How does the servant supervisor influence the employability of postgraduates? Exploring the mechanisms of self-efficacy and academic engagement

Abstract

Drawing on the conservation of resource theory, this study investigates the mediating effects of self-efficacy and academic engagement in the relationship between servant supervision and postgraduates’ employability. We conducted a field study with 598 postgraduates (students for the research-based master's degree and PhD candidates) enrolled in universities in China to test our hypotheses. We developed and tested a model contending that servant supervisors propagate servant supervision among postgraduates through postgraduates’ self-efficacy and academic engagement, which indirectly influences postgraduates’ employability. The results support the mediating effects of both self-efficacy and academic engagement on the relationship between servant supervision and postgraduates’ employability. Finally, the theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

General Self-Efficacy and Employability Among Financially Underprivileged Chinese College Students: The Mediating Role of Achievement Motivation and Career Aspirations

“…The results indicate that there was a significant positive relationship among general self-efficacy, achievement motivation, career aspirations, and employability. Specifically, consistent with existing research, this study confirms that general self-efficacy positively predicted employability (Zhong et al, 2020), via achievement motivation (Chemers et al, 2001;Torres and Solberg, 2001), and also facilitated the establishment of career aspirations (Mau and Li, 2018).…”

“…A previous study found that individuals' role breadth self-efficacy was positively related to their perceived employability (Hanzla et al, 2019). Besides that, researchers have explored the relationship between self-efficacy and employability using Chinese postgraduate students as subjects and suggested that selfefficacy positively predicted employability (Zhong et al, 2020). Moreover, Yan et al (2019) found that university students' self-efficacy in career decision-making positively predicted employability.…”

Safety Stressors and Construction Workers' Safety Performance: The Mediating Role of Ego Depletion and Self-Efficacy

“…Individuals use their key resources to cope with stressful situations in the current environment and they also actively construct and protect the existing resources to deal with possible stressful situations in the future. Self-control and self-efficacy are typical individual resources (Hagger et al, 2010 ; Guarnaccia et al, 2018 ; Zhong et al, 2020 ). Self-control refers to the self-suppression of harmful reaction tendency and self-stimulation of beneficial reaction tendency through cognitive, emotional and behavioral strategies (Hagger et al, 2010 ; Righetti and Finkenauer, 2011 ).…”

Exploring Employability of Business Graduates: Evidence from Woldia University

“…Among the exogenous variables, self-efficacy has affected the endogenous variable directly and indirectly. The variable's indirect effect passes through the level of competency, finally affecting the employability of graduates (Ahmed et al, 2019;Zhong et al, 2020). The second path has directly affected the employability of graduates with the coefficient of 0.146 and a statistically significant p value = 0.006 (Caballero et al, 2017;Ahmed et al, 2019;Zhong et al, 2020).…”

“…When they develop self-efficacy, they become self-confident and motivated to convince the employers (Caballero et al, 2017). Thus, there is a positive relationship between self-efficacy and enhanced competency of students and the employability of graduates (Ahmed et al, 2019;Zhong et al, 2020). Accordingly, the above discussion helps us to develop the following hypothesis: H 3 : Self-Efficacy Has a Positive Statistically Significant Effect on the Employability of Business Graduates H 4 : Self-Efficacy Has a Positive Statistically Significant Effect on the Graduate Level of Competency of Business Graduates…”