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The present study proposes coaching as a pedagogical intervention to prepare students for transitioning to the labour market. Taking a competence-based approach, the proposed coaching practice aims to enhance students' employability competences to facilitate a smoother school-to-work transition. However, what transition coaching looks like remains largely unclear. Moreover, in competence-based education, teachers are expected to be highly skilled coaches, facilitating students' transition to the labour market. The present study aims to map the core competencies of a transition coach.

A qualitative design was adopted to map the core competences of a transition coach. Data were collected from two focus groups, consisting of coaches in higher education and in the workplace.

Results show that, to create the necessary support conditions, a coach creates a safe coaching environment and supports students in setting goals, guide them in the activities they undertake to attain these goals, and asks reflective questions. Moreover, the coach stimulates students' ownership by putting the student in the centre of the decision-making process. Furthermore, the results emphasize the importance of the coach's professional attitude and knowledge about the transition process and the labour market.

The article concludes with practical implications for novice transition coaches and teachers in higher education.

The present study adds to the agenda of graduate work readiness by proposing a coaching practice aimed at preparing students for their transition to the labour market.

This exploratory research aims to unravel how Chinese international students form their decisions regarding the school-to-work transition (sometimes also referred to as the university-to-work transition) when studying abroad.

The authors use the concepts of school-to-work transition and cultural approaches to investigate how Chinese graduate students make career decisions to navigate the school-to-work transition in the context of international mobility. The authors' empirical study is based on 30 semi-structured interviews conducted with Chinese graduate students studying in the Netherlands.

The authors discovered four patterns with two major subgroups among Chinese students studying in the universities in the Netherlands based on their initial intentions: return-return, open-return, open-stay and stay-stay. These patterns made sense when navigating the school-to-work transition: participants experienced varied international experiences, cultural perceptions and acknowledgment influences when enhancing employability and shaping their career decisions. Participants in the return-return and stay-stay groups indicated strong resilience and consistency in achieving their goals and strongly focused on long-term objectives. However, participants' open-return decision demonstrated a thoughtful alignment of personal goals and knowledge of the possible beneficial influence they may have in their home country. Open-stay participants utilized the overseas study opportunity to finalize their decisions and increase their employability in the local labor market, thereby creating a transition from university to work in the host country.

The authors highlight the way Chinese graduate students manage their international experience and provide novel insights into the role played by the cultural characteristics of their home country and host country.

The purpose of this paper is to use the two-way fixed effect (TWFE) methodology to estimate the impact of the reform, exploiting its staggered implementation across regions. The analysis is restricted to graduates from the short vocational track before and after the reform.

This paper studies the impact on the length of school-to-work transition of a reform that extended from two to three years the short vocational track in Italy in the early 2000s.

The study finds that the reform had a positive impact and reduced school-to-work transition by around five months (a 24% reduction). Moreover, the new short vocational track proved to be extremely effective for migrants and females, whose school-to-work transition was reduced by 1.4 years and 0.9 years, respectively. In implementing the new short vocational track, some regions adopted a quasi-market organization in which private training institutions competed with public schools. This model proved to be more effective in shortening school-to-work transitions, in particular for migrants.

This study makes an important contribution to the literature on the labor-market effect of vocational education by showing that lengthening the short vocational track, and changing the overall content of curricula, can speed up school-to-work transition.

The Italian school-to-work transition (STWT) is astonishingly slow and long in comparison to the other EU countries. We analyze its determinants comparing the Italian case with Austria, Poland and the UK.

The analysis is based on a Cox survival model with proportional hazard. The smoothed hazard estimates allow us to identify the nonlinear path of the hazard function.

The authors reckon that the actual length of the transition to a stable job is around 30 months in Italy. Conversely, it is less than one year in the other countries. Women are particularly penalized, despite being on average more educated than men. Tertiary or vocational education at high secondary school strongly increases the hazard rate to a regular job. The smoothed hazard estimates suggest positive duration dependence at the beginning of the transition and slightly negative thereafter.

Stimulating economic growth and investing in education and training are important pre-conditions for shortening the transition.

Despite the duration of the STWT is one of the most important indicators to measure the efficiency of the STWT, it is not easy to measure. The authors build on their previous research work on this topic, but relaxing the assumption of a monotonic hazard rate and using the flexible baseline hazard approach to test for the existence of nonlinear duration dependence. Furthermore, they extend the analysis by including student-workers who attended a vocational path of education, in order to detect its effectiveness in allowing young people finding a job sooner.

This study aims to explore virtual leadership work within educational settings in the light of social disruption. In 2020, a global pandemic changed the way we work. For school leaders, that involved running a virtual school overnight. Although there is a stream of research that explores leadership in solely virtual communities, there is a gap in the literature regarding practices that transition from analog to virtual practices and the changes in leadership in those types of work practices.

The data gathering method constitutes a questionnaire to explore school leaders’ experiences of virtual work and virtual leadership in light of social disruption. One hundred and five Swedish school leaders answered the questionnaire covering both fixed and open questions.

The results show that school leaders’ general experiences of transition to virtual school have worked relatively well. We show how the work changes and shift the focus in the virtual workplace.

The author’s contributions include theorizing about leadership affordances in virtual schools and providing implications for practice. The authors summarize our main contribution in five affordances that characterize virtual leadership, including a focus on core activities, trust-based government, 1:1 communication with staff, structure and clarity and active outreach activities. The results could be interesting for understanding the radical digitalization of leadership in the digital workplace.

The initial transition into work has become less predictable. Therefore, emerging adults should take charge and be proactively engaged in their careers during the preparation stage of the school-to-work transition (STWT). We explored which behaviors emerging adults display during the STWT to foster their happiness, health, and productivity, how various contextual factors enable or hinder these behaviors, and to what extent these behaviors can be considered proactive.

Taking a qualitative approach, we conducted 44 semi-structured interviews with undergraduate students at an Applied Sciences University in the Netherlands six months before graduation. Additionally, we held nine focus groups (n = 55) and four interviews (n = 6) with contextual stakeholders (i.e. parents, faculty/staff, employers, the board of the university, higher education policymakers, and the Ministry of Education).

The students mentioned three main behaviors to foster their health, happiness, and productivity, namely, eating healthy food, maintaining social contacts, and reflecting on their motivations. Our analysis shows that, conceptually, none of these behaviors can be considered truly proactive. Moreover, the findings revealed multiple systemic underlying contextual hindrances to portray these behaviors, such as educational system characteristics, which make proactive behaviors less likely.

As the STWT is affected by multiple contexts, adopting a multi-stakeholder perspective is imperative when studying the phenomenon. We adopted the sustainable careers framework as a lens to uncover how emerging adults may build early career sustainability—additionally, we nuance current research on proactivity by concretizing the conceptualization of proactive behaviors.

The paper aims to contribute to the broader literature on just transition by examining the intersection of technology and justice, and identifying opportunities for bridging the gap between theory and practice. The work seeks to emphasize the importance of transformative change, which ensures that no individual, community or sector is left behind in the transition towards a sustainable future, both on a global and local scale.

The paper explores the potential for linking justice to the ongoing technological transition, focusing on its impacts on climate and sustainability. Drawing on various sociological, environmental and technological studies, this work examines the intersections between justice and technological change. Through a qualitative analysis of case studies and a review of literature, the article offers insights and recommendations for policymakers, practitioners and scholars involved in the pursuit of a sustainable and equitable future.

The paper concludes that balancing environmental, social and economic goals is necessary on a large scale within the framework of a “just transition”, in order to ensure that no individual, community or sector is left behind in the path to a sustainable future. This involves reflecting on sensitive issues such as competition, intellectual property, market openness, liability and fighting against inequalities. Additionally, it requires considering smart and welfare policies from a multilevel perspective.

The originality of this work lies in its contribution to advancing the understanding of the limitations of a technology-centric approach to climate action and the need for systemic changes. The paper emphasizes the importance of addressing social equity, policy reform and collective action in conjunction with technological transition to achieve a sustainable future. It highlights the risks of overlooking the systemic drivers of the climate crisis, such as unsustainable consumption patterns and reliance on fossil fuels, while pursuing technological solutions. Furthermore, the work emphasizes the relevance of the Sustainable Development Goals of Agenda 2030 in guiding a just transition towards sustainability.

This study aims to create a better understanding of how practitioners implement and work Agile while balancing the tensions arising between stability and change.

A grounded theory approach was used to explore what happens in practice when software development teams implement and work Agile. The empirical data consists of twenty semi-structured interviews with practitioners working in fourteen different organizations and in six different Agile roles.

As a result, a substantive theory was presented of continuously balancing between stability and change in Agile teams. In addition, the study also proposes three guidelines that can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile.

The inherent limitation of a grounded theory study is that a substantial theory can only explain the specific contexts explored in that study. Thus, this study's contribution is a substantial theory that needs to be further developed and improved.

The proposed guidelines can help organizations about to change their way of working to Agile. They can also assist organizations in switching from “doing Agile” to “being Agile”, thus becoming more successful.

The new perspective that this study contributes is the fact that our discovered categories show that several inherent processes are ongoing at the same time in order to balance the need to have both stability and change.

This paper aims to explore the impact of remote work on organizational culture, focusing on redefining workplace presence during the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines changes in communication patterns, employee engagement and leadership practices, offering insights into how organizations can adapt their cultural frameworks for a remote or hybrid workforce.

Using a conceptual approach, this paper draws on existing literature, theories and case studies to analyze the implications of remote work for organizational culture. It examines the practical applications of theoretical frameworks such as Kotter's 8-Step Change Model, the Competing Values Framework, Social Exchange Theory, Role Theory, Self-Determination Theory and Equity Theory.

The findings indicate that the transition to remote work necessitates changes in communication patterns, collaboration, employee engagement and the sense of belonging. It also highlights the critical role of leadership in fostering a positive remote work culture, requiring organizations to adapt to a paradigm where presence is measured by engagement and productivity rather than physical visibility.

This paper contributes to understanding the impact of remote work on organizational culture by integrating various theoretical frameworks and providing practical implications for managing remote work environments. It comprehensively analyzes the challenges and opportunities the shift to remote work presents and provides recommendations for organizations to navigate this transition successfully.

The results of the COVID-19 pandemic rendered the traditional work environment model obsolete for the United States Air Force, resulting in the need to create a new hybrid work model that fits unique employee needs in a complex organization. This practitioner article discusses how the 711th Human Performance Wing (711 HPW) built the Mission-Focused Agile Work Environment (MFAWE) using a combination of human and mission-focused strategies to ensure a more flexible work environment without compromising excellence or its employees' well-being.

Using an action research approach, data was collected by 77 diverse stakeholders in six working groups. Five perspectives were examined – employee, operations, infrastructure, leadership and mission – using a combination of literature and policy reviews, interviews, surveys and personal experiences to deliver recommendations to leadership for implementation.

The MFAWE addressed hybrid work transition requirements, including employee guidance, permanent workspace guidelines and facilities. Lessons learned from implementation included the need for a change management and communication strategy. An employee playbook was found to be an effective modality for information sharing but not for policy enforcement. Employee preference for permanent space regardless of time on site due to sanitation and mental health concerns was also discovered.

This article showcases how a large, complex organization built a new hybrid work model using employee-inclusive practices, filling a gap in the literature. This project also uncovered complex interdependencies when transitioning to a hybrid work model, including employee preferences.