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The purpose of the present study is to investigate the extent to which female and male university students from low-income countries express different entrepreneurial intentions. Specifically, the study empirically tests whether the anticipated financial returns to entrepreneurship versus salaried employment, or the perceived barriers to entrepreneurship exert a stronger influence on the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions.

To test the relationship of anticipated rewards versus barriers to entrepreneurship on gender and entrepreneurial intention, the study uses new data from a field survey in Sierra Leone and employs multiple mediation analyses.

The authors find that the relationship between gender and entrepreneurial intentions operates through the mediator of perceptions of the financial returns to entrepreneurship but not perceived barriers to entrepreneurship.

The authors study intent, not behavior, acknowledging that cognitive intent is a powerful predictor of later behavior. Implications for future research on entrepreneurship in the African context are discussed.

The results from this study can be applied to both pedagogic and business settings in the field of entrepreneurship, with concrete implications for policymakers.

Results suggest that the gender gap in entrepreneurial intentions (EI) for science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM)- and business-educated students in Sierra Leone is predominantly influenced by anticipated financial returns to occupational choices, as opposed to perceived barriers to entrepreneurship, a more frequently studied antecedent to EI.

This study aims to explore how factors such as working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic characteristics may affect the mental health of industrial workers in Kuwait.

Within the scope of the study’s objective, the authors reached 400 industrial workers (228 male, 172 female) working in oil and gas organizations in Kuwait. An ordered logistic regression model was conducted to examine the effect of relevant independent variables on workers’ mental health.

Result indicated that employees with a lower education level (p-value = 0.015), employees who were smokers (p-value = 0.004) and employees with night shifts (p-value = 0.019), were more likely to experience mental health issues. Furthermore, result strongly highlights a higher chance of experiencing mental health problems among the workers who had longer working times (p-value = 0.000). On the other hand, having children (p-value = 0.042), visiting a mental health professional (p = 0.014) and living in a house with others (flat mate, family members, etc.) (p-value = 0.016) were statistically significant factors to improve employees’ mental health. Surprisingly, the authors’ research did not find a significant relationship between the mental health issues experienced by employees and their yearly income.

The paper lies in its exploration of the impact of working conditions, lifestyle choices and demographic factors on mental health of industrial workers using statistical approach. By applying ordered logistic regression, this study uncovers new insights into mental health of industrial workers.

The gender pay gap is a well-documented phenomenon in labor economics. Based on the 2018 Structure of Earnings Survey (SES), the authors estimate the impact of observable characteristics on the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries and provide policy recommendations on reducing the gender pay gap.

The Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition is applied to estimate the values of explained and unexplained parts of the gender pay gap. Gender pay gap in unadjusted as well as adjusted form is estimated using data on the individual level.

The results show that unadjusted gender pay gap proved to be stable at more than 20%. The authors found evidence that education widens gender pay gap implying that men have higher returns on education than women. Tertiary education proved to be the highest contributor to widening of gender pay gap. Results also show that there is strong sectoral and occupational segregation. Decomposition proved that only 21% of gender pay gap could be explained by observed characteristics. The unexplained part showed negative values, meaning women would have higher wages, if they had characteristics like men.

Structure of Earnings Survey data are published every four years; therefore the authors’ dataset from year 2018 might not completely reflect today's reality. Unfortunately, newer data are note available yet. Second, Structure of Earning Survey data do not contain variables representing social factors of respondents like marital status, number of children or labour market absence due to birth or childcare. Third, data used for this study do not contain firms that have less than 10 employees; therefore, considerable portion of the labour market is omitted.

Results of this study will help policymakers understand the roots and causes of the gender pay gap in Visegrad Group countries but addressing this issue requires further research.

Situated in the Chilean context, this study investigates how Vocational Education and Training (VET) teacher profiles, based on their perceptions of prior work experience in industry, relate to their current motivation and perception of teaching in VET. By doing so, the authors seek to provide valuable evidence to inform the development of policies to attract and maintain well-qualified teachers from industry in Chile and other countries facing similar changes.

The authors used a descriptive cross-sectional design to collect data from 660 VET teachers using a two-scale instrument: Perception of Prior Occupation (PPO) and adapted FIT-Choice scales. By adopting a typological approach, the authors constructed profiles of VET teachers based on their perception of past industry experience. The authors then analyzed how these profiles vary regarding individual teacher characteristics, motivation and perception of teaching in VET.

The authors found a significant degree of heterogeneity among VET teachers' prior industry experiences, leading them to identify three distinct VET teacher profiles: “High Perception of Prior Occupation,” “Learning and Teaching-Oriented” and “Low Perception of Prior Occupation.” Notably, the most distinguishing characteristics across these profiles were age, VET teaching area, holding a job outside of teaching and years of prior industry experience. Furthermore, the authors found that motivation and perceptions of teaching varied significantly across these VET teacher profiles.

There needs to be more research on the factors that attract and retain industry workers as VET teachers in high schools. This study is among the first to address this topic in a non-European context.

The purpose of this study is to critically explore the linkage between adolescent work, parent–child relationships and offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. It examines the aforementioned in light of the stay/go decision faced by adolescent family members.

Findings are derived from semi-structured interviews with 15 individuals from five Italian families operating family catering businesses in Yorkshire (UK). The approach represents a sample spanning four generations, designed to capture data from individuals who had experienced adolescent work at the family business.

The findings offer evidence that the “familiarity” of family business impacts on offspring career choices, providing a safety net or a trap which can impede exit decisions. Returning after periods of study leave that represent the transition from adolescence to adulthood, offspring continue to use the family business as a base from which to explore their career options. Alternatively, when parent–child relationships break down, family business escape strategies assume priority for offspring.

The study focussed exclusively on migrant Italian families within the catering sector. The sample included different generational representations among the five families. It lays the ground for future research of a similar nature among other family business ethnicities and across other economic sectors.

This paper contributes to understanding offspring career choice outcomes in a family business context. The empirical evidence suggests that parent–child relationships are instrumental to understanding the stay/go decision as well as previous stages of the socialisation process of embedding in the family business.

The social inclusion of immigrants has been a central public policy issue in European countries, and entrepreneurship is often promoted as a form of integration. Female immigrants face double discrimination of gender and ethnicity while becoming entrepreneurs. The aim of the paper is to investigate the female empowerment in the host country as a predictor of immigrant women engagement in entrepreneurship.

Based on panel data for European Union countries for years 2006–2021, female immigrant entrepreneurship was modelled by the impact of variables showing the empowerment of women in host countries. Data availability was the determinant regarding the inclusion of 22 countries: Austria, Belgium, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden were all in the research sample.

Although immigrant entrepreneurship is highly context-oriented and locale-specific (as in the physical setting for relationships among people), some universal patterns for a group of countries are found. A stronger political and managerial position of power for the women in host countries encourages female immigrant entrepreneurship, while the gender pay gap is statistically insignificant.

The originality of the paper is due to the multi-country level and female-focused research perspectives in immigrant entrepreneurship. The study refers to the intersectionality of gender and ethnicity, arguing that the empowerment of women in host countries affects female immigrant entrepreneurship at the macro-level.

The authors' work aims to identify the employer-specific drivers of the college (or university) wage gap, which has been identified as one of the major determinants of the dynamics of overall wage and income inequality in the past decades. The authors focus on three employer-level features that can be associated with asymmetries in the employment relation orientation adopted for college and non-college-educated employees: (1) size, (2) the share of standard employment and (3) the pervasiveness of incentive pay schemes.

The authors' establishment-level analysis (data from the Basic Survey on Wage Structure (BSWS), 2005–2018) focusses on Japan, an economy characterised by many unique economic and institutional features relevant to the aims of the authors' analysis. The authors use an adjusted measure of firm-specific college wage premium, which is not biased by confounding individual and establishment-level factors and reflects unobservable characteristics of employees that determine the payment of a premium. The authors' empirical methods account for the complexity of the relationships they investigate, and the authors test their baseline outcomes with econometric approaches (propensity score methods) able to address crucial identification issues related to endogeneity and reverse causality.

The authors' findings indicate that larger establishment size, a larger share of regular workers and more pervasive implementation of IPSs for college workers tend to increase the college wage gap once all observable workers, job and establishment characteristics are controlled for. This evidence corroborates the authors' hypotheses that a larger establishment size, a higher share of regular workers and a more developed set-up of performance pay schemes for college workers are associated with a better capacity of employers to attract and keep highly educated employees with unobservable characteristics that justify a wage premium above average market levels. The authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

The authors' contribution to the existing knowledge is threefold. First, the authors combine the economics and management/organisation literature to develop new insights that underpin the authors' testable empirical hypotheses. This enables the authors to shed light on employer-level drivers of wage differentials (size, workforce composition, implementation of performance-pay schemes) related to many structural, institutional and strategic dimensions. The second contribution lies in the authors' measure of the “adjusted” college wage gap, which is calculated on the component of individual wages that differs between observationally identical workers in the same establishment. As such, the metric captures unobservable workers' characteristics that can generate a wage premium/penalty. Third, the authors provide empirical evidence on how three relevant establishment-level characteristics shape the heterogeneity of the (adjusted) college wage observed across organisations.

This study aims to examine the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment and how gender moderates the association.

Secondary data from the World Bank’s Skills Towards Employment and Productivity (STEP) survey on Ghana were analysed using a binary choice (logit regression) model. The STEP survey drew its nationally representative sample from the working-age population (15–64 years) in urban areas.

After controlling for several factors identified in the literature as determinants of self-employment, the results indicate that completing apprenticeship training increases the likelihood of being self-employed. However, women who have completed apprenticeship training are more likely to be self-employed than men.

By examining the moderating effect of gender on the association between apprenticeship training and self-employment, this study has offered new evidence that policymakers can use to promote self-employment, especially among women, to reduce the entrepreneurial gap between men and women.

In recent years, there has been a growing trend of individuals willingly opting for employment positions that do not fully use their education, skills and abilities, a phenomenon known as voluntary overqualification. This study aims to investigate the factors that influence and the formation mechanism of this emerging phenomenon. Drawing upon social cognition theory, this study explores the relationship between work values and voluntary overqualification while also examining the mediating role of the future work self and the moderating role of perceived marketability.

This study used a longitudinal approach, collecting data through questionnaires administered at multiple time points. The sample consisted of 607 employees from various departments of five Chinese companies. Regression analysis using the PROCESS macro in SPSS was used to test the research hypotheses.

The results indicate a positive relationship between employees’ work values and voluntary overqualification. Furthermore, this relationship is mediated by the future work self. Additionally, perceived marketability plays a moderating intermediary role in the whole model.

This study contributes to the overqualification literature by introducing a novel type of overqualification and unveiling the mechanism by which work values influence voluntary overqualification. The findings provide insights for understanding and managing employees who are voluntarily overqualified.

The influx of expatriates to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has led to labor imbalance inducing these countries to initiate workforce nationalization policies. However, despite the policies' emphasis on increasing the presence of nationals in all sectors, employing nationals in the private sector is still a critical challenge for policymakers. This paper explores local job seekers' and employees' perceptions of employment choices in the private and public sectors.

Adopting a qualitative approach, data were collected through in-depth interviews with 28 local job seekers, either not currently employed or employed but seeking another job.

The data revealed a contextualized understanding of positive and negative connotations pertaining to employment in the private and public sectors in Qatar.

Understanding nationals' negative preconceived notions against working in the private sector and the perceived benefits of public sector employment lays the groundwork for developing measures to help policymakers to create labor market-oriented policies that stimulate mobility between the public and private sectors.

This study contributes to the workforce nationalization literature in the GCC countries by examining local job seekers' perceptions associated with employment in the private sector and the public sector. A closer examination of why nationals are hesitant to enter the private sector can propel the pendulum towards higher success rates of workforce nationalization.