Learning Climate Perceptions as a Determinant of Employability: An Empirical Study Among European ICT Professionals

The influence of leadership on employees' employability: a bibliometric analysis, systematic literature review, and research agenda

Introduction

Policymakers, researchers, and practitioners have recently begun treating employability-an individual's ability to possess and continuously adjust and acquire up-to-date competencies, flexibility, adaptability, and openness to change-as crucial to enabling employees to respond to ubiquitous and rapid changes in organizations (e.g., changing tasks and work-related processes). Research into ways to enhance employability, particularly through supervisor leadership, which, for example, facilitates training and competence development, has thus grown in popularity. A review on leadership as an antecedent of employability is both evident and timely. This review thus addresses the question of whether a supervisor's leadership influences employees' employability, and in which contexts and through which mechanisms it does so.

Methods

As preliminary study we conducted a bibliometric analysis (which corroborated employability's recent rise in popularity) and as main study we conducted a systematic literature review. For this, the authors independently searched for articles, which met the inclusion criteria and subsequently were included for full text analysis. The authors also independently used the forward and backward snowballing technique for identifying additional articles which met the inclusion criteria and subsequently were included for full text analysis. The procedure resulted in 17 articles in total.

Results

Most of the articles identified positive relationships among several conceptualizations of supervisor leadership and employee employability, such as transformational leadership and leader-member exchange, and to a lesser extent, servant leadership and perceived supervisor support. This review suggests that such relationships occur across different work contexts, such as educational, SMEs, healthcare, and several other industries, and these contexts also vary geographically.

Discussion

The relationships among supervisor leadership and employee employability are largely explained using a social exchange perspective, which means that the positive influence of leadership on employability is itself influenced by a two-way social exchange relationship between supervisor and employees. The quality of the dyadic relationship between leader and followers thus determines the extent to which leaders offer valuable resources such as training and feedback, which subsequently enhances employees' employability. This review demonstrates that investing in supervisors' leadership is a valuable HRM strategy that fosters employability, and it identifies practical implications that inform policy and practice and sets an agenda for future employability research.

With a little help from my friends: adopting a P-E fit perspective in understanding the value of organizational learning climate for sustainable employability

Purpose

The objective of our study was to investigate how organizational learning climate (measured as developmental opportunities and team support for learning), career commitment, and age are related to employees' self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability (e.g., their sustainable employability). Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective building upon the notion that sustainable employability is a function of both the person (P) and the environment (E) and tests a three-way interaction between organizational learning climate, career commitment, and age.

Design

In total, 211 members of the support staff of a Dutch university completed a survey. Hierarchical stepwise regression analysis was used to analyze the data.

Findings

Only one of the two dimensions of organizational learning climate that we measured, namely the developmental opportunities, appeared to be associated with all indicators of sustainable employability. Career commitment only had a direct positive relationship with vitality. Age was negatively related to self-perceived employability and to work ability, but not to vitality. The relationship between developmental opportunities and vitality was negatively influenced by career commitment (a negative two-way interaction effect), while a positive three-way interaction effect was found between career commitment, age, and development opportunities, and with self-perceived employability as the outcome.

Theoretical and practical implications

Our findings confirmed the relevance of adopting a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability, and of considering the possible role of age in this. It requires more detailed analyses in future research to unravel the role of age in the shared responsibility for sustainable employability. In practice, the results of our study imply that organizations should provide all employees with a working context that facilitates learning, however, with a special focus on older employees, for whom it is a particular challenge to protect their sustainable employability, possibly due to age-related stereotyping.

Originality

Our study adopted a P-E fit perspective on sustainable employability and examined the association between organizational learning climate and all three components of sustainable employability: self-perceived employability, vitality and work ability. Moreover, it investigated whether and how the employee's career commitment and age influence this relationship.

Supervisor-Subordinate Age Dissimilarity and Its Impact on Supervisory Ratings of Employability: Does Supportive Learning Context Make a Difference?

Status incongruence resulting from a supervisor who is younger than their subordinate potentially leads to age stereotyping of employees. This article investigates the relationship between age difference and supervisory ratings of five competence-based measures of subordinate employability (Occupational Expertise, Anticipation/Optimisation, Personal Flexibility, Corporate Sense, and Balance). In addition, we consider the buffering role of a supportive learning context which allows older workers access to learning resources. Learning context is represented by duration of the supervisory relationship, perceived organizational learning climate and participation in, and application of, training and development. Using 295 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors in a Dutch building company, findings show that age dissimilarity reflecting status incongruence was related to lower supervisory ratings of Occupational Expertise (job-related competence) and Corporate Sense (social/organizational competence) regardless of learning context. Longer duration relationships exacerbated, rather than buffered, the age difference effect on some types of supervisory ratings. The implications of these findings for age stereotyping with regard to employability are considered.

Does the Employability Paradox Exist or Not? An Inverted U-Shaped Model

This paper’s purpose is to test the employability paradox by adopting a combined linear and non-linear approach based on the conservation of resource (COR) theory and the prospect theory and further to discuss it in two groups of employees with different seniority following the career timetable perspective. A total of 623 pairs of matched employee and manager surveys was collected from 27 Chinese enterprises in two waves. Hierarchical regression analysis was used to test the hypotheses. The results show no paradox that perceived employability promotes both an employee’s turnover intention and performance. Specifically, perceived employability has a significant inverted U-shaped effect on turnover intention but no direct influence on job performance. Seniority is a moderator, showing the curvilinear relationship only exhibits for employees with shorter work seniority (≤3 years), and a positive linear relationship between perceived employability and job performance only exists for employees with longer seniority (>3 years). This study emphasizes the value of employability for employers and proposes who is more suitable and what timetable should be followed for employability enhancement in practice. In addition, the study provides an enlightening finding of the inverted U-shaped relationship between perceived employability and turnover intention, applies the COR theory and the prospect theory to explain the non-linear relationship, validates the effect of too much of a good thing (TMGT), and negates the paradox from the perspective of the perceived general employability and career timetable.

Debating the Future of Work: The Perception and Reaction of the Spanish Workforce to Digitization and Automation Technologies

Given the significant changes that are expected in the nature of work as a consequence of rapid technological advances, it is crucial that society finds ways to maximize benefits while recognizing and mitigating related challenges. This article is intended to fill a current research gap in this context by examining how aware and prepared affected workers are for the challenges predicted by research. This information is crucial since expectation and preparation of the workforce will significantly influence society's adaptability to the future. As a result of the article various significant relationships among workers' characteristics and their attitude towards automation could be identified. The interviewed workers' level of fear appears to have very little influence on preparation for automation-driven changes in the future while perceived opportunity significantly impacts this degree of preparation. Characteristics that additionally most influence the degree of preparatory steps taken by respondents are their level of education as well as work complexity and position. These findings should be used to identify potential ways for relevant stakeholders to adequately prepare for and meet the challenges of the impending increase of automation in the workplace.