The main purpose of this paper is to explore how the probability of taking continuing education programs towards no degree for job or career purposes after graduation will be affected by overeducation, which can be defined as having actual education levels that exceed requirements for the job. Using the data from the National Graduates Survey – Class of 2005-Public User Microdata File (PUMF) (Statistics Canada 2007), a probit model was estimated to test the hypothesis that graduates who are already overeducated would take fewer continuing education programs for job or career purposes. Possible reasons for the negative relationship between overeducation and the likelihood of taking continuing education programs after graduation were examined based on human capital theory.

Magister Educationis (Adult Learning and Global Change) - MEd(AL) / The study investigates a Western Cape Technical Vocational and Education and Training (TVET) college internship programmes and how the curriculum prepare students for the workplace. The research utilizes and applies the Human Capital Theory (HCT) to student employability and college internships to generate new theoretical insights into the possibilities and limitations of an internship in preparing college students for the workplace. The study is motivated by observations of students in the workplaces who had completed the National Certificate Vocational (NCV) course with regard to hospitality and office administration who were participating in its associated internships. The research question underlines the relationship between the NCV qualification, HCT and internships.

The purpose of this research was to study the influence of strong and weak social network ties on the phenomenon of bullying by examining the social ties leading to, or preventing bullying. Social ties were examined in relation to bullying, to establish the risk and protective factors associated with the structures of existing social networks. The study answered the research question: How does the strength of social ties relate to the phenomenon of bullying experienced by Grade 4 learners in a school environment? The secondary research questions addressed by the study were: What types of social ties are prevalent in bullies' and victims' networks? How do social ties act as protective factors when regarding bullying for the Grade 4 victims and bullies? How do social ties act as risk factors when regarding bullying for the Grade 4 victims and bullies? Social capital theory formed the basis of the theoretical framework. This study made use of an interpretivist paradigm, and employed a qualitative approach. This study was conducted using an exploratory, embedded case study design. One-on-one, semi-structured interviews, observations and reflexive journal were used to gather data. The data was analysed using thematic content analysis. Bullies were found to have more weak network ties than victims. Weak ties are largely necessary for the exchange of resources across networks, leading to greater diversity and variety of information, thus increasing access to social capital. Future research recommendations included a mixed-methods study, as well as an examination of the longevity of bullying and social network status. Recommendations included interventions aimed at reducing the incidences of bullying through addressing unrealised assets within social networks, and the wider social context, alongside teacher training. / Dissertation (MEd)--University of Pretoria, 2016. / Educational Psychology / MEd / Unrestricted

<p>Recent studies claims that Sweden has the lowest returns on education compared to other OECD countries. Other research made in the subject tend to focus on the gains from education, but forget to calculate the costs, both direct cost such as material, accommodation and food, but also opportunity costs from not working instead of investing in education.</p><p>The purpose of this thesis is to study if an investment in an education is an effective way of monetary utility maximizing in Sweden, in other words income. This thesis will investigate whether education will be a profitable investment, and if so how many years of employment it will take an individual to gain from that investment.</p><p>The Human Capital theory is the theoretical framework of this thesis and the result is in Swedish Crowns. This research quantifies that an education is an effective way to income maximizing and men’s payback time in monetary terms are more likely to be shorter than female’s.</p>

The purpose of this study is to explore Black women’s experience of becoming and being entrepreneurs and accumulating wealth. Through interview questions that examine social capital, this study allows eight Black women to recall their ever-changing and evolving experience of entrepreneurship and economic mobility. This qualitative study goes beyond empirical data of the wealth gap and the numerical trends of Black women entrepreneurs. The study allowed for Black women to share their experience with wealth accumulation and the social factors, such as networks and relationships that attributed to starting and sustaining a business. Findings and implications will be discussed.

Master of Science / Department of Communications and Agricultural Education / Shannon G. Washburn / STEM fields represent between 5% and 20% of all employed in the United States (United States Department of Labor – Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2015). Many employers of job positions in the STEM field have indicated an ongoing challenge of demand for such employees exceeding supply (Hira, 2010). Literature suggests a skills gap exists in some career fields and labor markets (Sentz, 2013). A topic that falls in many STEM fields in water resources. In Kansas, both supply and demand of water resources vary greatly across the state. A growing trend statewide, however, is a need to focus efforts on preserving the quality and quantity of Kansas’ water supply. Anecdotal evidence suggests the focus on water resources increases the demand for employees prepared for careers in related STEM fields (S. Metzger, personal communication, May 3, 2016). Drawing on both the Human Capital Theory and the Theory of Work Adjustment, descriptive survey research and qualitative interviews based in symbolic interactionism were used to gather data from employers of water-related job positions. The data indicated that a variety of employability and technical skills describe both employers’ ability requirements and employees’ ability sets. The results of the study suggest that, while employers have not recently experienced much challenge filling job vacancies, demand for employees could increase in the near future. Additionally, employers utilize a variety of professional development resources, and would utilize others if available. While levels of correspondence range among ability requirements and ability sets depending on the job position, efforts in education and recruitment could help address the supply of candidates for these positions.

Purpose - Healthcare (HC) is a globally expensive investment, suffering from service quality, due to medical errors caused by physicians’ poor decisions making (DM). Current published literature: (1) encourages clinical DM research to reduce diagnostic errors and (2) stresses on the dearth of means for practitioners’ knowledge shared DM; this research focuses on knowledge sharing for improving medical DM quality through physicians’ social capital (SC) in a virtual community of practice (VCoP). Physicians join a virtual community (VC) to share clinical practice knowledge to aid medical DM. This study aims to assess the effect of physicians’ SC on medical DM and assess the mediating role of knowledge sharing quality, between physicians’ SC and medical DM quality since research lacks to investigate the impact of knowledge management (KM) tools in a HC context. VCoP is a KM tool and medical DM quality is a HC topic of this study. Design/methodology/approach – This positivist, quantitative research utilizes non-experimental survey to empirically assess its conceptual framework. After attaining an ethical approval, from Brunel Business School Research Ethics Committee, online survey was pre-tested and pilot tested for clarity and validity. 10 non-physician Ph.D. academics voluntarily participated during the survey’s pre-test phase. The survey was amendment for its pilot study phase; conducted in “plastic surgery yahoo group” VC. 31 physician VC members voluntarily participated. Again, the survey was amended and distributed for main data collection from 204 voluntary SurveyMonkey’s VC’s physician members. Findings – Data was analysed using SPSS 20 and LISREL 8.80 by means of confirmatory factor analysis and Structural Equation Modeling. Empirical findings supported this study’s four main hypotheses as well as supported this study’s initially proposed conceptual framework. Originality/value – This study customized the Honeycomb framework to establish a definition of professional physicians; HC VCs followed by identifying 51 VCs from social networking platforms like LinkedIn, Facebook, etc. This study also fulfilled its aim and hence proposed a structurally fit conceptual framework.

Magister Artium - MA / Cape Town has arguably the most diversified urban agriculture sector across the country. Nevertheless, the desired gains of urban agriculture are barely realized. The organization of urban agriculture, specifically the nature in which urban farmers are organized in relation to supporting actors, is identified as a significant factor in influencing the success of the activity. Surprisingly, the literature on the organization of urban farmers and supporting actors in Cape Town is scanty. It is on this basis that this study aimed to investigate the organization of urban farmers and their relationship with supporting actors in Mitchells Plain. Informed by the social capital theory, a case-study approach was employed where both the qualitative and quantitative methods of data collection and analysis were utilized to meet the study objectives. A random sampling technique was used in the selection of the 60 respondents for a questionnaire survey. Purposive sampling was employed to select the key informant respondents which included knowledgeable urban farmers, Non-Governmental Organization officials, a Research official and a Provincial Department of Agriculture official. Secondary data collection was achieved through a systematic review of scholarly literature and policy documents. The statistical software IBM SPSS 25 was employed to process and analyze quantitative data through descriptive and inferential techniques. For qualitative data, thematic analysis was conducted to process the transcribed interviews whilst a hermeneutic approach was used to analyze secondary data. The study findings show that urban farmers are organized into loose and largely fragmented informal networks within Mitchells Plain. Although these forms of networks in their current state are beneficial to household farmers, community farmers require more formal networks to operate optimally and receive resources beyond non-governmental organization assistance. Moreover, the study discovered a lack of meaningful coordination of activities between the supporting actors involved in urban farming initiatives which militate against the success of urban agriculture activities in the community. Consequently, the study recommends that supporting actors need to develop functional partnerships to enhance the impact of urban agriculture activities. Also, community farmers are encouraged to affiliate with formal networks while household farmers simply need to enhance informal networking amongst themselves to improve activity coordination and resource access from supporting actors.

The dominant human capital theory-based perspective that education is crucial for economic success and employment has affected national and regional policies in education and employment worldwide. The present thesis critically assesses the target for increased number of tertiary education graduates in the current EU agenda for growth and employment (Europe 2020 Strategy). This target presumes that employment is positively related with tertiary education qualifications, and that there is an increasing demand for highly educated workers in the EU labour markets. Based on Eurostat data, our findings indicate that (i) more public spending on tertiary education does not seem to be associated with higher employment rates of graduates in the EU countries; (ii) in more than half of the EU28 member states, unemployment rates are not related with increased number of graduates; (iii) in most of the remaining EU countries, the increase in graduates is associated with higher graduates’ unemployment rates; (iv) increased number of tertiary education graduates relates with higher overqualification rates in the majority of the EU countries. These results accord with previous studies which find that investment in education alone is inadequate to explain complex socio-economic phenomena, such as graduates’ employment/unemployment. Moreover, they further support previous research works, which question the proclaimed increased need for highly educated workers in the EU labour markets. This, in turn, suggests that common European policies which target at increasing horizontally the number of graduates may further deteriorate the existing problem of overqualification in the EU. Without downplaying the importance of education and skills in employment, the current thesis contemplates that the disproportionate emphasis on the role of tertiary education in employment may falsely cultivate the perception that education per se can be the main solution for unemployment. Thus, it is likely to conceal the wider socio-economic reasons that influence a person’s ability to find, secure and advance in his/her job. Last, but not least, this perspective narrows down the role of tertiary education confining it to economic and employment purposes.

The inability of business owners to hire skilled employees affects the profitability of a small business. Small business owners may attain profitability by understanding the value of military veterans and cultivating strategies for the hiring and recruitment process. The purpose of this qualitative multiple case study was to explore strategies that business owners in Fayetteville, North Carolina used to recruit military veterans as a means to acquire skilled employees to maximize productivity, profitability, and sustainability. The conceptual framework of this study included human capital theory and recruitment theory. The purposive sample consisted of 6 participants who were small business owners. Data from interviews and supporting documents were processed and analyzed using data source triangulation to identify 3 emergent themes. Findings indicated that, for these 6 Fayetteville small business owners, job description and transition workshops, resume review and communication, and accommodations and benefits were key attributes related to the successful recruitment of military veterans as skilled employees. Specifically, streamlined hiring processes, relationship building, and access to resources were predictive of a successful hire. Knowledge barriers regarding hiring processes prevented efficient communication between small business owners and military veterans, but business owners cultivated strategies to help with hiring military veterans. The implications for positive social change include the potential for business owners to capitalize on the skills that military veterans bring to the civilian workforce, which in turn may improve the economy.