Considering that Mpumalanga province has a large petrochemical plant owned by a multinational company that runs and owns mines, the province should abound with employment opportunities for Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) college graduates, especially those from the local Gert Sibande TVET College. However, students with TVET college qualifications struggle to attract employment. Therefore, this study explored the question, “What can TVET providers in Mpumalanga do to enhance students’ employability?” The research was conducted in a selected TVET college in the province. The study employed a qualitative approach and an interpretive paradigm. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews, focus groups and document analysis. The identities of all respondents were protected. Upon analysis of the results, several measures that the TVET college, stakeholders and employers could employ, emerged. There was a lack of proper skills for graduates, qualifications without relevance and employers hardly acknowledging the TVET college qualifications. Some of the recommendations made include collaboration, relationship building between stakeholders and revision of the National Certificate (Vocational) [NC-(V)] curriculum. Topics for future research are also suggested. / Educational Management and Leadership / M. Ed. (Education Management)

The thesis deals with employing visually impaired people and support for their employability in the labour market. The purpose of the work is to explain the issues connected with the employment, its possibilities and ways of support in this area aimed at visually impaired people. The empirical part is based on the assessment of conditions of participation of visually impaired people in retraining courses organised by Dědina Residential Physiotherapy and Retraining Centre for Visually Impaired People. Its verification was performed using the following methods: analysis of the specialist literature, interviews, analysis of the interviews, observation and interviews with the specialist staff. The research showed that retraining courses organised by Dědina Residential Physiotherapy and Retraining Centre for Visually Impaired People are an important means of support for employment of visually impaired people from all over the country. The established facts show that retraining of any specialisation is necessary in order to enable the target group to find a suitable job. The aim of this work was to establish the objective and subjective benefits for the individual participants of a retraining course for Blind and Visually Impaired Masseurs and to point out that free labour market is not sufficiently...

Depuis le Conseil européen de Lisbonne en 2000, l’Union européenne s’active à devenir une société de la connaissance leader dans l’hypercompétition mondiale. Elle s’attache à enrichir et structurer ses ressources de diversité et de créativité en restructurant sa méthode d’intégration suivant une approche plus ascendante. Elle pousse aussi au décloisonnement de tous les secteurs socio-économiques afin d’en libérer les potentiels d’innovation. Une société en réseau se tisse ainsi grâce au développement des acteurs locaux et d’une connivence public-privé. Toutefois, ces mutations juridiques exigent l’adhésion active des citoyens. Dès lors, à côté des politiques d’éducation, de recherche et d’innovation, l’Union favorise les synergies avec les domaines de l’emploi, de la jeunesse et de la culture. Tous ces changements entraînent une quête effrénée de cohérence globale nécessaire à la compétitivité et à la durabilité du modèle européen de société de la connaissance. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, le droit européen va puiser sa cohérence dans l’articulation des concepts d’Etat social actif, de méritocratie et de démocratisation. / Since the European Council of Lisbon in 2000, the European Union tends to become a knowledge society leader in the world competition. It enriches and structures its ressources of diversity and creativity by generating a renewal of its integration method around a bottom-up approach. It stimulates too a decompartmentalization of all the socio-economic sectors to free all the innovation potentials. So, a network society appears thanks to the development of regional actors and a public-private connivance. But, the legal evolutions need to get the adhesion of the citizens. That’s why, in addition to the policies of education, research and innovation, the European Union fosters synergies with the domains of employment, youth and culture. All these transitions trigger a search of global coherence to guarantee the competitiveness and the sustainability of the European model of knowledge society. To reach these goals, the European law finds its coherence by articulating the notions of active welfare State, meritocracy and democratization.

La gestion prévisionnelle des emplois et des compétences est une locution appartenant au vocabulaire gestionnaire ce qui lui confère une dimension organisationnelle indéniable et originelle. En droit la notion bénéficie depuis son apparition dans le Code du travail d'une indéniable publicité bien qu'elle préexistait à cette juridification. Elle garde malgré cela une certaine dose de mystère qui tient en partie aux relations qu'elle a longtemps entretenu avec les licenciements pour motif économique, à la pluralité des thématiques qui la composent ainsi qu'aux évolutions constantes de son régime juridique. Depuis qu'elle est devenue un objet du droit social, elle a bénéficié de multiples enrichissements légaux et jurisprudentiels. Partant, la présente étude, qui commandait une approche d'ensemble de la notion, tend à la détermination des contours de la gestion prévisionnelle des emplois et des compétences du point de vue du droit social. / He management of jobs and skills is a phrase belonging to the manager vocabulary which gives it a distinct and original organizational dimension. By law the concept has since appeared in the Labour Code of undeniable advertising although it existed before this juridification. She keeps nevertheless a certain dose of mystery partly due to the relationship it has long maintained with redundancies, with the plurality of themes that compose it and the constant changes in its legal system. Since it became an object of social law, she received multiple legal and jurisprudential enrichment. Accordingly, this study which commanded an overall approach to the concept, tends to determine the contours of the management of jobs and skills of the labor law perspective.

Employable humanists. A qualitative study on humanist students' views on employability. The crisis of the humanities is a controversial debate in the media and within academic settings. Because of lack of request for humanists in the labor market, the question of humanistic skills and employability is becoming increasingly important. The concept of employability importance not only echoes within the economic discussions, but also on everyday agenda in the academic world and takes a large part in the communication between the university and the students. It is therefore important to get answers to the question whether there is conformity in the interpretation of this concept between the university and the students. The aim of this desk study is to examine how the concept of employability has its significance in the academic communication and how the responsibility for employability is portrayed. This is done by studying how the concept of employability is formed and how the responsibilities outlined in texts from Career Center at the University of Umeå, and by comparing study results with the students' perceptions of the concept of employability and responsibility. The study has a qualitative disposition and consists of two main methods: qualitative interviews with focus groups to explore students' views, and critical linguistic analysis of texts with a focus on metaphor analysis and syntax analysis which are also supplemented by the multimodal text analysis. Results of this study indicate that the concept of employability takes a central part of the university’s communication. There are many common starting points in the interpretation of the concept and the responsibility between the university and students. Both the Career Center at Umeå University and students believe that actual knowledge, skills, experience as well as network forms the meaning of the concept of employability, and has a big importance in the student’s position on the job market. However, because the students look at the use of the concept of employability in the texts as acceptance to the social ideological perception of the individual as objects, there is some criticism of the use of the term employability in the university’s communications.

Zum gesellschaftlich relevanten Thema des Arbeitsmarktes findet sich kaum arbeitspsychologische Empirie. Erste Hinweise auf ein die Gesundheit Erwerbstätiger gefährdendes Potenzial einer schlechten Arbeitsmarktlage geben Studien aus den Bereichen der Freiwilligkeit in der Erwerbsarbeit und der Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit. Alle diese Studien sind jedoch Befragungen mit dem methodenimmanenten Interpretationsproblem der gemeinsamen Methodenvarianz. Unter Ausschluss dieses Methodenproblems wird zunächst ein Beitrag zur Klärung der Bedeutung der Arbeitsmarktsituation für die psychische Gesundheit Erwerbstätiger geleistet. In einem zweiten Schritt werden empirisch bewährte Merkmale der Arbeitssituation in die Analysen einbezogen. Den theoretischen Rahmen der Arbeit bilden das Belastungs-Beanspruchungs-Konzept (BBK) und ein spezifiziertes Zwei-Ebenen-Modell. Sekundäranalytisch werden zweier branchenspezifische Gelegenheitsstichproben (N1 = 183; N2 = 314) und die repräsentative BIBB/IAB-Strukturerhebung von 1998/1999 (N3 = 34.343) ausgewertet. Es liegt ein ex-post-facto-Design vor. Das Merkmal der Arbeitsmarktsituation wird als Risiko langzeitarbeitslos zu werden operationalisiert und dokumentenanalytisch generiert. Diese Operationalisierung erweist sich als valide. Die anderen Merkmale werden mittels schriftlicher Befragungen erhoben. Die Datenauswertung erfolgt mit Methoden des ALM. Die globalen Zusammenhänge zwischen der Arbeitsmarktsituation und der psychischen Gesundheit Erwerbstätiger sind marginal. Bei Betrachtung der mit Hilfe des BBK gebildeten Subgruppen zeigen sich jedoch hypothesenkonform veränderte Zusammenhänge. Dieses Ergebnismuster kann im Sinne des sozialepidemiologischen Risikofaktorenmodells als Beleg für das Belastungspotenzial einer schlechten Arbeitsmarktsituation angesehen werden. Zentral für die Vorhersage der psychischen Gesundheit Erwerbstätiger sind jedoch die Merkmale der Arbeitssituation: Auch in Zeiten mit einer problematischen Arbeitsmarktsituation reicht es nicht aus, einfach nur Arbeit zu haben. Die konkrete Arbeitssituation bleibt zentral. / Within the field of occupational psychology there is very little empirical research on the socially highly relevant topic of the labor market. Studies on voluntariness within gainful occupation and on job insecurity have provided initial evidence that a poor labor market situation poses a potential risk to employees’ health. However, all of these studies can be criticized for having the method-immanent interpretation problem of shared method variance. Excluding this methodological problem, the present study, first, contributes to clarifying the role of the labor market situation for employees’ mental health. In a second step, empirically established characteristics of the personal job situation are included in the analyses. The theoretical framework for this research is the stress-strain concept (SSC) and a more specific two-level model. Secondary analyses are conducted with two sectoral convenience samples (N1 = 183; N2 = 314) and the representative BIBB/IAB data set of 1998/1999 (N3 = 34.343). An ex-post-facto design is used. The characteristic of the labor market situation was operationalized as the risk for long-term unemployment, which was generated through document analyses. This operationalization proves to be valid. Other characteristics were assessed with questionnaires. Data analyses were conducted with methods of the GLM. The overall relations between the labor market situation and mental health are marginal. However, when studying subgroups that were formed utilizing the SSC the observed relations vary as hypothesized. These findings can be interpreted within the social-epidemiological risk-factor model as a demonstration of the stress potential of poor labor market conditions. Nevertheless, the central predictors of employees’ mental health are characteristics of the personal job situation: Even in times of a problematic labor market situation just being employed it is not sufficient to ensure good mental health. The person’s specific job situation remains central.

In the shift to a globalised creative economy where innovation and creativity are increasingly prized, many studies have documented direct and indirect social and economic benefits of the arts. In addition, arts workers have been argued to possess capabilities which are of great benefit both within and outside the arts, including (in addition to creativity) problem solving abilities, emotional intelligence, and team working skills (ARC Centre of Excellence for Creative Industries and Innovation, 2007). However, the labour force characteristics of professional artists in Australia and elsewhere belie their importance. The average earnings of workers in the arts sector are consistently less than other workers with similar educational backgrounds, and their rates of unemployment and underemployment are much higher (Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2005; Caves, 2000; Throsby & Hollister, 2003). Graduating students in the arts appear to experience similar employment challenges and exhibit similar patterns of work to artists in general. Many eventually obtain work unrelated to the arts or go back to university to complete further tertiary study in fields unrelated to arts (Graduate Careers Council of Australia, 2005a). Recent developments in career development theory have involved discussion of the rise of boundaryless careers amongst knowledge workers. Boundaryless careers are characterised by non-linear career progression occurring outside the bounds of a single organisation or field (Arthur & Rousseau, 1996a, 1996b). The protean career is an extreme form of the boundaryless career, where the careerist also possesses strong internal career motivations and criteria for success (Baruch, 2004; Hall, 2004; Hall & Mirvis, 1996). It involves a psychological contract with one's self rather than an organisation or organisations. The boundaryless and protean career literature suggests competencies and dispositions for career self-management and career success, but to date there has been minimal empirical work investigating the predictive value of these competencies and dispositions to career success in the boundaryless or protean career. This program of research employed competencies and dispositions from boundaryless and protean career theory to predict career success in professional artists and tertiary arts graduates. These competencies and dispositions were placed into context using individual and contextual career development influences suggested by the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a). Four substantive studies were conducted, using online surveys with professional artists and tertiary arts students / graduates, which were preceded by a pilot study for measure development. A largely quantitative approach to the program of research was preferred, in the interests of generalisability of findings. However, at the time of data collection, there were no quantitative measures available which addressed the constructs of interest. Brief scales of Career Management Competence based on the Australian Blueprint for Career Development (Haines, Scott, & Lincoln, 2003), Protean Career Success Orientation based on the underlying dispositions for career success suggested by protean career theory, and Career Development Influences based on the Systems Theory Framework of career development (McMahon & Patton, 1995; Patton & McMahon, 1999, 2006a) were constructed and validated via a process of pilot testing and exploratory factor analyses. This process was followed by confirmatory factor analyses with data collected from two samples: 310 professional artists, and 218 graduating arts students who participated at time 1 (i.e., at the point of undergraduate course completion in October, 2005). Confirmatory factor analyses via Structural Equation Modelling conducted in Study 1 revealed that the scales would benefit from some respecification, and so modifications were made to the measures to enhance their validity and reliability. The three scales modified and validated in Study 1 were then used in Studies 3 and 4 as potential predictors of career success for the two groups of artists under investigation, along with relevant sociodemographic variables. The aim of the Study 2 was to explore the construct of career success in the two groups of artists studied. Each participant responded to an open-ended question asking them to define career success. The responses for professional artists were content analysed using emergent coding with two coders. The codebook was later applied to the arts students' definitions. The majority of the themes could be grouped into four main categories: internal definitions; financial recognition definitions; contribution definitions; and non-financial recognition definitions. Only one third of the definition themes in the professional artists' and arts graduates' definitions of career success were categorised as relating to financial recognition. Responses within the financial recognition category also indicated that many of the artists aspired only to a regular subsistence level of arts income (although a small number of the arts graduates did aspire to fame and fortune). The second section of the study investigated the statistical relationships between the five different measures of career success for each career success definitional category and overall. The professional artists' and arts graduates' surveys contained several measures of career success, including total earnings over the previous 12 months, arts earnings over the previous 12 months, 1-6 self-rated total employability, 1-6 self-rated arts employability, and 1-6 self-rated self-defined career success. All of the measures were found to be statistically related to one another, but a very strong statistical relationship was identified between each employability measure and its corresponding earnings measure for both of the samples. Consequently, it was decided to include only the earnings measures (earnings from arts, and earnings overall) and the self-defined career success rating measure in the later studies. Study 3 used the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via Classification and Regression Tree (CART - Breiman, Friedman, Olshen, & Stone, 1984) style decision trees with v-fold crossvalidation pruning using the 1 SE rule. CART decision trees are a nonparametric analysis technique which can be used as an alternative to OLS or hierarchical regression in the case of data which violates parametric statistical assumptions. The three optimal decision trees for total earnings, arts earnings and self defined career success ratings explained a large proportion of the variance in their respective target variables (R2 between 0.49 and 0.68). The Career building subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, pertaining to the ability to manage the external aspects of a career, was the most consistent predictor of all three career success measures (and was the strongest predictor for two of the three trees), indicating the importance of the artists' abilities to secure work and build the external aspects of a career. Other important predictors included the Self management subscale of the Career Management Competence scale, Protean Career Success Orientation, length of time working in the arts, and the positive role of interpersonal influences, skills and abilities, and interests and beliefs from the Career Development Influences scale. Slightly different patterns of predictors were found for the three different career success measures. Study 4 also involved the career development constructs validated in Study 1, sociodemographic variables, and the career success measures explored in Study 2 via CART style decision trees. This study used a prospective repeated measures design where the data for the attribute variables were gathered at the point of undergraduate course completion, and the target variables were measured one year later. Data from a total of 122 arts students were used, as 122 of the 218 students who responded to the survey at time 1 (October 2005) also responded at time 2 (October 2006). The resulting optimal decision trees had R2 values of between 0.33 and 0.46. The values were lower than those for the professional artists' decision trees, and the trees themselves were smaller, but the R2 values nonetheless indicated that the arts students' trees possessed satisfactory explanatory power. The arts graduates' Career building scores at time 1 were strongly predictive of all three career success measures at time 2, a similar finding to the professional artists' trees. A further similarity between the trees for the two samples was the strong statistical relationship between Career building, Self management, and Protean Career Success Orientation. However, the most important variable in the total earnings tree was arts discipline category. Technical / design arts graduates consistently earned more overall than arts graduates from other disciplines. Other key predictors in the arts graduates' trees were work experience in arts prior to course completion, positive interpersonal influences, and the positive influence of skills and abilities and interests and beliefs on career development. The research program findings represent significant contributions to existing knowledge about artists' career development and success, and also the transition from higher education to the world of work, with specific reference to arts and creative industries programs. It also has implications for theory relating to career success and protean / boundaryless careers.

Submitted by Jorge Silva (jorgeh.oliveira@hotmail.com) on 2017-11-30T19:56:45Z No. of bitstreams: 2 Versão Final_Dissertação_Jorge.pdf: 2401869 bytes, checksum: c7d6ed51433aa231c82780a4727eb472 (MD5) carta do orientador.pdf: 410564 bytes, checksum: f8e3c9902cb7b2500e2e4ed2818d87c5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (bco.producao.intelectual@gmail.com) on 2017-12-14T18:48:59Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Versão Final_Dissertação_Jorge.pdf: 2401869 bytes, checksum: c7d6ed51433aa231c82780a4727eb472 (MD5) carta do orientador.pdf: 410564 bytes, checksum: f8e3c9902cb7b2500e2e4ed2818d87c5 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Ronildo Prado (bco.producao.intelectual@gmail.com) on 2017-12-14T18:49:10Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 Versão Final_Dissertação_Jorge.pdf: 2401869 bytes, checksum: c7d6ed51433aa231c82780a4727eb472 (MD5) carta do orientador.pdf: 410564 bytes, checksum: f8e3c9902cb7b2500e2e4ed2818d87c5 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-12-14T18:57:12Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 Versão Final_Dissertação_Jorge.pdf: 2401869 bytes, checksum: c7d6ed51433aa231c82780a4727eb472 (MD5) carta do orientador.pdf: 410564 bytes, checksum: f8e3c9902cb7b2500e2e4ed2818d87c5 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-09-14 / Não recebi financiamento / Student satisfaction is a response from the student evaluation regarding several aspects of the educational experience. The objective of this study is to investigate the effects of service quality, learning outcomes, employability, value and institutional image on the satisfaction of students enrolled in Vocational Education, considering the multiple relationships between the mentioned factors and the impacts on the student loyalty. A conceptual model was proposed that differs from others because it adds two important constructs for the educational context - learning outcomes and employability. Both are especially relevant in Vocational Education. For the validation of the model, a quantitative survey was carried out with students enrolled in courses offered by the Federal Institute of Education, Science and Technology of São Paulo. A valid sample of 505 students was obtained. The data were analyzed using Structural Equation Modeling The results showed that the final model has a large capacity to explain the variation in factors related to student satisfaction. It was identified that educational quality of services and employability have the greatest effects on student satisfaction. While the value that the student attributes to the educational experience is mainly determined by learning outcomes. Theoretical and managerial implications are made. / Satisfação de estudantes é uma resposta afetiva à avaliação feita por alunos sobre diversos aspectos da experiência educacional vivenciada numa instituição de ensino. O objetivo geral deste estudo é investigar os efeitos da qualidade em serviços, dos resultados da aprendizagem, da empregabilidade, da imagem institucional e do valor na satisfação de estudantes da Educação Profissional, considerando múltiplos relacionamentos entre os fatores mencionados e impactos produzidos na lealdade dos alunos. Propõe-se um modelo conceitual que se distingue na literatura por agregar dois construtos notadamente relevantes na Educação Profissional: resultados da aprendizagem e empregabilidade. Para validar o modelo, foi realizada uma pesquisa quantitativa do tipo survey (levantamento) com alunos matriculados no Instituto Federal de Educação, Ciência e Tecnologia de São Paulo. Obteve-se uma amostra válida de 505 estudantes e os dados foram analisados por meio de técnicas da Modelagem de Equações Estruturais. Os resultados demonstram que o modelo apresenta ampla capacidade para explicar variações nos fatores relacionados à satisfação. Identificou-se que a qualidade educacional dos serviços e a empregabilidade produzem maiores efeitos na satisfação dos estudantes. Enquanto o valor atribuído à experiência educacional é determinado, principalmente, pela percepção em relação aos resultados da aprendizagem. Ao final, implicações teóricas e práticas são apresentadas.

In my thesis I deal with the issues related to disabled young people work opportunities in the job market. The extent of movement disability significantly affects the quality of human life, not excepting working integration. If handicapped people cannot realize their potential in an employment, it may impair their self-confidence and self-respect. Considering their specific needs and conditions resulting from the given handicap, such as wheelchair access to the workplace, lower education, bad accessibility of the workplace by public transport, slow working tempo, worsened ability to express oneself etc., such people may be qualified by the state as people endangered by social exclusion. The aim of this practical part of the thesis is to explore the employability of secondary school graduates from the Jedlička´s Institute and Schools in the job market and to monitor the expectations and barriers of employability of the students in the last year of secondary schools in the Jedlička´s Institute and Schools. On this basis the following hypotheses were formulated: 1. Students from the Jedlička´s Institute and Schools have unrealistic expectations in connection with their actual employability. 2. Students and Graduates from Jedlička´s Institute and Schools tend to continue to study so that they could postpone solving problems associated with their employment. The research proved the confirmation of the first and the second hypotheses. To test the validity of the hypotheses, the quantitative research was selected. The data were collected by means of a questionnaire, an analysis of documents and an structured interview.

This thesis primarily focuses on employability of graduate of University of Economics in Prague with Accounting and Corporate Financial management field of study on the labor market. The first part presents theoretical background, especially basic information about the Faculty of Finance and Accounting and the above-mentioned field of study. Furthermore, publicly available research regarding employability of graduates are described. The practical part is divided into two main pillars. The first one is the study which consists of two surveys oriented on potential employers and students/graduates. Its main goal is to analyze and typify current situation on the economic labor market. The second part, as well as one of the main aims of this thesis, designs new and practically oriented subject that fulfills basic requirements of curriculum of University of Economics in Prague with respect to the surveys.