Employability and job search behavior. A six-wave longitudinal study of Chinese university graduates
| Date | 13 February 2017 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/ER-02-2016-0042 |
| Pages | 223-239 |
| Published date | 13 February 2017 |
| Author | Xie Yizhong,Zhibin Lin,Yevhen Baranchenko,Chi Keung Lau,Andrey Yukhanaev,Hailing Lu |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour,Industrial/labour relations,Employment law |
Employability and job
search behavior
A six-wave longitudinal study of Chinese
university graduates
Xie Yizhong
Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
Zhibin Lin and Yevhen Baranchenko
Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK
Chi Keung Lau and Andrey Yukhanaev
Northumbria University, Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, and
Hailing Lu
School of Economics and Management,
Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing, China
Abstract
Purpose –Graduate employability is a key concern for many observers particularly at a time when
education is increasingly available for the masses. The purpose of this paper is to examine the impact of
graduate perceived employability on job search by integrating theory of planned behavior and to identify
how job search self-efficacy, subjective norms, intention and intensity change over time.
Design/methodology/approach –Data were collected from a six-wave survey study with a sample of
Chinese university graduating students.
Findings –Results show that perceived employability has a positive and significant effect on job search
self-efficacy, attitude, intention and intensity; and that all the repeated measuring variables (except job search
attitude) decreased over time.
Practical implications –The study is useful for educators, employers and prospective students. It prompts
discussion of reforms in the curriculum to increase graduate awareness of the complexity of the job search process
andexistingopportunities.Thestudycouldalsohelpto explain how job search behavior changes over time.
Originality/value –The findings carry implications for both higher education research and the measures of
improving graduate employability. The study fills the gap in the literature by integrating employability and
the theory of planned behavior into one framework in order to analyze the process of Chinese university
graduates’job search behavior.
Keywords China, Graduate employability, Job search, Regulatory focus, Theory of planned behaviour,
Self-evaluation
Paper type Research paper
Introduction
A considerable amount of research attention has been devoted to the concept of
employability (Clarke and Patrickson, 2008; Rothwell et al., 2008; Kang et al., 2012) revealing
its multi-facetedness (Forrier and Sels, 2003). Rothwell et al. (2008) defined graduate
employability as “the perceived ability to attain sustainable employment appropriate to
one’s qualification level.”Being studied from different angles employability is perceived as a
component of higher productivity (Fugate et al., 2004). It has impact on health and
well-being of employees (De Cuyper et al., 2009). Employees are encouraged to take
responsibility for how to respond to challenges with regard to work, their employment and
organizations (Hiltrop, 1995; Clarke and Patrickson, 2008).
In the higher education context policy makers and managers have to face a paradox:
making the higher education system available for the masses and ensuring the
Employee Relations
Vol. 39 No. 2, 2017
pp. 223-239
© Emerald PublishingLimited
0142-5455
DOI 10.1108/ER-02-2016-0042
Received 20 February 2016
Revised 1 August 2016
23 August 2016
Accepted 24 August 2016
The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:
www.emeraldinsight.com/0142-5455.htm
223
Employability
and job search
behavior
employability of the graduates and the efficiency of the system (Chillas, 2010; Kulkarni and
Nithyanand, 2013). In recent decades, there has been a trend of shifting from an elite to a
mass higher education system across developed countries and emerging countries such as
China (Shen and Darby, 2006; Li et al., 2008; Scurry and Blenkinsopp, 2011). China presents a
prime example of a country shifting to mass higher education (Zhiwen and Van der Heijden,
2008; Li and Zhang, 2010). In 1999 the Chinese Government expanded the higher education
sector in response to the trend of international trade and the shortage of highly qualified
manpower (Bai, 2006). The number of graduates with a bachelor degree from higher
education institutions was 5,754,245 in 2010, 6,081,565 in 2011, 6,247,338 in 2012 and
6,387,210 in 2013 (National Bureau of Statistics of China, 2014). According to Yang (2014),
employment rates for recent graduates were 67.1 percent in 2009, 72.2 percent in 2011 and
71.9 percent in 2013. University graduates are meeting tremendous difficulties in securing
jobs that matched their qualification (Li et al., 2008, 2010; Wang and Moffatt, 2008; Wang
et al., 2012), hence there have even been concerns about their “over education,”“over
qualification”and “underutilization”(Scurry and Blenkinsopp, 2011).
Graduate employability has become a major concern for all higher education
stakeholders including universities, governments, employers and the graduates
themselves. Cai (2013) pointed to the potential imbalance between the supply of labor
and the skills required by the labor market. Concerns are raised about how seriously
stakeholders address the over education. Seen by Li et al. (2008) and later by Li et al. (2010)
as an evolving trend since the middle of the 1990s in China, the over education in the
country is arguably of a temporary nature as the percentage of highly educated workers in
China has not reached the corresponding figure of the international average. Despite being
portrayed as a contemporary phenomenon and shared optimisms regarding over education
of the graduates in China (Li et al., 2008), researchers including the authors of this paper
believe that measures need to be taken to address the potential threats imposed by over
education. The potential consequences include devaluation of education (Dolton and
Vignoles, 2000), decrease in productivity of individuals (Tsang, 1987) and may lead to a
wage penalty in the short to medium term (Diem and Wolter, 2014).
For these reasons, graduate unemployment is now considered by many researchers to be
a serious socio-economic issue ( Jin et al., 2009; Moorman, 2011), which has an impact on the
experience of student learning and their confidence in finding a job after graduation.
Graduate employment has been a critical benchmark for measuring performance at an
institutional level seen through the prism of institutional constraint (such as hukou for
instance) (Wang and Moffatt, 2008), yet examination of how individual students get
employment has received less attention (Harvey, 2001). Due to the vast changes taking place
in the labor market, including job deterioration, employability has become the central
concern for prospective graduates (Berntson et al., 2008; Kang et al., 2012) and universities
have been criticized for not sufficiently preparing their graduates for employment. It is
therefore important to understand how graduates’perception of their own employability
impacts on their job search process, so as to develop relevant support strategies for their
chances of success after university education.
In the human resources development and vocational study literature, most studies have
focused only on the effects of employability on reemployment, salary, job satisfaction and
job performance (Clarke and Patrickson, 2008; De Cuyper et al., 2009), with little attention to
the effects of perceived employability as a motivational factor. Moreover, the antecedents of
job search behavior have been extensively analyzed by a number of experts using theory of
planned behavior (Kanfer et al., 2001; Saks et al., 2005), yet limited research has examined
the role of graduate perceived employability on the process.
Furthermore as acknowledged by Wang and Moffatt (2008) studying graduate job
search in China involves a range of constraints mainly due to difficulties in obtaining the
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