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1 – 10 of over 3000Chan Hum, Tae-Hee Choi, Sing-Kai Lo, Say Sok and Wai Mui Christina Yu
This study examines the management practices and alignment features needed to develop academic staff’s careers, mainly focusing on teaching competencies in the evolving landscape…
Abstract
Purpose
This study examines the management practices and alignment features needed to develop academic staff’s careers, mainly focusing on teaching competencies in the evolving landscape of Cambodian public universities.
Design/methodology/approach
A multiple-case research design was adopted to collect data from interviews with 11 academic leaders and focus-group discussions (FGDs) with 13 academic teachers at two public universities in provincial Cambodia. A thematic approach was performed to code and analyse data to address the research questions.
Findings
This study found that the management of academic careers in the selected universities was hybrid, deregulating state control to relative institutional autonomy for contracted employees but rather centralised management for civil servants. However, weak institutional leadership and negligence in formulating comprehensive institutional guidelines for strategic human resource management (HRM) have caused misalignments of management practices to develop academic careers in the studied contexts.
Research limitations/implications
This case study limits its findings to two universities in provincial Cambodia. Nevertheless, this study adds to the scarce literature on the research topic in Cambodian public universities and opens a path for cross-institutional and national comparative studies on similar foci.
Originality/value
This is a ground-breaking study set in the evolving space of Cambodian public higher education, where attention to the research area remains limited.
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Angela S. Kelling, Robert A. Bartsch, Christine A.P. Walther, Amy Lucas and Lory. Z. Santiago-Vázquez
This study was conducted to fill gaps in the literature based on institution type, career level, and gender identity.
Abstract
Purpose
This study was conducted to fill gaps in the literature based on institution type, career level, and gender identity.
Design/methodology/approach
Faculty often struggle with achieving work-life balance. This struggle is exacerbated for faculty parents. Most academic parent research has been conducted on early-career women and at research-intensive universities. Although these groups are important, it is also important to understand experiences of academic parents at different career levels and types of institutions. The authors conducted a qualitative thematic analysis from focus groups with faculty from a mid-sized master's level university about work-life balance expectations and experiences in their roles as academics and parents. These four groups included early-career mothers (n = 5), early-career fathers (n = 4), mid-career mothers (n = 4), and mid-career fathers (n = 7).
Findings
Faculty expressed having a high workload based on an intersection of high work expectations, unclear work expectations, and lack of equity. Consequences of the high workload included lower work-life balance, dissatisfaction at not doing more, the loss of flexibility as an advantage, and lower organizational commitment.
Originality/value
Although results are limited in generalizability, it is useful to examine one institution, with all participants sharing the same culture and policies, in-depth. The authors discuss recommendations for educational administrators for assisting academic parents and suggest institutions work to examine informal expectations and formal policies at their institutions. Working together, faculty and staff can help enhance alignment of expectations and perceptions of work-life balance, hopefully leading to happier, more satisfied employees.
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Fleur Sharafizad, Kerry Brown, Uma Jogulu and Maryam Omari
Literature around the careers of female academics is targeted mainly toward identifying and examining career progression inhibitors, while the drivers appear largely unexplored…
Abstract
Purpose
Literature around the careers of female academics is targeted mainly toward identifying and examining career progression inhibitors, while the drivers appear largely unexplored. This paper aims to contribute to contemporary knowledge by identifying drivers to the career progression of female academics in Australia. With COVID-19 currently impacting the careers of female academics this knowledge can assist universities and human resource (HR) professionals in developing policies and practices to better facilitate female academic career progression.
Design/methodology/approach
Empirically this paper draws on a qualitative study of 18 male and 29 female academics, as well as nine senior university stakeholders. The authors employed semi-structured interviews and a novel methodology, Draw, Write, Reflect.
Findings
In line with attribution theory, senior stakeholders mainly identified organisational efforts, including leadership, gender equity endeavours, recruitment and promotion approaches, as well as a construct known as “relative to opportunity considerations”, as drivers of female academics’ career progression. Female academics, however, largely attributed their career progression to personal factors, such as family support, informal mentoring, and determination and persistence.
Practical implications
The findings have implications for universities and HR practices seeking to facilitate female academic career progression. Implementation of the drivers identified may enhance female academics’ abilities to progress their careers.
Originality/value
By focussing on the drivers of, rather than the barriers to, female academic careers, the research is novel in its identification of a previously unexplored mismatch between organisational attribution and individual attribution of career progression drivers thereby advancing knowledge of gender differences in academic careers.
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Through addressing female academics in four public universities in Egypt, the author of this paper aims to answer the question: How do female academics cope with the career shock…
Abstract
Purpose
Through addressing female academics in four public universities in Egypt, the author of this paper aims to answer the question: How do female academics cope with the career shock resulting from the spread of COVID-19?
Design/methodology/approach
The author used a qualitative research method through semi-structured interviews with 32 female academics from four public universities selected from among 26 public institutions of higher education in Egypt. Thematic analysis was subsequently used to determine the main ideas in the transcripts.
Findings
The findings assert that the following three strategies: heroism, cronyism and temporalism are used by female academics in the Egyptian context to cope with the career shocks they feel during the time of COVID-19. The findings assert that female academics try to reassert their professionalism in their academic duties and familial obligations even after the spread of COVID-19. Moreover, they tend to use forms of cronyism behaviour to alleviate the effect of the career shock, mostly via hypocritical phrases. Furthermore, the thought that COVID-19 is a temporary stage helps female academics to actively accept their challenging new work conditions.
Originality/value
This paper contributes by filling a gap in human resources management and higher education in which empirical studies on the career shock of female academics have been limited so far.
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Otmar Varela and Sonya Premeaux
In response to current initiatives that seek to rebalance the facets of academic jobs, this paper aims to examine the impact of teaching, research and service on objective (e.g…
Abstract
Purpose
In response to current initiatives that seek to rebalance the facets of academic jobs, this paper aims to examine the impact of teaching, research and service on objective (e.g. salary) and subjective (i.e. satisfaction) indicators of career success.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected data from 182 tenure-track management faculty from public universities in the USA. The selection of participants followed a stratified sample from two traditional segments in higher education, research-intensive and teaching-research balanced institutions. Hierarchical regression analysis was used for testing the study hypotheses.
Findings
Results reveal that research achievements is the only job facet that accounts for objective and subjective indicators of career success across institutions. Outcomes suggest the impact of the initiatives put in place to elevate the role of teaching and service in the life of academics are falling short.
Originality/value
The study provides evidence about the need to adjust policy that seeks to rebalance academic jobs.
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Edward C. Fletcher, Erik M. Hines, Donna Y. Ford and James L. Moore
The purpose of this study was to examine the learning experiences of high school Black males participating in an academy of engineering that was configured as a magnet school. We…
Abstract
The purpose of this study was to examine the learning experiences of high school Black males participating in an academy of engineering that was configured as a magnet school. We followed a qualitative case study design to explore the experiences of 16 Black male academies of engineering students. We identified three recurring themes from the interviews with the Black male academy of engineering students: Promoting Interests in STEM, Drawing Connections to Core Academic Concepts, and An Affinity for Hands-on Learning through the Engineering Curriculum. The results of our study helped us to better understand how academies provide a platform for Black male students' interest in engineering as a viable college and career pathway.
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Na Zhou, Jiping Wang, Xin Liu, Liu Yang and Xinglin Jin
Recently, digital competence has become one of the most important work competencies of employees. This study investigated students' digital competence in the context of Chinese…
Abstract
Purpose
Recently, digital competence has become one of the most important work competencies of employees. This study investigated students' digital competence in the context of Chinese higher education and examined digital competence's relationship with students' career adaptability.
Design/methodology/approach
The participants were 298 Chinese higher education students from both universities and colleges. MANOVA (Multivariate Analysis of Variance) was carried out through SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) 26.0 to examine whether digital competence varied with the students' personal characteristics, i.e. gender, grade level and school type. In addition, the structural equation model was employed with Mplus 8.3 to analyse the relationship between digital competence and career adaptability as well as the mediation role of digital informal learning and academic performance.
Findings
The descriptive statistics revealed that students performed best in the safety construct, whilst worst in the digital content creation construct. The result of MANOVA showed that the digital competence of the participants significantly varied with participants' gender, school type and grade level. Furthermore, the structural equation model results demonstrated that higher education students' digital competence was positively associated with the students' career adaptability. And the mediation role of digital informal learning and academic performance was also confirmed.
Originality/value
To the authors' knowledge, this is the first study focussing on the relationship between digital competence and career adaptability. In particular, both working and learning perspectives were considered to explore this relationship. Besides, the authors also displayed Chinese higher education students' digital competence with consideration of different districts and school types.
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The main objective of this paper is twofold: to analyse the progress of a research stream concerning expatriate academics in the last four decades and to make recommendations for…
Abstract
Purpose
The main objective of this paper is twofold: to analyse the progress of a research stream concerning expatriate academics in the last four decades and to make recommendations for further studies in this field.
Design/methodology/approach
In this study, the systematic literature review (SLR) concerning expatriate academics was applied. The search embraced the period from 1980–2022. The review was performed in two interdisciplinary electronic databases: Web of Science and Scopus. The selection process of papers was conducted in steps, as recommended by the PRISMA protocol. The total pool of articles received after the exclusion criteria was 110. The content of each paper was thus extracted and categorised in Excel file: author, year of publication, tittle of article, journal, theory applied, research method, sample size, country/field of investigation.
Findings
For almost three decades this topic was almost absent in the literature of the subject. The most active publication period started from 2009 and since then there have been two “waves” of published articles devoted to expatriate academics: 2009–2014 and 2017–2021. The significant number of studies appeared in Journal of Global Mobility followed by Personnel Review, IJHRM, Higher Education. The thematic analysis revealed six themes which have been already researched on expatriates academics: (1) motives, (2) adjustment, (3) job factors and work outcomes, (4) academic missions, (5) academic career, (6) women and men in academia.
Practical implications
Practitioners and university management might find this article useful as the article allows to manage this pool of international academics more efficiently with mutual benefits for expatriates and organisations. This study may assist the university authorities to develop systemic approach to attract foreign academics; adjust the same in work and culture domain through effective training; support in organisational, financial and career field; create the performance criteria of expatriate work related to three missions: research, teaching and service; introduce metrics and indicators to evaluate the contribution and work outcomes of foreign scientists into the host university.
Originality/value
This review shows that there are many new perspectives and models through which the academic expatriation can be analysed. This paper gives an insight into the academic literature on academics expatriates. The paper is innovative and has contributed to research by doing an SLR in a new area (academic expats) and tackling all the areas that has been covered by academic research so far. New research directions have been recommended for future research, to open the field further.
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Work-Based Learning (WBL) is a form of practical learning that is still rare, yet upcoming in academic education. It differs mainly from classical approaches because work…
Abstract
Purpose
Work-Based Learning (WBL) is a form of practical learning that is still rare, yet upcoming in academic education. It differs mainly from classical approaches because work experience forms a key curriculum element. To enable WBL, a cultural change in academic landscape seems required, which depends on views and support of academic staff.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors carried out a case study, in which the authors interviewed 20 Dutch science professors to examine their vision on the master track Science, Business and Policy (SBP), a WBL program offered for over 15 years.
Findings
Generally professors are positive about its added value and recommend the track, especially for students with career ambitions outside academia. WBL is perceived to have a positive contribution to academic level. Professors indicated that for academic skills development, compared with a traditional master's program, SBP is evaluated neutral to positive.
Originality/value
Altogether the current climate at the university of Groningen towards WBL seems predominantly positive. The educational change towards a solid inclusion of WBL in the regular curriculum seems supported by one of the key players, the professors. This track could thereby be an example for other WBL programs worldwide.
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