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In the current war for talent employers are concerned about the idea that the best employees are more likely to leave the organization for another employer (i.e. the management paradox). This study tests this management paradox. The purpose of this paper is to advance our understandings of how employees’ occupational expertise is associated with job search intensity, through its assumed relationships with perceived internal and external employability in the internal and the external labor market. The authors thereby tested the research model across three different age groups (young, middle-aged, and senior employees).

The authors conducted a survey among 2,137 professional workers and applied multi-group structural equation modeling.

Perceived internal employability negatively mediated the relationship between occupational expertise and job search intensity, whilst there was a positive mediational effect of perceived external employability. Age had a moderating effect on the association between perceived internal employability and job search intensity.

The findings contribute to the scholarly literature on the management paradox, and the empirical work on employability and age.

Organizations can recoup their investments in expert workers’ employability and enhance their retention by providing opportunities for internal career development.

This study is original by including both internal and external employability. By doing so, the authors thereby shedding new light on how occupational expertise might explain job search and how this relationship differs depending on employee age, thereby using a large sample of respondents.

The present study investigates the relationship between two career‐related variables and occupational expertise of higher‐level employees from large working organisations in three different age groups. The factors in question are: total number of jobs that have been performed; and the average period spent in each job. Survey data from 420‐higher level employees and 224 direct supervisors have been utilised. We may conclude that it is not experience as such that counts for the development of occupational expertise. We assume that it is rather the allocation of different jobs that determines competence growth. Results are considered in relation to possible explanations of the outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a study that investigates the relationship between organisational factors, Teachers' Professional Development (TPD) and occupational expertise.

A survey was administered among 152 Dutch teachers in secondary education.

Analysis of the data revealed that of the organisational factors, in particular, the availability of organisational facilities contributes positively to the amount of TPD (that is, in training programmes, and social networks). Furthermore, participation in social networks appeared to have a positive influence on the development of occupational expertise.

The study is cross‐sectional (all data have been collected at one point in time), and data have been gathered in one country, i.e. The Netherlands. It would be interesting to examine the proposed model in a longitudinal study, in order to address issues of causality. More research is also needed to explore the extent to which the findings would generalise to other occupational settings and/or to other countries. Owing to the relatively small sample size, a mediation model was not empirically tested. Future research using larger sample sizes is needed in order to test whether participation in learning activities (partially) mediates the relationship between organisational factors and occupational expertise.

It is important that HRM departments and HRD managers in schools offer organisational facilities for teachers. These facilities should focus not only on the traditional formal training activities, but also on creating opportunities for participation in social networks. This study indicates that, particularly, participation in intra‐ and extra‐organisational social networks enhances occupational expertise. Managers can stimulate participation in these social networks by providing enough social support.

Although teachers' professional development is increasingly perceived as being important in school settings, until now little empirical research has been available that investigates the relationship between organisational factors, TPD, and occupational expertise.

Sociologists have paid little attention to what people mean when they call themselves “professionals” in their everyday talk. Typically, when occupations lack the characteristics of self-control associated with the established professions, such talk is dismissed as desire for greater status. An ethnography of speaking conducted among several technicians’ occupations suggests that dismissing talk of professionalism may have been premature. The results of this study indicate that among technicians, professional talk highlights dynamics of respect, collaboration, and expertise crucial to the horizontal divisions of labor that are common in postindustrial workplaces, but have very little to do with the desire for occupational power.

Employability and its components have received a lot of attention from scholars and practitioners. However, little is known about the interrelations between these different components of employability and how employees progress within their employability trajectories. Therefore, a model of such progression was constructed and tested using Van der Heijde and Van der Heijden’s (2006) employability measurement instrument. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The propositions were tested empirically by applying a Rasch model using a sample of 167 Austrian business consultants.

The findings lend some support for the hypothesized progression model of employability. Specifically, the items measuring occupational expertise are largely located in the group of items that were relatively likely to be endorsed. Also, the items of personal flexibility and anticipation and optimization were, in general, less likely to be endorsed than the items of occupational expertise.

The major thrust of this paper is a theoretical one. However, the empirical demonstration tentatively supports the proposed model, which implies that further, more robust longitudinal research in this direction may be a worthwhile endeavor.

By understanding which competences are important at which stage or across which stages of an individual’s career, career advisors and human resource management professionals can give more targeted advice concerning career management practices.

The present study contributes to the literature by investigating how employees may make progress within their employability trajectories.

The individual placement and support (IPS) model is an evidence-based approach to employment support for people with severe mental illness that functions by co-locating an employment consultant from the local disability employment service within a community mental health team to assist service users to find work. This paper aims to examine the unintended impacts of implementing IPS on occupational therapy practice and offer some suggestions.

The authors performed a narrative literature review on the IPS model, employment and occupational therapy. Authors then analysed and discussed impact on occupational therapy practice and concluded by making suggestions based on current evidence and practice.

The authors concluded that implementation of IPS has resulted in some unintended changes of practice in mental health with occupational therapists taking a less active role in enabling employment outcomes than previously. This paper concludes by calling upon occupational therapists to re-establish their role of enabling employment.

This paper offers an original viewpoint on employment and occupational therapy based on current evidence and authors’ expertise.

The ways in which expert workers differ from novices is principally in the amount of specific skills that they possess and the ways they have organized their knowledge. Highlights the advantages of aiming for expertise rather than competence. Also outlines the stages in the development of expertise. Provides examples from industry to show that occupational expertise is practical, informal in nature and only rarely, if ever, taught. Discusses implications for on‐the‐job training in major industries. Shows that expertise is based on case knowledge and problem solving.

Research into inter‐organisational relationships has been one of the key drivers in the development of services marketing theory. Yet the understanding of the nature of such relationships, and the management of the relationship process, remains limited. Focusing on the development of buyer‐seller relationships in an archetypal professional business service, this paper aims to critically examine the nature and format of inter‐organisational service relationships.

Research reported in the paper is based on case study research across multiple dyads (n=7) in the occupational health sector supported by large‐scale survey data.

Argues that, rather than adhering to a single format in terms of characteristics or pattern of development, relationships are diverse and complex. A typology of “ideal type” relationship formats, ranging from quasi‐transactional to internalised, is proposed. Each of these ideal types is characterised by a unique set of causal and resultant conditions.

The paper is based on data from a single, albeit archetypal, professional business service. Consequently future research should address the replicability of the results across other service sectors.

The identification of these discrete relationship formats and their key characteristics along a continuum provides an empirical basis on which service professionals can develop targeted strategies for the management of particular inter‐organisational relationships.

Building on preceding research, the paper provides empirically based analysis of the nature and format of inter‐organisational relationships in professional service markets.

The purpose of this paper is to offer a timely assessment of the influence of human resource (HR) processes and policies on expatriates’ employability, using a Dutch international engineering firm as the study setting.

The qualitative study, based on in-depth interviews with 15 respondents in various roles, such as expatriates, repatriates, HR managers and line managers, is complemented by a document analysis of HR policy reports about expatriation processes.

Expatriation management influences the internal employability of engineering expatriates, yet most HR policies related to expatriation work are counterproductive in terms of in-company employability of expatriates.

Further research could extend this single case study by differentiating engineering from management functions and addressing employability implications for other assignments and other forms of expatriation. Comparisons are also possible across various stakeholders with regard to social support.

HR management can follow several prescriptions revealed by this study to increase expatriates’ employability within the organization.

This study is among the first to relate expatriation processes to the dimensions of employability.

The present study describes the relationship between three individual predictor variables and the degree of occupational expertise of middle and higher‐level employees in three different career stages working in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Occupational expertise is operationalised by means of five dimensions, i.e. knowledge, meta‐cognitive knowledge, skills, social recognition and growth and flexibility. The predictors in question are: the degree of participation in social networks, the degree of participation in training and development programmes and the degree of initiatives that are taken by the individual employee. Hypotheses have been tested with original survey data from 233 higher‐level employees and 217 direct supervisors.