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Graduate employment programmes offer university students the prospect of a reasonable salary and development opportunities. For employers, such programmes offer a talent pipeline and a means to identify future leaders. The psychological contract which develops during recruitment processes creates high expectations on both sides of the employment bargain. A corollary is that graduate programmes usually entail highly competitive, multi-stage selection processes, in which applicants must repeatedly demonstrate their employability in online psychometric tests and computerised activities before progressing to the final selection stage. Drawing on Foucauldian theories of governmentality, this study uses interviews (n = 17) and focus groups (n = 2) to explore how final-year students at a post-1992 English university navigate graduate recruitment processes, and learn to signal what they believe is employability. The article shows how students’ understanding of employability is formed not only through traditional channels such as university careers services or employer communications, but increasingly through third-party (and often commercial) ‘helper’ apps offering online test-practice sessions, templated careers advice, and other methods for gaming the recruitment process. These helper apps can have distorting effects, producing graduates focused on the performance rather than the substance of employability.

Aim – Middle managers are known to be the important figures as change agents but how their thoughts are constructed as people with managing responsibilities and at the same time being managed in mobilising actions during a sudden event are less examined. The perspectives from non-Western are at the core of this research to provide new insights on how people on other part of the world made sense of unforeseen crisis through the concept of sensemaking. Design – Six semi-structured interviews were conducted with six middle managers in a Malaysian commodity trading company located in the Malaysia countryside. Process research approach is adopted to study the how the middle managers’ sensemaking processes unfold in the crisis. Findings – Middle managers found to have high sense of responsibilities and care towards employees, in their best efforts would use and acquire any available resources to assist employees, less attention paid to the factors beyond their control as a subordinate, suggesting how emotions, resources, and power influence the sensemaking process. In negotiating lives as both roles during crisis, middle managers appeared to use personal resources like positive self-talk and beliefs to cope with the pressures. Contribution – This study contributes to the extant literature on sensemaking and Conservation of Resources theory from the non-Western perspectives. Middle managers’ perspectives provide insights into how people in duality roles negotiate lives through sensemaking and resource conservation strategies. Limitations – Its unique cultural background and demography in the non-Western world provide unique contextual settings that are not easily replicable, neither can be generalised to represent the nature of the sensemaking process even in Malaysia. Many possibilities ahead for future research considerations.

Aim – the role of the departmental administrator is arguably a critical and pivotal role for any educational organisation. However, what has not been explored is whether their role could be used in a different, more effective way through change management programmes. This research will help address the lack of research into the role of the administrator through change processes. It collects experiences and perceptions from administrators at a Further Education provider that has recently undergone a merger. Design – Adopting an interpretivist approach, eight semi-structured interviews were conducted with administrators from two colleges’ sites of an FE provider. One semi-structured interview template was used for all interviews, where a thematic analysis was used to explore themes on the role of the administrator in times of change. Findings – Most of the administrators felt they wanted to play a part in the success of restructures, but were unable to say in what role. They reflected on their role being a “forgotten entity” and “just an administrator”. This has resulted in them feeling undervalued and affected their self -motivation in their day job. Contribution – This research adds to the change management and mergers and acquisitions research for educational providers in times of crises. It contributes to an understanding of the under-researched, but pivotal role of the administrator in change processes. This research makes a contribution to support human resources strategies and the use of administrator staff as change supporters through change management processes. Limitations – My role of the research alongside being employed as human resources Business Partner. This dual function may have been a barrier to individuals being open in the interview. Another limitation could be that only those who wanted their voice to be heard came forward, which does not necessarily include all relevant experiences. Key concepts – change management, restructures, mergers, pandem

This dissertation investigates how experience creation in third place occurs, using the case of cafés in Oxford. It explores what it is about cafés that makes them such a significant part of many lives, and how that understanding can be utilised to deepen understanding of their value proposition. A multidisciplinary literature review was undertaken to maximise the insights available around the café as third place. The perspectives of 9 café customers and 3 owners were collected through semi-structured interviews and thematically analysed to understand the role cafés play in their lives. Four needs were identified (to meet, to belong, to restore, to be seen) that customers and owners value being met by cafés. A value proposition for cafés in third place literature is developed which emphasises the individual experiential nature of the third place; the third place means different things to different people. A framework is proposed, which is recommended as a tool to support owners to enhance their third place offer / value proposition; meeting the four third place needs of customers and of themselves. Recommendations build on the potential wider implications of this work for pubs and government agencies.

Onboarding programs are widely used as an important tool facilitating newcomer adjustment and expediting their socialisation into the organisation. Empirical research has documented that successful socialisation has multiple positive outcomes and provided a number of practices to increase socialisation efficiency; several studies have shown that successful socialisation and onboarding are linked to higher engagement, increased performance and organisational citizenship. However, the research pays little attention to newcomers’ understanding of their early interactions within the company and the meanings they assign to the organisation based on their interpretation of those experiences. Using the concepts of sensemaking and identity work, the research addresses this by exploring the experiences of employees new to the organisation and their trajectory of becoming ‘socialised’. The project contributes to a (re)evaluation of the notion of professional identity, the meanings associated with the role and group memberships and their links with the perceived company identity. An understanding of these processes will allow the organisation to have more effective onboarding practices and provide targeted training which would affect informal aspects of onboarding and improve newcomers’ learning and integration.

This article examines the narratives of 24 knowledge workers aged 48-58 as they anticipate their future employment and employability. The term knowledge worker is used to indicate occupational roles such as software engineer, academic, architect, manager and lawyer, where work involves non-routine problem-solving using 'intellectual assets'. Four narrative patterns about future employment are presented - winding down; reorienting 'self' away from work; seeking progression; renewal. These patterns reveal contrasting self-evaluations of employability and potential. We argue that employability is not a straightforward function of human capital, which usually refers to experience, knowledge and qualifications. We show through our data how judgements about a person’s employability – both self-evaluations as well as evaluations by others - are complicated by social norms and cultural understandings of 'potential'. Strategies to signal one's potential become more complex and sometimes less effective for older knowledge workers. We contend that a person's age influences others' evaluations of their employment potential, such that the relationship between attributed merit (based largely on past experience) and attributed potential (based on assumptions about a person's future) is inverted as workers become older. The findings have implications for public policies such as Extending Working Lives. Policies that remove legal and institutional barriers to extended working lives may be only partially successful without changes to cultural attitudes about older workers' employment potential.

HE institutions persistently seek to increase student engagement and satisfaction with assessment feedback, but with limited success. This study identifies the attributes of good feedback from the perspective of recipients. In a distinctive participatory research design, student participants were invited to bring along actual examples of feedback that they perceived as either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ to 32 interviews with student researchers. Findings highlight the complex interdependency and contextual nature of key influences on students’ perspectives. The feedback artefact itself, its place in assessment and feedback design, relationships of the learner with peers and tutors, and students’ assessment literacy all affect students’ perspectives. We conclude that standardising the technical aspects of feedback, such as the feedback artefact or the timing or medium of its delivery is insufficient: a broader consideration of all key domains of influence is needed to genuinely increase student engagement and satisfaction with feedback.