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Career Exploration and Perceived Employability within an Emerging Economy Context
Author(s) -
Forstenlechner Ingo,
Selim Hassan,
Baruch Yehuda,
Madi Mohamed
Publication year - 2014
Publication title -
human resource management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.888
H-Index - 94
eISSN - 1099-050X
pISSN - 0090-4848
DOI - 10.1002/hrm.21553
Subject(s) - employability , private sector , public sector , government (linguistics) , business , context (archaeology) , population , state (computer science) , labour economics , economic growth , economics , economy , sociology , paleontology , linguistics , philosophy , demography , algorithm , computer science , biology
Following four decades of unprecedented economic, social, and cultural change, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) labor market is highly segmented: The native population is almost exclusively employed in the government sector, while the private sector is effectively outsourced to foreigners. This has created an unsustainable situation with growing numbers of young citizens reaching working age and with a public sector that has reached the saturation point. Policymakers repeatedly try to legislate to encourage private‐sector employers to hire citizens. These policies have had limited success. We explored the career attitudes of 2,267 United Arab Emirates citizens prior to their entry into the labor market. Using structural equation modeling, we found that the social contract and resulting expectations toward state employment have strong implications for willingness to work in the private sector. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.