Graduate Careers in a Changing Workplace: A Fresh Challenge?

Introduction: Today’S Career Landscape

Today’s graduates are entering the workforce in unusual times. Born and raised in a digital era, most will be no strangers to the tech-enabled services that drive today’s economy (Schroth, 2019), yet few will have truly known and experienced the pre-pandemic workplace (Donald et al., 2022a). Indeed, today’s career landscape is built upon foundations that are characterized by turbulence and change. The last decade has seen pivotal developments in the growth and application of social collaboration tools and media in the workplace (Birkinshaw et al., 2021), which have enabled the emergence of global power brands such as Amazon and Apple, and the delivery of complex products and services that thrive because they have become inextricably entwined with everyday life (Birkinshaw, 2019).

Meanwhile, innovation in the use of social media and collaboration tools has given a broader platform to customers and competitors, leading to new opportunities and ways of working in business (Karanasios & Allen, 2014). In some cases, these developments have created new business models for remuneration, working pattern versatility, and the notion of ‘employment’, while expanding opportunities for young enterprises (Cherubini et al., 2021; Karanasios & Allen, 2014; Parker & Grote, 2022; Stephens, 2021). The use of social media has also given power to the customer, forcing the hand of businesses in areas such as sustainable and ethical business practices (Minton et al., 2012), and in some cases, this has levelled playing fields by giving voice to marginalized groups (Donald, 2022; Donald & Scattergood, 2023).

Yet, even against this backdrop, the disruption caused by the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 was seismic, sudden, and unprecedented; rocking the global workplace to its core (Mockaitis et al., 2022). While many organizations had previously tried to shape and steer workplace use of such social media and collaboration tools (Hislop et al., 2015), the COVID-19 pandemic rendered their existence unavoidable, forcing organizations to quickly embrace and integrate their possibilities through hastily developed remote working policies (Collins et al., 2020; Parker & Grote, 2022), as the virus halted international infrastructure, and stopped movement for both travel and trade. As a result, the implications of the pandemic were transformational for many, changing both the types of work they were expected to do and the ways in which they completed it (Parker & Grote, 2022; Smith & McBride, 2022). Outside of work, the pandemic affected the pace of life for some during this time, and many began to re-evaluate work in the context of other priorities (Adisa et al., 2022; Ghosh, 2021). Together with economic turmoil and healthcare pressures that accelerated growth in some sectors while flatlining others (World Economic Forum, 2021), these aspects have led to demographic changes in the labor market, and societal changes in expectations and employment trends. In fact, an unprecedented exodus of workers left the labor market during the pandemic to retire and/or retrain, leaving labor shortages in many areas of Business and Management (Blustein et al., 2020; Costa Dias et al., 2020). Today, they are further catalyzed by the war in Ukraine, unstable economies and political climates, and an ongoing climate crisis (Ågerfalk et al., 2020; Gkeredakis et al., 2021).