Self-assessment of competences and their impact on the perceived chances for a successful university-to-work transition: the example of tourism degree students in Poland

Competences are the most important career capital a university graduate can have. The objective of the paper is to determine which competences acquired at tourism degree programmes affect students’ self-assessment regarding their own competitive advantage on the labour market. The data was collected during a nationwide diagnostic survey (N = 476) carried out at ten Polish universities among students finishing their tourism degree courses. Principal component analysis allowed us to identify a set of competences that have a significant impact on the students’ perception of their chances of finding employment in the tourism industry. These are: ability to cope with challenges and stress; writing and speaking skills in a foreign language; public speaking; planning and implementation of subject-specific projects; ability to conduct subject-specific research and perseverance. The higher the assessment of each of the above, the more confident of their competitive advantage on the labour market the students were.

Development of career capital during expatriation: partners' perspectives

PurposeThe purpose of this qualitative study is to examine the effects of expatriation on the development of career capital among the partners of expatriates.Design/methodology/approachThe study draws on in-depth interviews with 30 Finnish partners of expatriates.FindingsThe results reflect the various learning experiences reported by partners of expatriates that developed their career capital during expatriation. The learning experiences related to the experience of living abroad itself and to the specific activities undertaken when abroad. The extent to which partners developed knowing-why, knowing-how and knowing-whom career capital was found to partly reflect their situation abroad as stay-at-home partners or as employees in less-demanding or more-demanding jobs. Though the experiences were developmental for all partners as have been reported among expatriates, the authors also identified several aspects in which partners' experiences differed from the typical developmental experiences of expatriates.Practical implicationsThe results also highlight the influence of initiative, an active role and career self-management skills in partners' career capital development.Originality/valueThis paper advances the understanding of how expatriation affects expatriate partners' career capital, a topic that has not previously been studied in-depth.

Taking a Step Back? Expatriation Consequences on Women in Dual-Career Couples in the Gulf

This article develops our understanding of how host country contextual features affect the career coordination strategies of dual-career couples (DCCs) from the perspective of expatriate women. The lived experiences of nine women expatriates in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) were explored through in-depth interviews. The findings challenge our understanding of the coordinated career strategies of DCCs by suggesting that sociocultural features of the host country context can hamper egalitarian career strategies such that they become hierarchical and subsequently negatively impact women expatriates’ career capital. Not only are women’s careers hampered while in the GCC, but the contextual setting has a long-term adverse effect on women’s career capital. The main results from this study suggest that sociocultural features of the host country setting, such as the inability to access professional networks due to gendered segregation, prevent women’s careers from being prioritised and force a ‘tipping point’, creating a lag in women’s careers and negatively impacting their career capital.

Tacit knowledge mediates the effect of family socioeconomic status on career adaptability

We explored the indirect effect of family socioeconomic status on career adaptability within the framework of career capital theory, by investigating the mediating role of human capital. We distributed the Family Socioeconomic Status Scale, Tacit Knowledge Inventory for College Students, and Career Adapt-Abilities Scale to 1,692 college students in China. SPSS 21.0 and Mplus 7.0 were used for data analysis. Results show that family socioeconomic status had a direct predictive effect on participants' career adaptability. Mediation model results show that this direct effect was full mediated by tacit knowledge. Critically, the mediation model results differed between urban and rural college student participants, such that the tacit knowledge of urban (vs. rural) participants had a more positive predictive effect on their career adaptability. Results are discussed within the framework of career capital theory.

CAREER CAPITAL. CONCEPTUAL APPROACHES

This article considers approaches to studying the career capital in the interdisciplinary career studies from the point of view of the creating conditions issues for professional development of employees. The concept was formed within the framework of the interdisciplinary career research, based on the concepts of the human, social and cultural capital, as one of the tools for understanding new processes in the field of labor. The content of those processes determines, among other things, the growing variety of career models and the need to adapt them to organizational strategies. Attention is focused on studying those concepts in two principal directions: considering it as a tool for management practices in modern organizations and considering it in the perspective of the career theory development. Conclusions are drawn that approaches to considering career capital are based on interdisciplinary interaction and understanding of the multilevel context of a career in the organizations research. Groups of environmental infrastructure factors are identified for the development of professional promotion opportunities; professional training of employees; individual career success.