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The purpose of this paper is to explore empirically manager and employee views on employees’ skills utilisation in organisations in Scotland.

Questionnaires to managers and employees, plus three case studies comprising manager interviews and employee focus groups.

Highly significant differences are found between manager and employee views on: the match of employee skills to their current jobs; the extent of utilisation of employees’ skills; and opportunities for promotion. The main difference in views is on the match of employee skills to their current jobs, with employees opining more than managers that employees’ skills exceed the requirements of their job. Also, for managers and employees alike, the meaning of skills utilisation is obscure despite the language of skills being widely used in organisations.

The scale of the empirical research is possibly limited. There is potential for manager and employee bias. A case study of a private sector organisation is not included.

It is apparent that there is potential to increase employees’ skills utilisation in organisations in Scotland. Managers are challenged with better utilising the skills within their workforces by using these skills to drive improvements in work processes and practices.

Previous commentary and research on skills utilisation mainly centres on policy and employer standpoints. This paper focuses on manager and employee viewpoints on employees’ skills utilisation.

The purpose of this paper is to understand what contributes to transfer of soft‐skill, leadership training.

The paper presents a literature review resulted in five broad factors that may influence transfer of leadership training. These were used to guide a qualitative, exploratory study. Interviews were conducted with 18 participants of an extensive, soft skill oriented leadership development program, along with peer observers. Where possible, quantitative analyses are used to test and confirm qualitative findings.

The results showed substantial transfer of training and suggest that actual utilization of newly learned skills is influenced differently than judgments about the value of the training. The greatest inhibitor to transfer appeared to be fear of breaking cultural norms and the most important remedy, the number of other managers who receive the training. In particular, having one's boss take the same training was strongly associated with post‐training utilization. Some kinds of social support, like encouragement and verbal praise, were associated with positive judgments of the training but not with utilization. Instead, observing others use the skills and being able to coach one another was the kind of “support” that effected utilization, which depended on colleagues and bosses also receiving the training.

As an exploratory case study, the study lacks a large sample and the kind of methodology that could prove the validity of the findings.

A number of implications for training managers wanting to ensure their leadership development programs have real impact are discussed. In particular, the study points to a need to plan for rapid diffusion of the training and for cultural change processes in parallel with leadership development courses.

The paper meets a need for empirical investigation of factors associated with transfer of soft skills into the workplace, as called for by researchers like Cheng and Ho. It identifies differences in what impacts judgments of value versus what actually impacts transfer. It also identifies how changing leadership behavior is as much a cultural intervention as a change in skill sets.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of labor mismatches on wages and on job satisfaction for the Spanish case, with a distinction been made between educational and skills-related measures of mismatch.

The focus is placed on the usage that the individuals do of their skills in the workplace and different measures of skills use are considered to check the robustness of the results.

Using data from PIAAC, the results suggest that whereas educational mismatch shows greater effects on wages, the effects of labor mismatch on job satisfaction are better explained by the relative use of individual skills in the workplace.

Both educational and skills mismatches are relevant for understanding the economic effects of labor mismatch. Nevertheless, it should be taken into account that educational mismatch is not an accurate proxy for skills mismatch, mainly when the non-monetary effects of labor mismatch are addressed.

There is room to increase workers’ skills utilization in the workplace, which, in turn, would contribute to enhance individual job satisfaction and, consequently, workers productivity.

A process of upgrading in the Spanish labor market would allow to take full advantage of recent investments in education and skills formation done in the country in the last decades.

This study contributes to the literature on labor mismatch by explicitly considering that educational and skills mismatch might reflect different phenomena and by analyzing the effects of both types of mismatches on different labor market outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to assess the level of digital information literacy (DIL) skill and use of electronic resources by humanities graduate students at Kenneth Dike Library, University of Ibadan, Nigeria.

This paper uses the survey research design and 200 graduate students from the 12 departments that made up the Faculty of Arts in the University of Ibadan participated in the study. A self-devised structured questionnaire was used as instrument for data collection. A pilot questionnaire was first sent to a small random sample of the respondents, with feedback used to fine-tune the final questionnaire. Respondents were requested to rate their level of proficiency in the use of digital devices, web-based tasks, information finding, evaluation and utilisation of available e-resources and challenges encountered. Ethical consideration of informed consent, institutional permission, confidentiality and anonymity of participants was strictly followed. Data collected were analysed and result presented using descriptive statistics including frequencies, percentage, mean and inferential statistics such as regression analysis and Pearson’s product moment correlation coefficient were used to test the research question and hypothesis, respectively.

Humanities graduate students at the University of Ibadan possessed high level of DIL skills in respect of digital devices usage, web-based tasks, information finding and evaluation, but low in e-resources utilisation. This study identified inadequate knowledge of e-resources availability, irregular internet access, inadequate training on e-resources utilisation, inadequate staff assistance, lack of continuity in e-resources subscription and paucity of local contents in the e-resources as main challenges encountered by graduate students in the use of e-resources. To ensure that those who can most benefit from e-resources utilisation are not further marginalised, this study recommends that active steps should be taken to increase e-resources awareness, regular internet access, training/support, continuity of e-resources subscription and increased local content so that all may benefit from the opportunities of the information age.

This paper has demonstrated that DIL skills can enhance effective utilisation of e-resources if users have adequate knowledge of e-resources availability, regular internet access, adequate training and assistance on e-resources utilisation, continuity in database subscription and adequate local contents e-resources.

Not only is multifunctionality regarded as an indispensable design feature of team‐based work, being multifunctional is allegedly beneficial for employees, and it is presumed to increase job satisfaction and commitment. In this article we argue that multifunctionality also has its downsides and propose a framework in which multifunctionality is associated with ineffective utilisation of human resources. We incorporate examples from the empirical literature to depict sources of ineffective utilisation in teams. Depending on the managerial policies in force and the social dynamics within teams, multifunctionality can lead to both underutilisation of skills and overutilisation of capacity (task overload). By drawing on a range of literature, this article gives reason for more scepticism concerning the alleged universal benefits of multifunctionality, and suggests a framework as a starting point for further research.

Persons with childhood-onset disabilities are among the most marginalized populations, often unemployed or underemployment in jobs providing neither adequate hours for financial self-sufficiency nor fulfillment through skill-utilization. The purpose of this paper is to examine the extent to which social capital in the form of strong ties with family and friends is associated with enhanced employment outcomes for persons with childhood-onset disabilities.

Questioning the current theoretical consensus that strong social ties are unimportant to employment quality, the authors draw on disability research and opportunity, motivation and ability social capital theory to propose a model of the impact of strong ties with family and friends on paid-work-hours and skill-utilization as well as the potential moderating role of gender and disability severity. The authors then test this model using data from 1,380 people with childhood-onset disabilities and OLS regression analysis.

As theorized, family-of-origin-size is positively associated with hours worked. Family-of-origin-size is also associated with having more close friends and children. These strong ties, in turn, are positively associated with hours worked. The impact of having more children on hours worked and skill-utilization, however, is positive for men but non-significant for women.

This study breaks new ground by focusing on the association between strong ties with family and friends and employment quality for people with childhood-onset disabilities – a marginalized and understudied group. Findings further indicate the particular vulnerability of women with disabilities.

Reports the results of a field study on managerial decision making and competence utilization in Chinese enterprises. The results showed that the participative decision making had positive effects on both morale and decision quality and that the decision skill utilization had a very close relationship with job satisfaction. It also demonstrated that the measure of influence/power‐sharing was an appropriate indicator for decision‐making patterns in the Chinese circumstances. Discusses implications of the results and proposes a process model of managerial decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to estimate the extent of “over‐qualification” (i.e. holding a qualification which is above that required to gain entry to the job being done) and “skills under‐utilisation” (i.e. being in a job which does not make use of the knowledge and skills possessed) in the United Kingdom and to examine whether these conditions are correlated with age.

The paper makes use of the 2006 Skills Survey. Cross tabulations of both conditions with age are produced and binomial probit estimates of both conditions are reported.

It is estimated that 38 per cent are over qualified; 15 per cent are in jobs which do not make use of the knowledge and skills they possess; and age is correlated with the probability of being over qualified but not with the condition of under‐utilising the knowledge and skills possessed.

Skills policy in the United Kingdom focuses almost exclusively upon increasing the supply of more highly qualified individuals. Given the extent of over‐qualification and skills under‐utilisation demonstrated in the paper, more effort should be made by policy makers to design and implement policies which increase the demand for highly skilled labour.

The paper answers three questions: How prevalent are qualification mismatches? How prevalent are skills mismatches? To what extent are the two conditions of being over‐qualified and being in a job which does not offer scope to make use of the knowledge and skills possessed correlated with age?

The objective of this paper is to further explore the emerging concept of personal knowledge management (PKM) and to bring researchers’ attention to this notion. Specifically, this paper aims to address issues related to the effective utilisation of technology in PKM practices.

A theoretical framework incorporating PKM skills, technology tools, user context and skills‐tools fit is proposed. Arguments are built on the task‐technology fit theory, which explores the link between technology tools and task characteristics (PKM skills).

The impact of effective PKM will depend increasingly on skills‐tools fit.

The success of technology utilisation resides not simply in whether individuals use technology, but if this usage actually improves effectiveness. For their own benefit, individuals should consider and assess the technology tools in the context of how they will be aligned with specific PKM skills.

Proposing a conceptual framework of PKM, this paper suggests that the core focus is individual inquest, that is, the effort to discover, share, learn and explore through combinations of technology and information skills. The importance of the user's context in the PKM process is also discussed

The purpose of this paper is to propose an improved concept of educational mismatch that combines a statistical measure of over- and undereducation with the worker’s self-assessment of skill utilization. The novelty of this measurement approach consists in identifying the vertical and horizontal nature of skills mismatch, that is, a mismatch in which skills are either over/underutilized or not utilized.

Cross-sectional data from the Swiss Household Panel survey for the years 1999 and 2004 are used to determine the true extent of educational mismatch among workers. Moroever, different versions of the Duncan and Hoffman wage equation are estimated depending on whether basic or alternative measures of educational mismatch are included.

The empirical analyses provide the following results: first, at least two-third of the statistically defined overeducated workers perceive their skills as adequate for the job they hold and are then apparently overeducated; second, overeducated workers whose skills are not related to the job do not receive any payoff to years of surplus education; and third, apparently overeducated workers have similar wage returns compared to others with the same schooling level but who are statistically matched. All in all, these findings confirm that most of those overeducated according to the statistical measure have unobserved skills that allow them to work in a job for which they are well-matched.

The paper indicates the need to consider both vertical and horizontal skill mismatches when measuring educational mismatch in the labour market. In that way, it is possible to account for worker heterogeneity in skills whose omission may generate biased estimates of the incidence and wage effects of over- and undereducation.