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The purpose of this research is to explore the employer and employee perspectives about the employability skills of skilful jobs. The research is conducted in a developing country (Palestine) which has a high percentage of university graduates, high unemployment rate and intense job competition. This paper defines skilful jobs as those that require employees who have attended a college or university and have completed a two-year diploma or a four-year degree.

This research integrates the components of discussion with local experts in the skilled labour market, primary data from employers (N = 415) and primary data from employees (N = 880). Binary logistic regression is used to measure the relationship between the dependent variable (likelihood of hire or not hire) and independent variables (job applicants' hard and soft skills).

The results from both employer and employee data revealed that the previous work experience, computer skills, professional certifications and high grade point average have significant impact on hiring and recruitment in the skilful jobs. In addition to these, the employers seek applicants who have communication skills. However, the employees consider personal relationship with employers to be a highly significant factor in accepting job offers.

To increase their likelihood of obtaining a skilful job, and then sustaining it, the job seekers should hone their soft skills and acquire professional certifications. The universities should adapt their curriculum to match these skills and move their focus from disciplinary knowledge to competencies. The public policy makers should design awareness and capacity building programmes that will facilitate the recent graduates' integration into the labour market. The empirical model in this study shows that previous work experience is the most important recruitment factor for employers – accordingly, creating internships and apprenticeship opportunities would be its clear policy implication.

The study contributes to the literature by providing a parsimonious employability model of skilful jobs, which fits as much as possible the perspectives of the employers and employees about the employability skills in a developing country.

Teleworking, working from home and flexible work have gained popularity over the last few years. A shift in policies and practices in the workplace is required owing to the COVID-19 pandemic accelerating current trends in work-from-everywhere (WFE) research. This article presents a systematic literature review of WFE research from 1990 to early 2023 to understand the transformation of the field.

The Web of Science database was used to conduct this review based on rigorous bibliometric and network analysis techniques. The prominence of the research studied using SPAR-4-SLR and a collection of bibliometric techniques on selected journal articles, reviews and early access articles. Performance and keyword co-occurrence analysis form the premise of cluster analysis. The content analysis of recently published papers revealed the driving and restraining forces that help define and operationalize the concept of WFE.

The major findings indicate that the five established and accelerated trends from cluster analysis are COVID-19 and the pandemic, telework(ing), remote working, work from home and well-being and productivity. Driving and restraining forces identified through content analysis include technological breakthroughs, work–life integration challenges, inequality in the distribution of jobs, gender, shifts in industry and sector preferences, upskilling and reskilling and many more have been published post-COVID in the restraining forces category of WFE.

A key contribution of this pioneering study of “work from everywhere” is the linking of the bibliometric trends of the past three decades to the influencing and restraining factors during the pandemic. This study illustrates how WFE could be perceived differently post-COVID, which is of great concern to practitioners and future researchers.

A wide range of publications on WFE and multiple synonyms can create confusion if a systematic and effective system does not classify and associate them. This study uses both bibliometric and scientometric analyses in the context of WFE using systematic literature review (SLR) methods.

This paper examines how soft skills training for owner-managers affects the financial performance of exporting small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Furthermore, the authors examine the differential influence of specific owner-manager skills, such as “team working skills”, “technical skills” and “leadership skills”, on performance.

The paper utilises the Longitudinal Small Business Survey, which is a nationally representative employer dataset of UK SMEs with up to 249 employees, including those with no employees. The dataset contains information on firms' turnover, export status of goods or services and training provision for employees or owner-managers.

The results suggest that owner-manager's training has a positive effect on turnover in non-exporting firms. Moreover, a combination of soft and hard skills is associated with higher turnover in exporting firms. Amongst the specific skills of owner-managers, training on “team working” has the most significant impact on exporting SMEs' performance.

The authors' findings imply that managerial training to develop soft skills such as leadership, decision-making and communication is a worthwhile investment. The knowledge that owner-managers acquire through soft and hard skills training enables them to develop essential internationalisation competencies. Moreover, the authors demonstrate that teamwork is a significant predictor of performance.

The authors contribute to the literature by examining the role of owner-managers' training in shaping internal systems, structure, processes and internationalisation strategies, thus affecting SMEs performance. The authors' also provide a nuanced analysis of how various types of soft and hard skills underpin the successful implementation of internationalisation initiatives.

Introduction Consider a hi‐fi loudspeaker manufacturing company acquired on the brink of insolvency by an American multinational. The new owners discover with growing concern that the product range is obsolete, that manufacturing facilities are totally inadequate and that there is a complete absence of any real management substance or structure. They decide on the need to relocate urgently so as to provide continuity of supply at the very high — a market about to shrink at a rate unprecedented in its history.

This paper starts with the assumption that local authorities, under the new public management, may use job sharing as part of an equal opportunities policy in order to attract and retain experienced and professional employees. Data collected from 32 councils in England and Scotland have shown that although most of the female employees would possibly prefer to work flexibly through job sharing, there was little or no established policies for the implementation of job sharing as a means of providing equal opportunities. With the consolidation of the new public management in local authorities in the late 1990s, the approach to the use of job sharing and flexible working in general has changed from emphasising equality to meeting business objectives. The promotion of job sharing is very limited and its implementation often restricted. Job sharing is undermined by a culture of full‐time work and determined by economic motives.

We've come to expect our retailing environments to look good, to be attractive to shoppers and to enhance the merchandise. There's nothing like a bright, new flashy fascia to catch the eye. Hut what lies behind the gleaming chrome and the glittering glass? The popular image of store design is often conceived of as something tacked on at the end — a quick job which a skilful team can carry out with speed. For Michael Peters, who until recently have concentrated on package design, to achieve the effortless‐looking end product a lot of hard graft has gone on before. Sue Sharpies reports on their philosophy and how they've carried this into practice.

Social structural and cultural theories suggest that social stress induced from socio‐cultural status patterns varies across the world's cultures. The purpose of the study is to compare subjective social stress in connection with objective socio‐cultural status patterns among Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Rasulpur of Bangladesh.

This study was conducted in Rasulpur, Bangladesh. Preliminarily, 760 male arrack drinkers who were stressful in their socio‐cultural status patterns were selected by snowball process from the study area. Of the respondents, 391 arrack drinkers (109 Muslim, 103 Hindu, 89 Santal and 90 Oraon) were intensively interviewed by semi‐structural questionnaire to examine and compare the research purpose.

The results of Pearson's χ² test suggested that there were significant differences (p<0.01) in subjective social stress in connection with socio‐cultural status patterns, except income among the communities, among the ethnic communities. The results of Spearman bivariate correlation coefficients revealed that there were significant relationships (p<0.01 and p<0.05) between socio‐cultural status patterns and its social stress, except occupation and income among the communities studied.

Although the findings of the study have been successful in understanding differences in social stress in the context of socio‐cultural status patterns among the Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Rasulpur, Bangladesh, further empirical research is needed on how personality factor, familial and community coping and social support from social service system influence the differences in subjective social stress associated with socio‐cultural status patterns among the communities. In spite of the limitations, the findings may provide valuable information for cross‐cultural social health policy and programs to manage the problem.

This paper is original in linking its theory, policy and practice to reduce subjective social stress in the context of socio‐cultural variations among the Muslim, Hindu, Santal and Oraon communities in Bangladesh.

IN the 25 years that this journal has been published the whole aspect of work study has changed. Once it was time and motion study. Today it is indeed more close to our title: WORK STUDY. For the plain fact is that the job we cover and expound is now the whole gamut of the study of every aspect of work. No longer is this confined to methods of getting more work (admittedly with less fatigue) out of the hours actually worked. Today the accent is on worker participation and job satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the direct role being played by transformational leadership (TL) dimensions in reinforcing product and service innovation. More particularly, the paper focusses on the role of job satisfaction (JS) as a mediator in this relationship.

A concurrent mixed methods technique was employed. The researcher surveyed 486 participants from three major telecoms companies that operate in Jordan to supply the society with mobile phones and internet services. In addition, 15 team leaders were interviewed for the same purpose.

The results of this paper support the positive direct impact of transformational leaders on both employees’ innovativeness and JS. In addition, JS was found to positively impact product and service innovation. Moreover, the results revealed that JS mediates the relationship between TL and innovation.

Leaders are playing a direct and significant role in reinforcing product and service innovation in an interesting manner, especially through JS. Other styles of leadership, populations, and methods may create new perceptions in further research works.

The findings in this paper indicate that practising superior level of TL behaviours enhances overall JS, which, as a result, reinforces product and service innovation within employees in the Jordanian telecom sector. Superior outputs are achieved through such styles both for the firm as a whole towards innovative products and services, and similarly, for individuals within teams who involve in further innovative team climate.

These outcomes augment understanding of practises in which transformational leaders endorse innovation, and emphasise the values added through endorsing more TL behaviours to yield more innovative outputs by employees.