In the preparation of the celebration of the 10th anniversary of the MA CESS all alumni were invited to participate in an alumni survey. The purpose of the survey was to thoroughly investigate the professional activities of MA CESS alumni and the way they build an alumni community. Another reason for starting the project is that it may play a part in maintaining and enhancing a mutually beneficial relationship between MA CESS and its alumni. All over Europe there are graduates working in the social and social political field who experienced the same education and spirit in the MA CESS course. It’s an important thing to reach out to them, renew and encourage a spirit of enthusiasm and desire for continuing education, by creating instruments of communication and networking opportunities. The first part of the report deals with the construction of the alumni survey, namely the background, the assignment, the survey design, the sampling, the research limitations, the influences of gender and age on professional activities and the way of making contacts, facts and figures about the sectors of activity in which the alumni are engaged, what alumni have to say about the international dimension in their professional activities, their ideas about network building, and finally their critiques and suggestions for the MA CESS study programme. The second part contains a reflection about the alumni community, particularly the role of CESSNET (Network of the Comparative European Social Studies Alumni ) in the strategy to reach out to the alumni. The report ends with conclusions and recommendations.
This dissertation concerns the adaptive ability by which workers meet new expertise needs throughout their careers. We aimed to increase our understanding of this adaptive ability through a series of four studies building upon the concept of flexpertise (Van der Heijden, 1998, 2000). These studies were designed to advance theorizing, specifically in scholarly research on expertise and expert performance (Ericsson et al., 2006) and sustainable careers (Van der Heijden & De Vos, 2015), and to increase our understanding of how flexpertise may be fostered among workers across expertise domains and working contexts.In this introduction chapter, we outline the key theoretical concepts regarding the flexpertise phenomenon that we will use throughout this dissertation, a description of the knowledge gap in the scholarly literature, and our research focus. This is followed by a summary of this PhD project that outlines the overall research objective, the research questions and research methods that we deployed, as well as an overview of the four flexpertise studies conducted (see Table 1.1). The subsequent chapters include the four (submitted) scientific publications on this matter. We conclude by reflecting on the theoretical, methodological and practical value of our research, and on the limitations of our research approach. We finish with recommendations for future research, ethical considerations on the usage of the flexpertise concept in labor market debates, and a personal reflection on this PhD program.Before explaining the key concept of flexpertise and related core concepts, we first outline what we mean by new expertise needs. These needs shaped the background of the four studies conducted.
The central goal of this study is to gain insight into students' study approach, their personal reasons and the relations between them regarding students who continue or withdraw from the educational system within one year. Results of our questionnaire study show that students who continue their educational careers show higher scores on a meaningful integrative study approach when entering Higher Education, than students who withdraw. Our questionnaire on personal reasons for withdraw revealed three scales: (1) perception and experience of educational and organizational aspects, (2) pragmatic and personal circumstances and (3) loss of interest in the future occupations. Personal reasons for continuing also produced three scales: (1) perception and experience of learning environment quality, (2) pragmatic and personal orientation and (3) future occupational identity. Withdrawing students' scores on meaningful integrative study approach are negatively related to perception and experience of educational and organizational aspects, whereas the superficial study approach positively correlates with pragmatic and personal circumstances. With regard to students who continue, high scores on the meaningful integrative study approach relate positively to all three reasons: future occupational identity, perception and experience of learning environment quality and pragmatic and personal orientation.
Despite Dutch Hospitality industry’s significant economic value, employers struggle to attract and retain early career professionals at a time when tourism is forecasted to grow exponentially (Ruël, 2018). Universally, hospitality management graduates are shunning hospitality careers preferring other career paths; stimulating the Dutch Hospitality to find innovative ways of attracting and retaining early career professionals. Following calls from the Human Resource Management (HRM) community (Ehnert, 2009), we attribute this trend to personnel being depicted as rentable resources, driving profit’’ often at personal expense. For example, hotels primarily employ immigrants and students for a minimum wage suppressing salaries of local talent (Kusluvan, et al 2010, O’Relly and Pfeffer, 2010). Similarly, flattening organizational structures have eliminated management positions, placing responsibility on inexperienced shoulders, with vacancies commonly filled by pressured employees accepting unpaid overtime jeopardizing their work life balance (Davidson, et al 2010,). These HRM practices fuel attrition by exposing early career professionals to burnout (Baum et al, 2016, Goh et al, 2015, Deery and Jog, 2009). Collectively this has eroded the industry’s employer brand, now characterized by unsocial working hours, poor compensation, limited career opportunities, low professional standing, high turnover and substance abuse (Mooney et al, 2016, Gehrels and de Looij, 2011). In contrast, Sustainable HRM “enables an organizational goal achievement while simultaneously reproducing the human resource base over a long-lasting calendar time (Ehnert, 2009, p. 74).” Hence, to overcome this barrier we suggest embracing the ROC framework (Prins et al, 2014), which (R)espects internal stakeholders, embraces an (O)pen HRM approach while ensuring (C)ontinuity of economic and societal sustainability which could overcome this barrier. Accordingly, we will employ field research, narrative discourse, survey analysis and quarterly workshops with industry partners, employees, union representatives, hotel school students to develop sustainable HRM practices attracting and retaining career professionals to pursue Dutch hospitality careers.
Gender barriers are a complex problem, as they are created and maintained by multiple dimensions of our societal system; governments, the corporate world, and by society itself. Within the hospitality industry, one of the most people-oriented sectors there is, gender barriers are especially a problem. Although there is equality amongst the entire Dutch hospitality sector in general (48.2% women, (CBS, 2022)), only 17% of top-management positions within the 5 largest hotel-chains in the country are occupied by women (Hampshire Hotel Group, 2022; Accor Group, 2022; van der Valk International, 2022; NH Hotels, 2022; NIBC, 2022). With the hospitality industry revolving around people and experiences, it is of utmost importance that it represents the actual world-population and society. In order to address the current challenges the industry is facing, it is time to face the elephant in the room; why don’t women get included in top and senior management within the hospitality industry as much as men do? This trajectory aims to identify where gender barriers occur within the Dutch hospitality industry and accordingly develop, and test interventions (enablers) together with two of the largest hotel-chains in the Netherlands, in order to improve women career advancement. The first phases of the trajectory will focus on the entire Dutch hotel sector, while the intervention phase will only be executed in collaboration with NH Hotels and IHG. The final phase of the trajectory will explore the implications of the findings from the industry to hospitality management education. By enabling more women to advance their hospitality careers, this will have a large impact on the industry’s sustainability and resilience, and again positively impact wider society.
The PANEURAMA project aims to address the mismatches between the output of HEI/VETs and the needs of the industry in the fields of animation, computer games and VFX. It consists of a network of HEIs and VETs in Europe as well as field-relevant industry partners, and is supported by a range of strong associated partners. The hope is to better prepare students and graduates for the emerging needs of their prospective careers, and in doing so building resilience into the European animation, gaming, and media arts sectors.Societal IssueStudents that are insufficiently prepared for their working fields limit the creativity of the sector, are stressed in their workplaces, and create economic problems.Benefit to societyHealthier cultural and creative sectors are a sign of a strong society, with benefits for mental health, cultural harmony, and positive economic impacts.
