Eddy S.W. Ng

The next Generation at Work--Business Students' Views, Values and Job Search Strategy: Implications for Universities and Employers.

Purpose – The purpose of the paper is to explore the views, career expectations, and job search behaviours among a sample of business students. It also aims to examine the role of campus career services in shaping students careers and how cooperative education influences their expectations and aspirations.Design/methodology/approach – A field survey involving 20,771 students across Canada was conducted by a strategic consulting firm. This research is a part of a broader research project commissioned by a consortium of large Canadian companies to understand better the views of university students on jobs, organisations, careers and perceptions of their organisation.Findings – The study found that cooperative students appear to have more realistic expectations, have better self‐insights into their own abilities and desires, and report higher self‐confidence. They also placed greater emphases on the “people” and “work” dimensions of a firm. Students with higher abilities also reported similar characteristic...

Career choice in management: findings from US MBA students

Purpose – This research aims to explore the role of values, family, and non‐family influences on career choice in management among a sample of US MBA students.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected using self‐reported questionnaires from 109 students in a mid‐sized university located on the west coast of the USA. The respondents were in the first semester of their MBA program. Males and females were almost equally represented in the sample.Findings – This study did not find people (family and non‐family) to be a predictor of career decisions. Instead, these decisions reflect the independent‐self among US students in the career choice and exploration process. In particular, the students placed a strong emphasis on self‐development (i.e. education). Most of the respondents aspired to careers, and not jobs or callings, reflecting a desire for career benefits and becoming wealthy. Men and women, with few exceptions, appear to have similar patterns in the factors affecting their career choice. Many ...

Why Organizations Choose to Manage Diversity? Toward a Leadership-Based Theoretical Framework

Research suggests that equal employment opportunity (EEO) legislation and affirmative action programs (AAPs) have been only partially successful in promoting women and minorities in the workplace. Firms are voluntarily pursuing diversity management, but only when business objectives coincide with the needs of women and minorities. Thus, the question of what factors are needed to help women and minorities advance in the workplace merits further investigation. Although top executive support is believed to be crucial to managing diversity, few studies have linked CEO commitment to diversity outcomes. This article proposes a theoretical framework for linking CEO commitment to diversity practices. Specifically, CEO commitment is expected to mediate the relationships between the leaders demographic characteristics and personal factors—consisting of values, cognition, and leadership styles—and a firms strategic orientation toward managing diversity. This article further argues that without CEO commitment, institutional and environmental factors (e.g., legislation) are limited in promoting workplace diversity. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

What women and ethnic minorities want. Work values and labor market confidence: a self-determination perspective

Drawing on self-determination theory and the model-minority hypothesis, this study explored potential differences in the work values and labor market perceptions of ethnic minorities and women relative to the majority group. Results, based on a sample of senior-level university students across Canada, revealed notable differences in the work values and levels of labor market confidence for these groups. Ethnic minorities reported higher intrinsic, extrinsic, social, and altruistic work values than Whites. Moreover, women reported lower intrinsic values, but higher extrinsic, social, and altruistic work values relative to men. With respect to perceptions of labor market confidence, both ethnic minorities and women expressed lower confidence in their labor market prospects than majority group respondents. Results from this study are consistent with self-determination theory and the model-minority hypothesis, and reinforce the need for organizations to more actively align their job design and recruitment efforts with the work values of minority workers. Implications for future research and the recruitment of minority workers are discussed.

Reaching new heights

Purpose – The purpose of this report is to highlight findings from research presented at the 2006 Administrative Sciences Association of Canada conference in Banff, Alberta.Design/methodology – Ten papers, of interest to Equal Opportunities International readers, were selected from the proceedings and presentations made at the conference for this report. The papers themselves vary in terms of research design and methodology. There was a mix of conceptual/review papers and empirical studies, using both quantitative and qualitative methods.Findings – Findings from the empirical studies showed that women and minorities continue to face barriers in employment and the workplace. Women continue to experience gender role stereotypes detrimental to their careers, while minorities face both discrimination and harassment at work.Originality/value – Each of the papers selected demonstrated new insights, both conceptually and empirically, and contributes to the literature on diversity.

Virtues, work satisfactions and psychological wellbeing among nurses

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to examine the relationship between virtues and indicators of work satisfaction and engagement, perceptions of hospital functioning and quality of nursing care, and psychological wellbeing of nursing staff.Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from 79 staff nurses using anonymously completed questionnaires. A virtue is any psychological process that enables a person to benefit himself or herself and others. Three virtues were considered: gratitude, optimism, and proactive behaviors. This emphasis was consistent with emerging trends in both psychology and organizational studies, termed positive psychology or positive organizational scholarship respectively, to focus on strengths and excellence rather than weakness and pathology.Findings – Hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for both personal demographic and work situation characteristics, indicated that virtues accounted for significant increments in explained variance on most outcome measures...