Career choices tend to be made within specific action frames, or what they refer to as horizons for actions. Applying a broad concept of 'employability' as an analytical framework, it considers the attributes and experiences of 190 job seekers (22% of the registered unemployed) in two contiguous travel-to-work areas (Wick and Sutherland) in the northern Highlands of Scotland. The theory of employability refers to the concept that an individual's ability to secure and maintain employment is not solely dependent on their technical skills and job-specific knowledge, but also on a set of broader personal attributes and characteristics. A range of other research has also exposed the variability within and between graduates in different national contexts (Edvardsson Stiwne and Alves, 2010; Puhakka et al., 2010). https://doi.org/10.1057/hep.2011.26. This research highlighted that some had developed stronger identities and forms of identification with the labour market and specific future pathways. The problem of managing one's future employability is therefore seen largely as being up to the individual graduate. For graduates, the process of realising labour market goals, of becoming a legitimate and valued employee, is a continual negotiation and involves continual identity work. Johnston, B. Greenbank, P. (2007) Higher education and the graduate labour market: The Class Factor, Tertiary Education and Management 13 (4): 365376. (1972) Graduates: The Sociology of an Elite, London: Methuen. 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d For Brown and Hesketh (2004), however, graduates respond differently according to their existing values, beliefs and understandings. Employers and Universities: Conceptual Dimensions, Research Evidence and Implications, Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches, Relations between graduates learning experiences and employment outcomes: a cautionary note for institutional performance indicators, The Effects of a Masters Degree on Wage and Job Satisfaction in Massified Higher Education: The Case of South Korea. Various stakeholders involved in HE be they policymakers, employers and paying students all appear to be demanding clear and tangible outcomes in response to increasing economic stakes. . This relates largely to the ways in which they approach the job market and begin to construct and manage their individual employability, mediated largely through the types of work-related dispositions and identities that they are developing. 6 0 obj Chapter 1 1. Yet the position of graduates in the economy remains contested and open to a range of competing interpretations. Continued training and lifelong learning is one way of staying fit in a job market context with shifting and ever-increasing employer demands. Report to HEFCE by the Centre for Higher Education Research and Information. Accordingly, there has been considerable government faith in the role of HE in meeting new economic imperatives. Bowman, H., Colley, H. and Hodkinson, P. (2005) Employability and Career Progression of Fulltime UK Masters Students: Final Report for the Higher Education Careers Services Unit, Leeds: Lifelong Learning Institute. Consensus theory is a social theory that holds a particular political or economic system as a fair system, and that social change should take place within the social institutions provided by it .Consensus theory contrasts sharply with conflict theory, which holds that social change is only achieved through conflict.. For Beck and Beck-Germsheim (2002), processes of institutionalised individualisation mean that the labour market effectively becomes a motor for individualisation, in that responsibility for economic outcomes is transferred away from work organisations and onto individuals. As Clarke (2008) illustrates, the employability discourse reflects the increasing onus on individual employees to continually build up their repositories of knowledge and skills in an era when their career progression is less anchored around single organisations and specific job types. Chapter 2 is to refute the Classical theory of employment and unemployment on both empirical and logical grounds. Structural Functionalism/ Consensus Theory. Much of this is likely to rest on graduates overall staying power, self-efficacy and tolerance to potentially destabilising experiences, be that as entrepreneurs, managers or researchers. Policymakers continue to emphasise the importance of employability skills in order for graduates to be fully equipped in meeting the challenges of an increasingly flexible labour market (DIUS, 2008). (2007) Round and round the houses: The Leitch review of skills, Local Economy 22 (2): 111117. Maria Eliophotou Menon, Eleftheria Argyropoulou & Andreas Stylianou, Ly Thi Tran, Nga Thi Hang Ngo, Tien Thi Hanh Ho, David Walters, David Zarifa & Brittany Etmanski, Jason L. Brown, Sara J. Taylor, J. and Pick, D. (2008) The work orientations of Australian university students, Journal of Education and Work 21 (5): 405421. These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. Such changes have inevitably led to questions over HE's role in meeting the needs of both the wider labour market and graduates, concerns that have largely emanated from the corporate world (Morley and Aynsley, 2007; Boden and Nedeva, 2010). 2003) and attempts to seek integrate them by formulating a model of explanatory form together with the existing empirical literature. Morley (2001) however states that employability is not just about . These changes have had a number of effects. (2011) Graduate identity and employability, British Educational Research Journal 37 (4): 563584. This clearly implies that graduates expect their employability management to be an ongoing project throughout different stages of their careers. Over time, however, this traditional link between HE and the labour market has been ruptured. yLy;l_L&. However, while notions of graduate skills, competencies and attributes are used inter-changeably, they often convey different things to different people and definitions are not always likely to be shared among employers, university teachers and graduates themselves (Knight and Yorke, 2004; Barrie, 2006). The label consensus theory of truth is currently attached to a number of otherwise very diverse philosophical perspectives. Consensus Theory. Conflict theory in sociology. . The development of mass HE, together with a range of work-related changes, has placed considerably more attention upon the economic value and utility of university graduates. Nabi, G., Holden, R. and Walmsley, A. Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Department for Education (DFE). Universities have typically been charged with failing to instil in graduates the appropriate skills and dispositions that enable them to add value to the labour market. Research into university graduates perceptions of the labour market illustrates that they are increasingly adopting individualised discourses (Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Tomlinson, 2007; Taylor and Pick, 2008) around their future employment. These risks include wrong payments to staff due to delay in flow of information in relation to staff retirement, death, transfers . Graduate Employability has come to mean many different things. the consensus and the conflict theory on graduate employability . French sociologist and criminologist Emile . In section 6, an holistic framework for under- Beck, U. and Beck-Gernsheim, E. (2002) Individualization, London: Sage. Brown, Hesketh and Williams (2002) concur that the . Consensus theory, on the other hand, looks at how individuals interact and how this can lead to agreement. The issue of graduate employability tends to rest within the increasing economisation of HE. While they were aware of potential structural barriers relating to the potentially classed and gendered nature of labour markets, many of these young people saw the need to take proactive measures to negotiate theses challenges. Moreover, in terms of how governments and labour markets may attempt to coordinate and regulate the supply of graduates leaving systems of mass HE. As Little and Archer (2010) argue, the relative looseness in the relationship between HE and the labour market has traditionally not presented problems for either graduates or employers, particularly in more flexible economies such as the United Kingdom. The challenge, it seems, is for graduates to become adept at reading these signals and reframing both their expectations and behaviours. research investigating employability from the employers' perspective has been qualitative in nature. Universities have experienced heightened pressures to respond to an increasing range of internal and external market demands, reframing the perceived value of their activities and practices. The increasingly flexible and skills-rich nature of contemporary employment means that the highly educated are empowered in an economy demanding the creativity and abstract knowledge of those who have graduated from HE. At one level, there has been an optimistic vision of the economy as being fluid and knowledge-intensive (Leadbetter, 2000), readily absorbing the skills and intellectual capital that graduates possess. Green, F. and Zhu, Y. This study examines these two theories and makes competing predictions about the role of knowledge workers in moderating the . This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. Marginson, S. (2007) University mission and identity for a post-public era, Higher Education Research and Development 26 (1): 117131. Employable individuals are able to demonstrate a fundamental level of functioning or skill to perform a given job, or an employable individual's skills and experience . There has been perhaps an increasing government realisation that future job growth is likely to be halted for the immediate future, no longer warranting the programme of expansion intended by the previous government. It appears that students and graduates reflect upon their relationship with the labour market and what they might need to achieve their goals. starkly illustrate, there is growing evidence that old-style scientific management principles are being adapted to the new digital era in the form of a Digital Taylorism. Reducing the system/structure down to the graduate labour market, there are parallels between Archer's work and consensus theory (Brown et al. Strangleman, T. (2007) The nostalgia for the permanence of work? Arthur, M. and Sullivan, S.E. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. The paper considers the wider context of higher education (HE) and labour market change, and the policy thinking towards graduate employability. Book This paper draws largely from UK-based research and analysis, but also relates this to existing research and data at an international level. Students in HE have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to the labour market. This may have a strong bearing upon how both graduates and employers socially construct the problem of graduate employability. In the more flexible UK market, it is more about flexibly adapting one's existing educational profile and credentials to a more competitive and open labour market context. The neo-Weberian theorising of Collins (2000) has been influential here, particularly in examining the ways in which dominant social groups attempt to monopolise access to desired economic goods, including the best jobs. Keynesian economics was developed by the British economist John Maynard Keynes . It also introduces 'positional conflict theory' as a way of Advancement in technological innovation requires the application of technical skills and knowledge; thus, attracting and retaining talented knowledge workers have become crucial for incumbent firms . While in the main graduates command higher wages and are able to access wider labour market opportunities, the picture is a complex and variable one and reflects marked differences among graduates in their labour market returns and experiences. The expansion of HE, and the creation of new forms of HEIs and degree provision, has resulted in a more heterogeneous mix of graduates leaving universities (Scott, 2005). A further policy response towards graduate employability has been around the enhancement of graduates skills, following the influential Dearing Report (1997). (2008) Managing in the New Economy: Restructuring White-Collar Work in the USA, UK and Japan, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Future research directions on graduate employability will need to explore the way in which graduates employability and career progression is managed both by graduates and employers during the early stages of their careers. In the United Kingdom, for example, state commitment to public financing of HE has declined; although paradoxically, state continues to exert pressures on the system to enhance its outputs, quality and overall market responsiveness (DFE, 2010). Employability. The consensus theory is based o n the propositions that technological innovation is the driving force of so cial change. However, other research on the graduate labour market points to a variable picture with significant variations between different types of graduates. The construction of personal employability does not stop at graduation: graduates appear aware of the need for continued lifelong learning and professional development throughout the different phases of their career progression. and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. It will further show that while common trends are evident across national context, the HElabour market relationship is also subject to national variability. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). Moreau and Leathwood reported strong tendencies for graduates to attribute their labour market outcomes and success towards personal attributes and qualities as much as the structure of available opportunities. (2009) Over-education and the skills of UK graduates, Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 172 (2): 307337. Morley ( 2001 ) nevertheless states that . Further research has also pointed to experiences of graduate underemployment (Mason, 2002; Chevalier and Lindley, 2009).This research has revealed that a growing proportion of graduates are undertaking forms of employment that are not commensurate to their level of education and skills. Structural functionalists believe that society tends towards equilibrium and social order. The functionalism perspective is a paradigm influenced by American sociology from roughly the 1930s to the 1960s, although its origins lay in the work of the French sociologist Emile Durkheim, writing at the end of the 19th century. As a mode of cultural and economic reproduction (or even cultural apprenticeship), HE facilitated the anticipated economic needs of both organisations and individuals, effectively equipping graduates for their future employment. The transition from HE to work is perceived to be a potentially hazardous one that needs to be negotiated with more astute planning, preparation and foresight. . This contrasts with more flexible liberal economies such as the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, characterised by more intensive competition, deregulation and lower employment tenure. Conversely, traditional middle-class graduates are more able to add value to their credentials and more adept at exploiting their pre-existing levels of cultural capital, social contacts and connections (Ball, 2003; Power and Whitty, 2006). Employers propensities towards recruiting specific types of graduates perhaps reflects deep-seated issues stemming from more transactional, cost-led and short-term approaches to developing human resources (Warhurst, 2008). If individuals are able to capitalise upon their education and training, and adopt relatively flexible and proactive approaches to their working lives, then they will experience favourable labour market returns and conditions. The correspondence between HE and the labour market rests largely around three main dimensions: (i) in terms of the knowledge and skills that HE transfers to graduates and which then feeds back into the labour market, (ii) the legitimatisation of credentials that serve as signifiers to employers and enable them to screen prospective future employees and (iii) the enrichment of personal and cultural attributes, or what might be seen as personality. This is then linked to research that has examined the way in which students and graduates are managing the transition into the labour market. %PDF-1.7 Employability is a product consisting of a specific set of skills, such as soft, hard, technical, and transferable. Employers value employability skills because they regard these as indications of how you get along with other team members and customers, and how efficiently you are likely to handle your job performance and career success. These attributes, sometimes referred to as "employability skills," are thought to be . Bowman et al. They see society like a human body, where key institutions work like the body's organs to keep the society/body healthy and well.Social health means the same as social order, and is guaranteed when nearly everyone accepts the general moral values of their society. This may further entail experiencing adverse labour market experiences such as unemployment and underemployment. More positive accounts of graduates labour market outcomes tend to support the notion of HE as a positive investment that leads to favourable returns. (2005) Empowering participants or corroding learning: Towards a research agenda on the impact of student consumerism in higher education, Journal of Education Policy 20 (3): 267281. Ideally, graduates would be able to possess both the hard currencies in the form of traditional academic qualifications together with soft currencies in the form of cultural and interpersonal qualities. A range of key factors seem to determine graduates access to different returns in the labour market that are linked to the specific profile of the graduate. This should be ultimately responsive to the different ways in which students themselves personally construct such attributes and their integration within, rather than separation from, disciplinary knowledge and practices. Clarke, M. (2008) Understanding and managing employability in changing career contexts, Journal of European Industrial Training 32 (4): 258284. European-wide secondary data also confirms such patterns, as reflected in variable cross-national graduate returns (Eurostat, 2009). Research done over the past decade has highlighted the increasing pressures anticipated and experienced by graduates seeking well-paid and graduate-level forms of employment. Elias, P. and Purcell, K. (2004) The Earnings of Graduates in Their Early Careers: Researching Graduates Seven Years on. Hesketh, A.J. Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE). Reay, D., Ball, S.J. Part of Springer Nature. Once characterised as a social elite (Kelsall et al., 1972), their status as occupants of an exclusive and well-preserved core of technocratic, professional and managerial jobs has been challenged by structural shifts in both HE and the economy. Longitudinal research on graduates transitions to the labour market (Holden and Hamblett, 2007; Nabi et al., 2010) also illustrates that graduates initial experiences of the labour market can confirm or disrupt emerging work-related identities. Consensus Theory: the Basics According to consensus theories, for the most part society works because most people are successfully socialised into shared values through the family Hassard, J., McCann, L. and Morris, J.L. Overall, consensus theory is a useful perspective for understanding the role of crime in society and the ways in which it serves as a means of defining and enforcing social norms and values. It draws upon various studies to highlight the different labour market perceptions, experiences and outcomes of graduates in the United Kingdom and other national contexts. Southampton Education School, University of Southampton, Building 32, Southampton, SO17 1BJ, UK, You can also search for this author in 's (2005) research showed similar patterns among UK Masters students who, as delayed entrants to the labour market and investors in further human capital, possess a range of different approaches to their future career progression. poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. Furthermore, as Bridgstock (2009) has highlighted, generic skills discourses often fail to engage with more germane understandings of the actual career-salient skills graduates genuinely need to navigate through early career stages. The strengths of consensus theory are that it is a more objective approach and that it is easier to achieve agreement. Research Paper 1, University of West England & Warwick University, Warwick Institute for Employment Research. 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