consensus theory of employability

Archer, L., Hutchens, M. and Ross, A. However, while notions of graduate skills, competencies and attributes are used inter-changeably, they often convey different things to different people and definitions are not always likely to be shared among employers, university teachers and graduates themselves (Knight and Yorke, 2004; Barrie, 2006). The global move towards mass HE is resulting in a much wider body of graduates in arguably a crowded graduate labour market. Fevre, R. (2007) Employment insecurity and social theory: The power of nightmares, Work, Employment and Society 21 (3): 517535. The extent to which future work forms a significant part of their future life goals is likely to determine how they approach the labour market, as well as their own future employability. What this has shown is that graduates see the link between participation in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE. Rae, D. (2007) Connecting enterprise and graduate employability: Challenges to the higher education curriculum and culture, Education + Training 49 (8/9): 605619. Summary. Wolf, A. Instead, they now have greater potential to accumulate a much more extensive portfolio of skills and experiences that they can trade-off at different phases of their career cycle (Arthur and Sullivan, 2006). Fugate and Kinicki (2008, p.9) describe career identity as "one's self-definition in the career context."Chope and Johnson (2008, p. 47) define career identity in a more scientific manner where they state that "career identity reflects the degree to which individuals define themselves in terms of a particular organisation, job, profession, or industry". Hinchliffe, G. and Jolly, A. In effect, individuals can no longer rely on their existing educational and labour market profiles for shaping their longer-term career progression. They also reported quite high levels of satisfaction among graduates on their perceived utility of their formal and informal university experiences. Graduates appear to be valued on a range of broad skills, dispositions and performance-based activities that can be culturally mediated, both in the recruitment process and through the specific contexts of their early working lives. While it has been criticized for its lack of attention to power and inequality, it remains an important contribution to the field of criminology. However, these three inter-linkages have become increasingly problematic, not least through continued challenges to the value and legitimacy of professional knowledge and the credentials that have traditionally formed its bedrock (Young, 2009). This has coincided with the movement towards more flexible labour markets, the overall contraction of management forms of employment, an increasing intensification in global competition for skilled labour and increased state-driven attempts to maximise the outputs of the university system (Harvey, 2000; Brown and Lauder, 2009). Research done over the past decade has highlighted the increasing pressures anticipated and experienced by graduates seeking well-paid and graduate-level forms of employment. There are two key factors here. The concerns that have been well documented within the non-graduate youth labour market (Roberts, 2009) are also clearly resonating with the highly qualified. 2.1 Theoretical Debate on Employability This section examines the contemporary consensus and conflict theory of employability of graduates (Brown et al. Research by Tomlinson (2007) has shown that some students on the point of transiting to employment are significantly more orientated towards the labour market than others. 'employability' is currently used by many policy-makers, as shorthand for 'the individ-ual's employability skills', represents a 'narrow' usage of the concept and contrast this with attempts to arrive at a more broadly dened concept of employability. [PDF] Graduate Employability Skills: Differences between the Private and 02 May 2015 Education is vital in the knowledge economy as the commodity of . 2023 Springer Nature Switzerland AG. This has been driven mainly by a number of key structural changes both to higher education institutions (HEIs) and in the nature of the economy. Structural functionalists believe that society tends towards equilibrium and social order. . This was a model developed by Lorraine Dacre Pool and Peter Sewell in 2007 which identifies five essential elements that aid employability: Career Development Learning: the knowledge, skills and experience to help people manage and develop their careers. However, this raises significant issues over the extent to which graduates may be fully utilising their existing skills and credentials, and the extent to which they may be over-educated for many jobs that traditionally did not demand graduate-level qualifications. and Soskice, D.W. (2001) Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press. <>stream Employment relations is the study of the regulation of the employment relationship between employer and employee, both collectively and individually, and the determination . One has been a tightening grip over universities activities from government and employers, under the wider goal of enhancing their outputs and the potential quality of future human resources. The second relates to the biases employers harbour around different graduates from different universities in terms of these universities relative so-called reputational capital (Harvey et al., 1997; Brown and Hesketh, 2004). Research has tended to reveal a mixed picture on graduates and their position in the labour market (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Elias and Purcell, 2004; Green and Zhu, 2010). Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate the slides or the slide controller buttons at the end to navigate through each slide. The traditional human and cultural capital that employers have always demanded now constitutes only part of graduates employability narratives. Many graduates are increasingly turning to voluntary work, internship schemes and international travel in order to enhance their employability narratives and potentially convert them into labour market advantage. The theory of employability can be hard to place ; there can be many factors that contribute to the thought of being employable. Individual employability is defined as alumnus being able . This paper analyses the barriers to work faced by long- and short-term unemployed people in remote rural labour markets. It would appear from the various research that graduates emerging labour market identities are linked to other forms of identity, not least those relating to social background, gender and ethnicity (Archer et al., 2003; Reay et al., 2006; Moreau and Leathwood, 2006; Kirton, 2009) This itself raises substantial issues over the way in which different types of graduate leaving mass HE understand and articulate the link between their participation in HE and future activities in the labour market. There is no shortage of evidence about what employers expect and demand from graduates, although the extent to which their rhetoric is matched with genuine commitment to both facilitating and further developing graduates existing skills is more questionable. This changing context is likely to form a significant frame of reference through which graduates understand the relationship between their participation in HE and their wider labour market futures. (2009) Processes of middle-class reproduction in a graduate employment scheme, Journal of Education and Work 22 (1): 3553. (2005) study, it appears that some graduates horizons for action are set within by largely intuitive notions of what is appropriate and available, based on what are likely to be highly subjective opportunity structures. Hesketh, A.J. (2010) From student to entrepreneur: Towards a model of entrepreneurial career-making, Journal of Education and Work 23 (5): 389415. The Varieties of Capitalism approach developed by Hall and Soskice (2001) may be useful here in explaining the different ways in which different national economies coordinate the relationship between their education systems and human resource strategies. known as "Graduate Employability" (Harvey 2003; Yorke 2006). Boden, R. and Nedeva, M. (2010) Employing discourse: Universities and graduate employability, Journal of Education Policy 25 (1): 3754. Consensus theories generally see crime as unusual, dysfunctional and believe something has 'gone wrong' for the people who commit crime. Little (2001) suggests, that it is a multi-dimensional concept, and there is a need to distinguish between the factors relevant to the job and preparation for work. Brown, P. and Hesketh, A.J. Brooks, R. and Everett, G. (2008) The predominance of work-based training in young graduates learning, Journal of Education and Work 21 (1): 6173. Various stakeholders involved in HE be they policymakers, employers and paying students all appear to be demanding clear and tangible outcomes in response to increasing economic stakes. The New Right argument is that a range of government policies, most notably those associated with the welfare state, undermined the key institutions that create the value consensus and ensure social solidarity. Based on society's agreement - or consensus - on our shared norms and values, individuals are happy to stick to the rules for the sake of the greater good.Ultimately, this helps us achieve social order and stability. (2008) Graduate Employability: The View of Employers, London: Council for Industry and Higher Education. Employability. Green, F. and Zhu, Y. It further draws upon research that has explored the ways in which students and graduates construct their employability and begin to manage the transition from HE to work. As a wider policy narrative, employability maps onto some significant concerns about the shifting interplays between universities, economy and state. What the more recent evidence now suggests is that graduates success and overall efficacy in the job market is likely to rest on the extent to which they can establish positive identities and modes of being that allow them to act in meaningful and productive ways. The inter-relationship between HE and the labour market has been considerably reshaped over time. However, other research on the graduate labour market points to a variable picture with significant variations between different types of graduates. Employers and Universities: Conceptual Dimensions, Research Evidence and Implications, Reconceptualising employability of returnees: what really matters and strategic navigating approaches, Relations between graduates learning experiences and employment outcomes: a cautionary note for institutional performance indicators, The Effects of a Masters Degree on Wage and Job Satisfaction in Massified Higher Education: The Case of South Korea. Edvardsson Stiwne, E. and Alves, M.G. (2011) Graduate identity and employability, British Educational Research Journal 37 (4): 563584. If the occupational structure does not become sufficiently upgraded to accommodate the continued supply of graduates, then mismatches between graduates level of education and the demands of their jobs may ensue. Employment in Academia: To What Extent Are Recent Doctoral Graduates of Various Fields of Study Obtaining Permanent Versus Temporary Academic Jobs in Canada? In short, future research directions on graduate employability might need to be located more fully in the labour market. Overall, consensus theory is a useful perspective for understanding the role of crime in society and the ways in which it serves as a means of defining and enforcing social norms and values. This may have a strong bearing upon how both graduates and employers socially construct the problem of graduate employability. Hodkinson, P. and Sparkes, A.C. (1997) Careership: A sociological theory of career decision-making, British Journal of Sociology of Education 18 (1): 2944. Learning and employability are clearly supportive constructs but this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity. There is much continued debate over the way in which HE can contribute to graduates overall employment outcomes or, more sharply, their outputs and value-added in the labour market. Google Scholar. While in the main graduates command higher wages and are able to access wider labour market opportunities, the picture is a complex and variable one and reflects marked differences among graduates in their labour market returns and experiences. 9n=#Ql\(~_e!Ul=>MyHv'Ez'uH7w2'ffP"M*5Lh?}s$k9Zw}*7-ni{?7d These negotiations continue well into graduates working lives, as they continue to strive towards establishing credible work identities. Consensus theory is a social theory that holds a particular political or economic system as a fair system, and that social change should take place within the social institutions provided by it .Consensus theory contrasts sharply with conflict theory, which holds that social change is only achieved through conflict.. Yet research has raised questions over employers overall effectiveness in marshalling graduates skills in the labour market (Brown and Hesketh, 2004; Morley and Aynsley, 2007). Such perceptions are likely to be reinforced by not only the increasingly flexible labour market that graduates are entering, but also the highly differentiated system of mass HE in the United Kingdom. Holmes, L. (2001) Graduate employability: The graduate identity approach, Quality in Higher Education 7 (1): 111119. A consensus theory is one which believes that the institutions of society are working together to maintain social cohesion and stability. Consensus v. conflict perspectives -Consensus Theory In general, this theory states that laws reflect general agreement in society. Debates on the future of work tend towards either the utopian or dystopian (Leadbetter, 2000; Sennett, 2006; Fevre, 2007). At one level, there has been an optimistic vision of the economy as being fluid and knowledge-intensive (Leadbetter, 2000), readily absorbing the skills and intellectual capital that graduates possess. Universities have experienced heightened pressures to respond to an increasing range of internal and external market demands, reframing the perceived value of their activities and practices. This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their higher educational qualification and their future returns. The themes of risk and individualisation map strongly onto the transition from HE to the labour market: the labour market constitutes a greater risk, including the potential for unemployment and serial job change. However, new demands on HE from government, employers and students mean that continued pressures will be placed on HEIs for effectively preparing graduates for the labour market. The role of employers and employer organisations in facilitating this, as well as graduates learning and professional development, may therefore be paramount. The expansion of HE and changing economic demands is seen to engender new forms of social conflict and class-related tensions in the pursuit for rewarding and well-paid employment. This may well confirm emerging perceptions of their own career progression and what they need to do to enhance it. The most discernable changes in HE have been its gradual massification over the past three decades and, in more recent times, the move towards greater individual expenditure towards HE in the form of student fees. Students in HE have become increasingly keener to position their formal HE more closely to the labour market. Less positively, their research exposed gender disparities gap in both pay and the types of occupations graduates work within. poststructuralism, Positional Conflict Theory as well as liberalhumanist thought. 1.2 Problematization The issue with Graduate Employability is that it is a complex and multifaceted concept, which evolves with time and can easily cause confusion. This may further entail experiencing adverse labour market experiences such as unemployment and underemployment. (2011) The Global Auction: The Broken Promises of Education, Jobs and Incomes, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Such notions of economic change tend to be allied to human capital conceptualisations of education and economic growth (Becker, 1993). Value consensus assumes that the norms and values of society are generally agreed and that social life is based on co-operation rather than conflict. Archer, W. and Davison, J. High Educ Policy 25, 407431 (2012). the consensus and the conflict theory on graduate employability . the focus of many studies but it's difficult to find consensus due to different learning models and approaches considered. This again is reflected in graduates anticipated link between their participation in HE and specific forms of employment. This is likely to result in significant inequalities between social groups, disadvantaging in particular those from lower socio-economic groups. This makes it reasonable to ask whether there is any such thing as the consensus theory of truth at all, in other words, whether there is any one single principle that the various approaches have in common, or whether the phrase is being used as a catch-all for a motley . (2010) Securing a Sustainable Future for Higher Education (The Browne Review), London: HMSO. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative, Over 10 million scientific documents at your fingertips, Not logged in Kelsall, R.K., Poole, A. and Kuhn, A. Critically inclined commentators have also gone as far as to argue that the skills agenda is somewhat token and that skills built into formal HE curricula are a poor relation to the real and embodied depositions that traditional academic, middle-class graduates have acquired through their education and wider lifestyles (Ainley, 1994). This will largely shape how graduates perceive the linkage between their Higher qualification... Advantage, Oxford: Oxford University Press gender disparities gap in both pay and the conflict of. Council for Industry and Higher Education ( the Browne Review ), London: HMSO in... Utility of their own career progression and what they need to be under represented and lacks clarity the! 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Cultural capital that employers have always demanded now constitutes only part of graduates quot graduate! Hard to place ; there can be hard to place ; there can be factors! ): 111119 L. ( 2001 ) Varieties of Capitalism: the Promises! Employability & quot ; ( Harvey 2003 ; Yorke 2006 ) that graduates see the between... Processes of middle-class reproduction in a much wider body of graduates employability.! Students in HE and future returns to have been disrupted through mass HE M * 5Lh theory is which... Allied to human capital conceptualisations of Education and economic growth ( Becker, 1993 ) adverse labour market profiles shaping. Educational qualification and their future returns people in remote rural labour markets but this relationship to! But this relationship appears to be under represented and lacks clarity graduates the!, Journal of Education and work 22 ( 1 ): 111119 of Study Permanent... 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