Understanding Business Research Annotated Bibliography

Question:-

write Annotated Bibliography Jackson, D. (2013). Business graduate employability–where are we going wrong? Higher Education Research & Development.

Answer:-

The paper “Business graduate employability- where are we going wrong?” has been written by Jackson. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the concept of transfer and propose a model of employability that incorporates the process. The researcher has identified that there is a persistent gap in non-technical skills in business graduates that impact their organizational performance as well as global competitiveness. Therefore, there is a need to develop non-technical skills in order to be more competitive in the market and produce high organizational performance. The researcher has used a qualitative research design in order to complete this paper. Secondary data has been used by the researcher in this paper in order to reach an effective conclusion. Various scholarly papers have been analyzed to collect relevant data for the paper. As the study does not involve primary data, there is no research participant or research population and research sample. However, the study talks about business graduates.

The research has found that learning or acquiring non-technical skills is very important for business graduates in order to prove their potential for a particular job. The importance of non-technical skills has been ignored and hence considerably less attention is paid to measure the outcomes of non-technical skills at universities. It is assumed that graduate transfer occurs naturally and it is a complex process that is significantly influenced by considerable noise generated from various learning programs along with characteristics of the learner as well as the workplace.

The key strength of the paper is its evidence-based arguments that prove that non-technical skills are significant for business graduates. The weaknesses of the paper are that the findings could not be generalized all over the globe.

The researcher has concluded that non-technical skills are equally important to technical skills and hence a considerable amount of focus should be given on non-technical skills as well. The business graduate should be encouraged to learn and acquire non-technical skills as well in order to improve their potential for employability. The paper can be used to answer the research question "Are Business students work-ready?" as it highlights the key concern that should be improved to increase the potential for employability.

The paper “The student perspective on employability” has been written by Tymon. The purpose of this paper is to explore the views of over 400 business students from marketing and human resource management about employability. A quantitative research design has been used by the researcher in order to accomplish the paper. Data has been collected from the first year, the second year, and final year undergraduate students. The researcher used the focus group method to collect data from the research participants. The sample size of this paper is 400. A simple random sampling technique has been used to select the sample population of the research paper. The size of the first-year student was 50% of the total sample population, whereas the size of the second-year students was 45% of the total population and 5% for the final year students.

The researcher has found that there are differences in response among the first, second, and third-year students regarding employability. The paper also found that there is limited alignment between the views of students and other stakeholder groups. The business students lack some of the most basic skills that are required for successful employment. They are not ready for the world of work. The researcher has concluded that there is a need to prepare business students for the world of work by making them learn the basic skills.

The key strength of this paper is that it involves a large sample size that helps in gaining reliable results. However, the small sample size of the third-year students is the key weakness of this paper. The paper directly answers the research question "Are business students work-ready?"