled job candidates in the labour market.

Because the eight essential skill sets proposed in this paper are based primarily on the qualitative data obtained from top/HR managers in firms across some industries, generalization to respondents across other industries or across other EMEs may be limited. It is possible that the context of other EMEs may be different from that of Thailand. In this regard, some of the essential work skill sets that are suitable in the case of Thailand may not be suitable in the case of other EMEs. Future studies should thus explore how institutional contexts of other countries/economies shape the definition of essential skill sets and their components, as well as potential selection tools that shall be applied to select high-skilled labour in those contexts.

This paper provides practical implications for top managers and/or HR managers of firms across various industries in EMEs. In particular, managers should internally train and develop their employees/workers to possess the eight essential skill sets: (1) ideation and system thinking, (2) information and digital literacy, (3) social skills with appreciation for diversity and inclusion, (4) communication and language, (5) creativity and innovation, (6) EQ for self-management and development, (7) growth/outward mindset and (8) cognitive skills for the specific job role so that their employees/workers can survive and thrive in the era of the brittleness, anxiety, non-linearity and incomprehensibility of the business world under pandemic conditions. Additionally, top managers and/or HR managers of these firms should apply the potential selection tools proposed in this paper to probe into job candidates’ past experience and behaviours to better predict such candidates’ success at work. In this regard, job candidates/workers should prepare themselves to possess these essential work skill sets so that they can be successful in the business arena and should understand potential selection tools that firms may apply to recruit and select them.

This paper provides social/policy implications for the government and/or relevant public agencies of Thailand and of other EMEs. These governments should encourage firms across industries to invest resources in training and developing their employees/workers to possess those essential work skill sets so that these employees/workers are industry-ready, leading to the alleviation of the problems of skill and mismatch in the labour market.

This paper contributes to the prior literature on human resource management (HRM), the comparative institutional perspective on employment systems based on the varieties of capitalism (VoC) framework and the LPT of work in the following ways: first, this paper fills in the research gap in the field of HRM that calls for studies that explore how the COVID-19 pandemic shapes essential skill sets and skills development among workers within firms (Cooke et al., 2021). Second, this paper provides implications for the LPT of work regarding how essential work skill sets are likely to return the power of negotiation from employers to workers in EMEs during the current situation. Third, the VoC framework tends to focus on only two types of economies, liberal market economies and coordinated market economies. However, this paper examines essential work skill sets and potential screening tools in the context of the underresearched country of Thailand, an EME. In fact, the Thai labour market is quite different from that of other EMEs labour markets, as it is impacted by an aging workforce. This paper contributes to the literature on comparative institutional perspectives on employment systems as it redefines essential work skill sets, proposes various components of these skill sets among workers and examines potential selection tools that are applied across firms located in EMEs.

Stuebs et al. (2021, p. 38) note that soft skills “are essential for accountants to carry out their moral agency role in society.” Indeed, calls for aspiring accounting professionals to have well-developed soft skills have been ongoing for decades (American Accounting Association [Bedford] Committee on Future Structure, Content, and Scope of Accounting Education, 1986; Accounting Education Change Commission, 1990; Albrecht & Sack, 2000; Big 8 White Paper, 1989; Lawson et al., 2014; Pathways Commission, 2012). Despite these calls, the development of accounting students’ soft skills remains elusive (Fogarty, 2019; Rebele & St. Pierre, 2019). Perhaps this is not surprising as a commonly accepted, profession-specific definition of the term is lacking, as is consensus about the corresponding capabilities comprising accounting professionals’ soft skills. Instead, those in the accounting profession have treated the term soft skills much the way Justice Potter Stewart famously described hard-core pornography: “I know it when I see it” (Jacobellis v. Ohio 1964, p. 197). The problem, of course, is that such a description is individualistic and can lead to conflicts and inconsistencies not only in identifying the phenomenon (Baskin, 2018; Goldberg, 2010) but, more importantly, particularly in the case of soft skills, in taking steps to foster its development and measuring changes in it. Thus, understanding the term soft skills and its fundamental capabilities is a necessary prerequisite to the development of the soft skills deemed critical for future accounting professionals. In this chapter, the authors advance that understanding by developing an accounting-specific definition for soft skills and identifying a set of capabilities that comprise soft skills applicable to accounting professionals. The authors also discuss the implications of the work and conclude by recommending soft skills in accounting be referred to as professional competencies.

Human behavior significantly determines the scale of impact of hazardous situations. If crisis situations are highly dynamic, they can only be managed successfully if both personnel and organization are well prepared. The purpose of this paper is to capture the specific demands disaster management staff are facing, from a psychological perspective.

General psychological statements based on action theory and organizational theory serve as the starting point for analyzing aspects of cooperation, especially in inter‐professional communication and coordination. The analysis is based on data which were collected in structured expert interviews and observations within the domain of German emergency organizations and public‐transportation companies.

The findings suggest shortcomings on different levels: individual (restricted routines, unprepared for “out of focus” events); organizational (regulations, training) and political (lack of public preparedness for disaster in underground traffic systems; and restrictions on large‐scale training).

Interviewees have not experienced “real” major disasters, so their answers are not derived from hands‐on experience. Also, generalization to other traffic systems or companies may show different patterns.

Training emergency response staff in public transport systems should include psychological aspects of crisis management in addition to emergency management, e.g. building a shared mental model, and requirements of inter‐professional communication.

Psychological demands of crisis situations in public transport have not yet been a focus of research or training.

Employability skills are critical for success in the workplace, even more so in this era of globalisation of economies and advancement in technologies. However, there is ample evidence of the gap between the skills acquired by graduates at universities and the skills expected by employers in the workplace. Applying the modes of grasping and transforming the experience embodied in Kolb’s experiential learning theory (ELT) (1976, 1984), the purpose of this paper is to examine the development of employability skills of accountancy students through their involvement in two extracurricular activities: community accounting and an accountancy club.

Underpinned by Kolb’s (1976, 1984) four modes of ELT and work-integrated learning to develop professional competencies required for future work, an online survey of accounting students was conducted to assess their reflections on involvement in these two aforementioned extracurricular activities over a two-year period.

The findings indicate that the students had developed useful cognitive and behavioural skills from their participation in these extracurricular activities. These findings are consistent with the literature on internships and service-learning, both of which have been associated with transferable skills development.

Prior studies focused on in-classroom learning activities or internships to help students develop various essential skills required in the workplace. However, extracurricular activities have received little attention in the accounting education literature. This study provides insights into skills accounting students can gain from extracurricular participation in community accounting and an accountancy club.

The implementation of life cycle assessment (LCA) and carbon footprinting represents an important professional and research opportunity for chemical engineers, but this is not broadly reflected in chemical engineering curricula worldwide. This paper aims to present the implementation of a coursework that is easy to apply, free of cost, valid worldwide and flexible enough to cover such holistic topics.

An analysis of chemical engineering curricula worldwide, a literature review and the implementation of a coursework case study are detailed. The latter combines practical exercises using free LCA software, oral presentations and debates.

The coursework goes beyond the calculation of results, giving the students key transferable skills to increase their employability, such as the capacity to negotiate/discuss in groups, software learning and development of critical thinking. The course is affordable and flexible, enabling adaptation to different sectors and engineering schools. One limitation is the challenge of ensuring robustness and consistency in marking, but this has been already improved with a more explicit rubric. The feedback of the students confirms these findings, including the learning of transferable skills as the major advantage.

This paper addresses, for the first time, the current state of “life cycle thinking” teaching in the curricula of the top 25 chemical engineering schools worldwide, a literature review of previous experience and a description of a novel coursework taking a theoretical and practical approach to LCA, carbon footprinting and socio-economic sustainability via a free software and a comprehensive range of didactic activities.