̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge - jobs

What is the metaverse – and will it help us or harm us?

lw355 — Thu, 27 Jul 2023 07:52:28 +0000

An interconnected world of extended reality is coming that will reshape how we work, play and communicate – and expose us to new levels of risk. What is the metaverse? Will we be safe? How do we make the most of it?

How to tend an economic bonfire

lw355 — Fri, 01 Mar 2019 13:05:07 +0000

Business, enterprise and employment are flourishing in Greater Cambridge, but housing and infrastructure are struggling to match the jobs boom, and gaps in social equality keep widening. ̽��ֱ�� academics are connecting their insights, data and algorithms to find solutions to the area’s “growing pains”.

̽��ֱ��fifty-percenters: the economic value of education

lw355 — Fri, 22 Jun 2018 12:26:17 +0000

At the start of the 1970s there were 600,000 university students. Now there are 2.5 million. In 2017, the participation of young people in higher education reached 49% – the highest level since the introduction of tuition fees.

̽��ֱ�� offers the promise of life-changing opportunities and teaching that develops knowledge and skills. Individuals, society and the economy are all winners in the game of higher education.

On the other hand, students will face an average debt of £50,000, a rising drop-out rate in some institutions and an uncertain future job market.

Arguably it is the best of times and the worst of times to be a student.

And now experts are predicting that 300,000 new university places will be needed by 2030 to keep up with demand.

“Needed is an interesting word in this context,” reflects Professor Anna Vignoles from Cambridge’s Faculty of Education. “It indicates an assumption that is built into our society that everybody should try to go to university. If this is the case then it becomes absolutely vital that prospective students understand what this means in terms of their future employability.”

Education plus the jobs it leads to are major factors in improving social mobility and the growth of an economy. And while Vignoles doesn’t claim to have answers to how this works best, what she and her colleagues do have is access to the largest UK education dataset ever to link education with earnings – and a set of complex questions to ask of it.

̽��ֱ��data has been collected as part of the Department of Education’s Longitudinal Education Outcomes (LEO). It’s actually two datasets: the educational performance of three million primary-school-aged children per year, followed through their secondary and further education to university, including the subject and university they choose; and their subsequent tax records data up to ten years after graduating.

Vignoles and colleagues in Cambridge and the Institute of Fiscal Studies are the first to be given access to such types of data, which they’ve been working on since 2013. Some of their results have been published, and many more are to follow.

“ ̽��ֱ��top-line result is that graduate-level skill is valued in the labour market and that, for most graduates, higher education leads to much better earnings than those earned by non-graduates,” says Vignoles. “Tony Blair pledged in 2001 as Prime Minister to increase the proportion of young people progressing to university to 50%. It’s clear that the UK is now well on its way to this milestone and to achieving the ambition of becoming a graduate economy.”

But when the team looked in detail at how graduate earnings vary by institution, degree subject and parental income, they were struck by the sheer scale of the variation.

For instance, their initial study, published in 2016, showed that more than 10% of male graduates from the London School of Economics, Oxford and Cambridge were earning in excess of £100,000 a year ten years after graduation, whereas the median earnings of graduates from some institutions were less than the median earnings of non-graduates ten years on.

Medical students were the highest earners ten years after graduating, followed by economics graduates. Those studying the creative arts had the lowest earnings, but there were major differences depending on the institution attended.

Some of these earnings differences are attributable to differences in entry requirements and levels of prior achievement at A-level. ̽��ֱ��point that Vignoles makes is that it’s important for young people to be aware of these differences when they make their choices.

“Of course factors beyond graduate earnings, such as the student’s interest in a subject, will and should drive student choice, and we should value subjects irrespective of whether they have high earnings,” says Vignoles. “However, it is also important that we don’t hide this information from students in the hope that they won’t notice the lack of jobs or earning power when they leave.”

̽��ֱ��team’s analysis of LEO doesn’t just give a full picture of what our education system is doing as a whole but also what it’s doing for those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

“It’s partly through analysis of these data that we show that a massive socio-economic gap in achievement at the point of entry into the school system actually worsens through primary and early secondary school. It is these early gaps in achievement that are largely responsible for fewer young people from poorer households going to university.”

But the inequality doesn’t end there. “What you really want to know is what about the students from poorer backgrounds who have managed to achieve in the system? We shouldn’t expect any difference between their success in the labour market and that of their advantaged peers – if education is the route to social mobility then they’ve done their bit.”

In fact they found that students from richer backgrounds still did better in the labour market than other students. “Even students who studied the same subject at the same university earn on average 10% less than more affluent peers if they come from poorer backgrounds,” she says.

“Why is there this second socio-economic gap? Is it around ‘social capital’ networks that they don’t have? Or types of postgraduate study they can’t afford? It’s really important for us to know what we’re dealing with so that we can get to the root causes.”

̽��ֱ��team’s findings are also relevant to discussions around the demand for skills that will advance the success of the UK’s economy and the level at which the state subsidises higher education. “How these relate to higher education are controversial issues,” says Vignoles, “It’s important that the intrinsic value of going to university is not lost in discussions that focus on the economics of human capital investment.”

Yet, according to the 2017 CBI/Pearson Education and Skills Survey, 61% of businesses said that they fear a shortage of people with the necessary skills to fill their predicted increase in high-skilled roles over the coming years.

Meanwhile, the government underwrites student loans; graduates pay 9% of their earnings above an income threshold of £25,000. “For around three quarters of graduates, it’s unlikely they will have paid off the loan by the end of their working lives,” says Vignoles.

“This income contingency is crucially important – we can’t give students mortgage-sized debts and ask them to take the risk of not being able to repay them. ̽��ֱ��state has to subsidise students. But, as a consequence, the state will be subsidising some subjects that attract lower earnings more than others. And subsidy for higher education may mean less resource for further education or apprenticeships. We need a public debate on this.

“We might argue the government should be investing more in education across the piece because we want a highly skilled future, but some hard choices need to be made about where to invest. That’s where big data approaches can inform a wider debate – helping us to dig deep below the surface of these complex issues.”

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Almost half of young people in the UK now go to university. Who gets in – and what and where they study – affects a person’s place in society and their future earnings, as well as the skills available to the job market. Can big data help the ‘fifty percenters’ make one of the most important decisions of their lives – and advance the success of the UK’s graduate economy?

We might argue the government should be investing more in education across the piece because we want a highly skilled future, but some hard choices need to be made about where to invest. That’s where big data approaches can inform a wider debate

Anna Vignoles

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. Images, including our videos, are Copyright © ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge and licensors/contributors as identified. All rights reserved. We make our image and video content available in a number of ways – as here, on our main website under its Terms and conditions, and on a range of channels including social media that permit your use and sharing of our content under their respective Terms.

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Making the numbers count: supporting and engaging women at every career stage

ed515 — Fri, 15 Jun 2018 08:00:00 +0000

Glass ceilings, glass cliffs, glass escalators… much has been written about the metaphorical glass barrier that stands invisibly yet solidly between women and high-level success across the economy.

It’s a description that exasperates Professor Sucheta Nadkarni from Cambridge Judge Business School.

“ ̽��ֱ��challenges faced by women in business are well documented and fiercely debated, and there’s a tendency for most of this talk to be negative. I call this the doom and gloom narrative – it’s about the barriers that women face and why women fail. Let’s change the conversation about gender equality to focus on the factors that help women
to succeed.”

Nadkarni is the lead academic on a major global research project that reported in the European Business Review last year on the factors that help women to succeed in corporate environments. ̽��ֱ��project gathered data from 1,071 companies in 42 countries, covering 56 industries. ̽��ֱ��information spanned a ten-year period, during which the average percentage of women on executive teams in sampled firms rose from 7.6% to just 11.7%.

̽��ֱ��study highlighted the many benefits that women in senior roles bring to companies. “It’s not just that hiring more women into senior positions is the right thing to do for gender equality, it’s also the smart thing to do from a business perspective,” says Nadkarni.

“We found that bringing more women to top roles can make a business function better, attract new customers and improve the bottom line. Women bring in diverse capabilities, diverse knowledge and new ways of thinking, which organisations need.”

With revelations about the gender pay gap making current headlines – three quarters of the 10,000 firms that have provided information pay men more than women – the inequality problems women continue to face in the labour market are gaining increasing attention.

However, Nadkarni is keen to focus on the future. “ ̽��ֱ��question we need to ask now is: what can we do about this situation of unequal pay and unequal representation, and how can we create a more optimistic, promising picture for our students and for the women who are just starting to rise up?”

Her study considered the economic, political, legislative and cultural forces that determine the number of women in the boardroom in different countries. ̽��ֱ��findings showed that the strongest drivers are ‘female economic power’ and a requirement for gender diversity in a country’s corporate governance code. Maternity provisions and female politicians providing a championing voice for women are also important factors.

Female economic power was measured by the expected years of schooling for women, and the percentage of women in the labour force. ̽��ֱ��results suggest that as women become more highly educated, and gain increasing levels of employment, they play a greater role in the marketplace. This then provides a powerful incentive for companies to hire more women onto the board, to reflect the market they cater for.

Corporate governance codes are a set of best practice recommendations, including gender diversity requirements. In the past decade, codes have been created in 64 countries. Among countries sampled in Nadkarni’s study, Colombia had the highest percentage of women in executive teams, at 28.5%, and Japan ranked bottom with 0.57%.

These codes, says Nadkarni, are one example of a ‘soft’ measure that has been shown to be effective in helping women to gain top roles in executive teams or on management boards. In comparison, ‘hard’ targets – such as the mandatory quotas enforced on companies by several countries to give a percentage of seats on the board to women – do little to support gender diversity, and can also have a negative effect on company cohesion.

“Although quotas can help to improve the representation of women on corporate boards, they do little to help women stay in senior positions long enough to make a real impact, and can have both positive and negative effects on turnover rates,” says Nadkarni. “They can also create a hostile environment, by conveying a sense of ‘preferential treatment’ rather than recognition of hard work, skills and capabilities.”

̽��ֱ��research also uncovered some of the loopholes that companies exploit to meet quota requirements. For example, in countries where family businesses are common, quotas are sometimes fulfilled by appointing female relatives to the board. In one case, an 86-year-old, the daughter of the founder of a company in Turkey, had been on the board since 1964.

Dr Jude Browne, the Jessica and Peter Frankopan Director of the ̽��ֱ�� of Cambridge Centre for Gender Studies, has constructed a different approach to addressing gender equality that focuses on encouraging diversity at all levels of an organisation rather than simply quota requirements for senior roles.

Browne suggests that “each organisation with significant pay gaps and other segregation patterns needs to begin by building a detailed picture of what it thinks its data ought to look like and, crucially, publish its goals.

“Too many organisations simply collect data, compile aggregate figures that don’t tell us that much and then look to other organisations to see how they compare. Given that a great many are failing to pick up real pace in addressing these patterns, the ‘comparison with competitors approach’ tends to generate a complacent comfort zone around what ought to be, in many cases, unacceptable.”

As Browne set out at the European Commission recently, the ‘Critical Mass Marker’ approach focuses on skilled women who are not advancing to the next level as quickly as one might expect – that is, where critical mass is not having the desired flow effect.

̽��ֱ��approach requires an organisation to undertake a detailed analysis of its workforce and mark out goals that proportionately relate each level to the next, taking critical mass failures into particular account. Organisations would then be required to analyse and explain their continued segregation patterns against their published goals. This might include analysing the different career profiles that various intersectional groups tend to have and the impact of dependant-related responsibilities, reassessing the benchmark criteria for promotion, and comparing those who have worked within the organisation for long periods to newcomers with very different workloads.

“ ̽��ֱ��Critical Mass Marker approach is not going to solve all the segregation problems that organisations tend to have,” she adds. “But it puts a greater onus on them to ensure those equipped with the relevant talents are able to move up and across institutional structures in a more effective and proportionate way than blanket quotas aimed solely at the top layers of management where we often only see the same few women.”

Nadkarni is also keen to see more women supported at every level, and would like to see action to increase the number of women in executive teams, not just on corporate boards.

“Corporate boards are important, but they only play an indirect role in influencing company strategies and performance, because they mainly have an advisory capacity,” she says. “ ̽��ֱ��decisions are made by the executive team. So, if we want companies to benefit, if we want women to really make an impact, then it’s the executive teams that matter.

“In this context, a quote that comes to mind is it’s not about ‘counting the numbers’, it’s about ‘making the numbers count’. In other words, it’s not merely the quantity of women in top positions that matters, but also whether policies are in place at various levels – company, government and corporate governance codes – to ensure that women can make
a true impact in such roles.

“Hopefully in the future we will watch the doom and gloom ebb away as the true benefits of gender equality become crystal clear to everyone.”

Inset image: read more about our research on the topic of work in the ̽��ֱ��'s research magazine; download a pdf; view on Issuu.

Researchers call for gender equality and career support for women in the workplace, and an end to “the doom and gloom narrative” over their limited numbers.

Hiring more women into senior positions is the right thing to do for gender equality. It’s also the smart thing to do from a business perspective

Sucheta Nadkarni

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̽��ֱ��myth of quitting in anger

Anonymous — Mon, 30 May 2016 23:00:01 +0000

Anger at the workplace is commonly associated with employees storming out of the office and quitting their jobs, but a new study from the Cambridge Judge Business School suggests that the picture is far more complex.

More broadly, positive emotions are usually thought to lead to constructive outcomes and negative emotions to damaging outcomes for business and other organisations.

A new academic study finds, however, that these generalisations are often a myth: when identification with a company is high, anger over job situations often decreases (rather than boosts) a person’s intention to leave because such employees want to stick it out and improve the organisation rather than walk out in a huff.

Conversely, when a person’s identity with their organisation is low, anger increases their intention to quit, says the study published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Researchers at the Cambridge Judge Business School found that for an individual highly-identified with the organisation, anger directed toward the organisation is similar to self-blame because the organisation is part of their self-definition, and hence such people are less likely to respond to negative feelings by disengaging.

̽��ֱ��practical implication of the research, the authors say, is that it is unwise for companies to broadly characterise specific emotions as beneficial or detrimental to the organisation.

“ ̽��ֱ��study suggests that company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect,” says Jochen Menges, ̽��ֱ�� Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at Cambridge Judge Business School and Professor of Leadership at WHU – Otto Beisheim School of Management in Germany. “So rather than seeking to suppress certain workplace emotions, companies should instead adopt practices that seek to encourage greater organisational identification.”

̽��ֱ��research focused on a large company in the pilot training and certification business, with a final dataset of 135 people employed in the United States and Europe who were evaluated over a one-year period. They were asked about their intentions to leave the company or remain, and about both general organisation issues (such as schedule and pay) and specific matters related to the job – such as events that “made you feel good at your job,” “made you feel disrespected as a pilot” or “made you feel close to other pilot instructors.”

As a follow-up, the study looked at actual staff turnover at the flight training company six months after the last survey of employees and found a significant correlation between the number of employees intending to leave the company and the actual staff turnover.

̽��ֱ��study examined guilt and pride, in addition to anger – and found here, too, a dark side of positive emotion and a bright side of negative emotion. For example, while pride is generally associated with a likelihood to remain at a company, for employees lacking in work-related identifications, a feeling of pride made them more likely to consider moving on.

̽��ֱ��research looked at a people’s identity with their occupation as well as organisation, and found that while occupational identity is not as powerful as organisational identity in staff turnover, it does play a complementary role.

Reference:
Samantha Conroy, William Becker and Jochen Menges. ' ̽��ֱ��Meaning of My Feelings Depends on Who I Am: Work-related Identifications Shape Emotion Effects in Organizations.' Academy of Management Journal (2016). DOI: 10.5465/amj.2014.1040

Originally published on the Cambridge Judge Business School website.

Anger often decreases – rather than boosts – a person’s intention to quit a job when they identify strongly with their company, says a new study.

Company policies that are designed to promote positive emotions or minimise negative emotions may in fact not have the intended effect.

Jochen Menges

̽��ֱ��text in this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License. For image use please see separate credits above.

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