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1 – 10 of 184Leah M. Omilion-Hodges, Scott E. Shank and Christine M. Johnson
While Millennials are the most educated generation to date, the unique contributions of higher education as a source of vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) for…
Abstract
Purpose
While Millennials are the most educated generation to date, the unique contributions of higher education as a source of vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) for organizational success remains unknown. Thus, this paper aims to establish a formative understanding from the student perspective of how faculty help ready the youngest of the Millennial generation for industry. This also allows for a comparison to their older counterparts.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected via an online mixed-methods survey with nearly 400 Millennials (n = 353).
Findings
Two prominent themes emerged including the professor as a socialization agent, where Millennials report learning from faculty as they are “managers of the classroom.” Additionally, the data indicate that many Millennials doubt the strength of the connection between higher education and career socialization, though a smaller cohort reported using the university environment, and more specifically, their interactions with faculty to practice and refine future workplace behaviors. In contrast to parents and peers, faculty nearly always ranked as the lowest source of VAS information.
Research limitations/implications
Some Millennials demonstrate a keen awareness of the importance of relational communication, boding especially well for their relationships with future managers and for their leadership skills as they transition into positions of management.
Practical implications
Faculty should consider how to address three concerns: a potential lack of perceived relevance, workplace inferences based on college experiences and leveraging interactions to strengthen student practice of professional communication. Managers would be well served to anticipate how to address newcomers’ expectations that stem from interpreting communicative experiences in the college classroom as analogous to workplace interactions.
Originality/value
The data indicate that traditional ideas about the impact of vocational anticipatory socialization sources and messaging need to be rethought, and instead, it appears some of the most fruitful socialization experiences faculty can provide is in giving students space and opportunity to practice and refine future workplace behaviors.
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– The purpose of this paper was to investigate the role of the body in the vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) processes of classical musicians.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper was to investigate the role of the body in the vocational anticipatory socialization (VAS) processes of classical musicians.
Design/methodology/approach
Using grounded theory, the paper analyzed semi-structured interviews with 48 musicians (27 children; 21 parents) to understand how classical musicians’ bodies intermediate the meaning of work. The Aristotelian concepts of potentiality and actuality frame this study.
Findings
The paper reveals that: “tuning” bodies is as important as tuning instruments (body as object of work), and diseases, occupational injuries, and accidents pose challenges to both health and performance (body as obstacle).
Research limitations/implications
Theoretically, the paper contributes the notion that phases of VAS are fused not just through cognitive and relational processes, but also through embodied learning for classical musicians.
Practical implications
At the practical level, the paper reminds that the body is an important source of vocational socialization information.
Originality/value
The paper is filling a gap in organizational literature, which has under addressed the materiality of the body.
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Kathryn Fonner and Michael Roloff
Economic insecurity has had a major impact on employees; however, much less is known about its relationship to the expectations of individuals as they prepare to enter the…
Abstract
Purpose
Economic insecurity has had a major impact on employees; however, much less is known about its relationship to the expectations of individuals as they prepare to enter the full‐time professional workplace. This study aims to focuss on relationships between negative workplace information and emotional support communicated by social networks and the development of undergraduates' pre‐employment schemas.
Design/methodology/approach
A survey of university upperclassman was conducted, resulting in a sample of 153 participants. Correlations and linear regressions were used to test hypotheses.
Findings
Results indicated that the emotional support undergraduates receive from parents and employed friends is more strongly related to their workplace expectations than the specific information they receive regarding downsizing, the faltering economy, and job insecurity.
Research limitations/implications
Data were collected using self‐report surveys. Future research should examine “non‐traditional” undergraduates who may have greater work experience and exposure to the workplace. Further exploration of work‐related discussion content, and whether it differs across cultures, is also warranted.
Originality/value
This study offers insight into the relationship between interpersonal discussions about the workplace ‐ and specifically emotional support during those discussions – to undergraduates' pre‐employment schemas. Study results contribute uniquely to the socialization literature by confirming the crucial role of friends as sources of information and emotional support during later stages of the anticipatory socialization process.
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Frances Gunn, Anna Cappuccitti and Seung Hwan (Mark) Lee
The purpose of this study is to investigate patterns in the social construction of occupational jurisdiction and related professional career identity. It examines the agency…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate patterns in the social construction of occupational jurisdiction and related professional career identity. It examines the agency associated with framing messages that influence perceptions about the professional nature and value of retail management careers. The aim is to identify sources which produce influential messages about perceptions about retail management careers and the content of these messages.
Design/methodology/approach
This study utilises a qualitative research methodology (focus-group interviews) to explore the observations of people involved with the monitoring and management of career messages. Two focus groups were conducted with a) nine Canadian retail practitioners and b) seven post-secondary educators from retail management education programmes.
Findings
The focus groups identify five sources of influential messages including (1) part-time retail work experience, (2) educational institutions, (3) parents, (4) retail industry/practitioners and (5) media. They also identify three content themes presented by these sources including (1) the importance of educational requirements, (2) the nature of occupational roles and (3) the value of the career.
Research limitations/implications
The significance and generalisability of the results are limited by the size and nature of the sample.
Practical implications
This study makes a practical contribution by identifying potential career awareness strategies.
Originality/value
This research makes a theoretical contribution by expanding understanding of the role of communication with career perceptions and with the related constitution of career professionalisation.
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Ian M. Borton and Gregory Dennis Paul
This study aims to better understand the socialization process individuals undergo when training to become a conflict mediator.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to better understand the socialization process individuals undergo when training to become a conflict mediator.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper presents an analysis of Michigan’s state-wide training guidelines, training documents and eight semi-structured narrative interviews from participants of two 40-hour mediation trainings.
Findings
Results are presented with regard to pre-training and post-training beliefs about mediation alongside data gathered regarding mediator tactics, beliefs and potential for transformation. In sum, newly trained mediators often undergo a phase of “unlearning” before returning to a settlement-focused facilitative model of mediation.
Practical implications
The paper presents implications for facilitative mediator training, training materials and role-play activities.
Originality/value
Third-party interventions can impact conflicts both positively and negatively. Currently, many states and municipal districts have engaged individuals through mediation training to act as a positive force for conflict resolution. Thus far, very little is understood about the development of individuals through mediation training.
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The concept of “career” has become the dominant mode of thinking about the “lifespan” of one's working life in contemporary late capitalist society. The research literature on the…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of “career” has become the dominant mode of thinking about the “lifespan” of one's working life in contemporary late capitalist society. The research literature on the concept of “vocation” and/or “calling” has grown in recent years, but has not yet received extensive treatment in the area of management career development. The purpose of this paper is to address this lacuna by outlining and describing the practice of vocational ideation (or considering one's work as calling, as opposed to a career or a job) in relation to its potential utilization in contemporary management and career development.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is essentially conceptual and is informed by an extensive review of research literature and theory which examines how the concept of the “calling” has been integrated with learning, educational and developmental activities.
Findings
The paper discusses the implications of the return to the concept of “vocation” in HR and Management Development theory and demonstrates why “calling” is a small but significant nuance which can change the way in which managers engage with career development practices. The literature on introducing the concept of vocational ideation to career development activities has grown in research years. However, the literature review found that this body of work tends to focus on pre-experience college students, which indicates that it has not often been considered as a viable avenue for management development practice or research.
Research limitations/implications
As the paper is purely conceptual, and most of the literature in this field tends to focus on pre-experience students, potential implications for practice and avenues for future research are outlined. One of the two main categories of research need which emerged from the conceptual work described in this paper in relation to vocationally oriented career ideation was concerned with developing an understanding the dynamics of introducing the concept of vocational calling into management career development interventions.
Practical implications
A template for “doing” for vocational ideation in a management career development or management development context was offered. This outline may be altered to assist management development practitioners to develop and augment vocational ideation initiatives as part of their work and professional practice.
Social implications
Another area of research need emerging from this work was concerned with understanding changing perspectives on non-economic aspects of work as a social practice, the impact of culture on how vocations are understood, and the relationship between spirituality and meaningfulness and career behavior. In summary there appears to be a need for more studies which demonstrate how changed understandings of the vocation is reflective of broader social change.
Originality/value
The concept of vocational ideation is original and does not exist as a concept or a practice in the professional or research literature. It is discussed here in the context of the growth of interest in spirituality and religion in workplaces. Specific attention is given to how it can be applied in contemporary workplaces and organizations as part of management development practices.
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Mohammad Alawamleh and Bushra K. Mahadin
This paper aims to identify internship factors and their roles in obtaining employment, establishing relationships among them using interpretive structural modeling (ISM).
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to identify internship factors and their roles in obtaining employment, establishing relationships among them using interpretive structural modeling (ISM).
Design/methodology/approach
Based on the literature review of more than 100 studies (1982–2020), 11 internship factors were identified. This was followed by the application of ISM technique to get insights into how these factors affect employability.
Findings
ISM technique and empirical research aided in classifying the factors on their driving and dependence power. Further analysis identified contextual relationships between all factors and how these affect each other.
Research limitations/implications
This study will be helpful for educators, students and managers to understand how internship affects employability through understanding of the factors and their relations.
Originality/value
This study is the first study presenting a holistic view of internship factors and how their relationships affect employability in the emerging market perspective of Jordan.
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Ralph Bathurst and Lloyd Williams
NZTrio is more than a traditional piano trio that performs music from the classical repertoire: it is a professional chamber ensemble with a difference. The members of the Trio…
Abstract
NZTrio is more than a traditional piano trio that performs music from the classical repertoire: it is a professional chamber ensemble with a difference. The members of the Trio, totalling three musicians and two administrators have a community orientation. Their vision is to forge links into other artistic, educational and business fields and in doing so they create and participate in events that evoke visceral encounters. In this way they confirm Esposito’s view that communitas is disruptive of stasis and that to belong is to change. In community, identity is disrupted and new possibilities of the self can emerge. This becomes possible through provocative performances that implicate the body. For instance, shouting commands through a megaphone in Jack Body’s O Cambodia and the repeated pattern of chords in the third movement of Shostakovich’s Piano Trio No. 2 are emotionally and physically encountered as audiences feel what it is like to be both perpetrators and victims of violence. NZTrio uses music like this as well as works from the standard repertoire to create aesthetic experiences rich in options for communion. Furthermore, through professional development events, business leaders and young people gain the opportunity to understand how the physicality of leadership works in a high performing team.
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Maoyu Zhang, Shiyu Zhou, Yan Wu and Shengming Liu
Despite the dramatic increase in people's use of social media, relatively few studies have examined its effect on careers. Drawing upon social comparison theory and…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the dramatic increase in people's use of social media, relatively few studies have examined its effect on careers. Drawing upon social comparison theory and self-regulation theory, this study aims to investigate how career-oriented social media usage interacts with social comparison orientation (SCO) to influence the career exploration of university students.
Design/methodology/approach
Three waves of survey data are collected from 482 university students in China. Hypotheses are tested through ordinary least squares analysis.
Findings
Results show that career-oriented social media usage increases career anxiety, which in turn promotes career exploration. Furthermore, SCO strengthens such influence of career-oriented social media usage.
Originality/value
Given the limited attention paid to the effects of social media in career contexts, this study distinguishes career-oriented social media usage and proposes insights into its effect on career exploration. In doing so, this study extends social media literature and provides implications for the transition of university students from school to work in the digital era.
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In this research paper, the attitudes of youth, in transition from high school to college and the adult world of work, are compared by their plans for college and military service…
Abstract
In this research paper, the attitudes of youth, in transition from high school to college and the adult world of work, are compared by their plans for college and military service in order to better understand the impact of self-selection and anticipatory socialization on perceptions of opportunity and equality in military work. Data are drawn from a national survey of US high school seniors and from a sample of students entering their freshman year at the US Naval Academy. The results highlight the effects of both self-selection and anticipatory socialization on the attitudes youth express about the military work and have potential implications for military recruiting and personnel policy.