Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to understand the career development and employability needs of undergraduate information technology (IT) students at an Australian university, and their relation to students' career interest. While many factors and stakeholders contribute to student career development, this study focused specifically on the student experience. Social cognitive career theory (SCCT) is used as an approach to understand the students' needs of career development and employability. Design/methodology/approach: An online survey was completed by 126 IT students to record information about students' career development and employability background and needs. Findings: The results demonstrate that SCCT helps understand the factors that impact on IT students' career development, with their outcome expectations and self-efficacy informed by prior studies in IT and their need for access to 'IT professionals' to contribute towards their career interest. In addition, IT students rely on academic achievement and experiential learning, rather than career resources, to guide their career development and employability., Research limitations/implications: The data collected in this study are limited to one discipline (IT) at one university, which necessarily limits the generalisability of the specific results. Practical implications: Career development is a complex, life-stage-dependant and discipline-specific process that varies for every decision maker. This research makes an important contribution in presenting the IT student experience and demonstrates how an appropriate career development model can help understand students' needs. This outcome will help educators better support IT students to build the career interest. Originality/value: This study explored the often-overlooked student experience of career development, providing valuable insight into IT students' needs.

Luxembourg exhibits strong transnational traits within its skills regime, defying any neat fit with existing educational typologies. It is characterised by its high-skill economy, cross-cultural characteristics, and central location within the European Union. As such, Luxembourg has developed a hybrid strategy of responding to labour market challenges, and by that, to skills development. Our institutionalist analysis finds that Luxembourg is involved in transnational skills development in three complementary ways: (a) employers in Luxembourg extensively recruit skilled workers at the European and global levels, but also (b) heavily rely on the distinct skills sets of cross-border commuters from the neighbouring regions of Belgium, France, and Germany (the Greater Region). Furthermore, (c) Luxembourg combines institutional elements of these neighbouring countries - representing distinct models of capitalism and welfare - within its own education system. In combining the specific strengths of different national skills regimes, institutional bricolage represents a core feature of Luxembourg's highly stratified system of skill formation. Our analytical framework refers to two major comparative political economy perspectives, namely the welfare state and varieties of capitalism approaches, to analyse how Luxembourg has responded to deindustrialisation by creating a domestic transnational labour market.

The creative industries workforce requires employees that use ICT applications to solve the knowledge related tasks at work. The aim of this research is twofold: (1) to see if previously cited twenty-first century digital skills are suited to the creative industries workforce and (2) to investigate the extent to which skill development get attention in current organizational practices. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 24 managers and senior executives of creative organizations based in the Netherlands. As a guideline for the interviews, a conceptual twenty-first century digital skills framework was used. This framework presented the following seven core skills supported by the use of ICT: technical, information management, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, and problem solving. The following five contextual skills that play a role when using ICT were also presented: ethical awareness, cultural awareness, flexibility, self-direction, and lifelong learning. The results support the importance of twenty-first century digital skills, however, there seems to be insufficient attention to the levels of these skills; they play a minor role during the selection and evaluation procedures. Often it is assumed that existing digital skills are sufficient. Managers are encouraged to improve on developing requirements necessary for future employees as well as measurements to ensure current employees skill levels. The developed framework might be used as a management tool for indicating skills that need to be assessed among professionals working in the creative industries.

Internationalisation and employability development are important themes for UK higher education (HE) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA). One aspect of many UK HE institutions' internationalisation strategies has been to increase the number and range of UK programmes delivered "offshore" as transnational education (TNE)--through overseas partner institutions, international branch campuses or distance learning. This research project aims to understand the extent to which curricula, and planned study-related experiences for students on TNE programmes of UK universities, are supporting the development of employability. The following is appended: Methodologies. A bibliography is also included. [The interviews with TNE alumni in this report were carried out as part of a project being undertaken by the Career Development Organization (CRAC) for the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS), to investigate the wider benefits of TNE to the UK.]

This paper looks at the effect of technological and organisational changes on the probability for workers in the second part of their careers of transmitting their knowledge to other colleagues in their employing firm. We use matched employer-employee data to link changes occurred at the firm level with knowledge transmission behaviours measured at the individual-level. To control for selection bias based on differences in observable characteristics between workers employed in changing work environments and those employed in non-changing ones, we apply propensity score matching techniques. We find that ICT and management changes reduce significantly the probability for workers over 45 of transmitting their knowledge to their colleagues. Then, we analyse the role of training in mitigating this negative impact. To address issues of self-selection into training, we use propensity score matching methods and a proxy for unobservable productivity. We show that participation in a training program regarding ICT tools may help older workers restore their role of knowledge transmitters.

In-work training is generally regarded as beneficial for employees and in Britain it continues to offer significant gains in earnings. However, little previous research has tested whether training also leads to higher levels of job satisfaction or 'happiness'. Employers need to retain trained employees in order to make training cost-effective, but this may clash with employees' career aims if they view external job mobility as a better strategy, for instance because of reduced internal promotion opportunities. Using panel survey data for the 1990s and the 2000s, and considering four different aspects of job satisfaction, this research finds that job mobility, usually regarded as inimical to in-firm training provision, is associated consistently with gains in job satisfaction, while receipt of training has effects on satisfaction that are mostly close to zero. Further, job satisfaction is high in circumstances where financial returns to training are low, and vice versa. Finally, we find that training inhibits mobility, probably a good outcome for employers but not necessarily for employees.

This study investigates the impact of non-formal training on job tasks of workers. The analysis is based on panel data from Germany covering detailed information on tasks performed at work at the level of individual workers. The results indicate that after training workers are more engaged in non-routine interactive tasks than they were before training. Analyses by topic of training reveal considerable heterogeneity in the impact of training on job tasks. In particular, it is 'communication and soft skills' training which is associated with more non-routine interactive tasks.

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt labor markets. While AI and automation can augment the productivity of some workers, they can replace the work done by others and will likely transform almost all occupations at least to some degree. Rising automation is happening in a period of growing economic inequality, raising fears of mass technological unemployment and a renewed call for policy efforts to address the consequences of technological change. In this paper we discuss the barriers that inhibit scientists from measuring the effects of AI and automation on the future of work. These barriers include the lack of high-quality data about the nature of work (e.g., the dynamic requirements of occupations), lack of empirically informed models of key microlevel processes (e.g., skill substitution and human–machine complementarity), and insufficient understanding of how cognitive technologies interact with broader economic dynamics and institutional mechanisms (e.g., urban migration and international trade policy). Overcoming these barriers requires improvements in the longitudinal and spatial resolution of data, as well as refinements to data on workplace skills. These improvements will enable multidisciplinary research to quantitatively monitor and predict the complex evolution of work in tandem with technological progress. Finally, given the fundamental uncertainty in predicting technological change, we recommend developing a decision framework that focuses on resilience to unexpected scenarios in addition to general equilibrium behavior.

Vocational education and training (VET) teachers and trainers have a key role in ensuring that workers in business and industry are upskilled and up-to-date in a rapidly changing industrial, economic and technological environment. It follows that the VET practitioners should themselves keep up to date, not only with industry developments but also with the pedagogical skills needed to embrace technology and adapt to new sites for learning. However, in Australia and other Western nations, continuing professional development for VET practitioners has been spasmodic and not always well supported, in contrast to the ways it has been established and accepted in other professions. This paper examines the professional development approaches of some of those other professions and identifies the key features that might be adopted in any genuine attempt to develop a more purposeful and systematic provision of ongoing learning for teachers and trainers in VET. The paper concludes with a number of recommendations aimed at Australian VET practitioners in particular, but which might be applicable to VET in any developed country.