Soldiers' employment attitude and employability: An exploratory study

Gao, Peng; Yuan, Lunqu Article Soldiers' employment attitude and employability: An exploratory study Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management (JIEM) Provided in Cooperation with: The School of Industrial, Aerospace and Audiovisual Engineering of Terrassa (ESEIAAT), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC) Suggested Citation: Gao, Peng; Yuan, Lunqu (2015) : Soldiers' employment attitude and employability: An exploratory study, Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management (JIEM), ISSN 2013-0953, OmniaScience, Barcelona, Vol. 8, Iss. 2, pp. 567-578, https://doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 This Version is available at: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/188698 Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen: Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden. 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If the documents have been made available under an Open Content Licence (especially Creative Commons Licences), you may exercise further usage rights as specified in the indicated licence. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/ Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management JIEM, 2015 – 8(2): 567-578 – Online ISSN: 2013-0953 – Print ISSN: 2013-8423 http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 Soldiers’ Employment Attitude and Employability: An Exploratory Study Peng Gao, Lunqu Yuan School of Economics and Management, Beijing Jiaotong University (China) [email protected], [email protected] Received: December 2014 Accepted: April 2015 Abstract: Purpose: Nowadays it is very difficult for Chinese retired soldiers to find proper jobs, and the primary reason is the significant gap between job requirements and soldiers owned job skills. Therefore, it is very important to improve the soldiers’ job skills and enhance their understanding of employment. Design/methodology/approach: This paper expands the study scope from the soldiers’ job skills to the employability, initiatively introduces the employment attitude which has obvious impact on the employment of soldiers, and analyses the influence that employment attitude can play on employability. At last, this paper develops statistical method to find the relationship between soldiers’ employment attitude and employability. Findings: The empirical analysis shows that soldiers’ employment attitude has the positive linkage with employability, which makes the employment attitude a measurable variable for the employability rather than an absolute standard. Research limitations/implications: According to the research purpose, more variables should be considered in the model, consequently, there are only three indicators to describe solders’ employment attitude and four indicators to describe solders’ employability. -567- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 Originality/value: This paper takes research on soldiers’ employability in a new perspective. The soldiers’ employment attitude is served as the entry point, showing the influence that soldiers’ employment attitude has on employability. Keywords: retired soldiers, independent choosing profession, job skills training, employment attitude, employability 1. Introduction The 11th National People's Congress (2011) standing committee’s 23nd meeting announced the decision of revising the Law of the PRC on Military Service System (taking effect on August 29, 2012) on October 29, 2011. Meanwhile, the State Council and the Central Military Commission (2011) jointly issued the Retired Soldiers’ Resettlement Regulation. The promulgation and implementation of the two laws and regulation mark that China has done significant adjustment on the resettlement of the retired soldiers, and reform of the retired soldiers’ emplacement has entered a new stage. However, the independent choosing profession of retired soldiers is facing severe challenge, it is usually hard for the retired soldiers to find suitable jobs, and some even cannot find a job. The problem is resulting from many reasons, such as, the poor enforceability of law and regulation, and the unsound of the matched system of financial compensation. Nonetheless, the most essential reason is the gap between job requirements and soldiers owned job skills. Therefore, it is very important to improve the soldiers’ job skills and enhance their understanding of employment. So far, many scholars had suggested to give soldiers employment skills training. This paper expands the study scope from soldiers’ job skill level to soldiers’ employability. It treats the soldiers’ employability as the object of study and the soldiers’ employment attitude as the entry point, hopes to analyze how the retired soldiers’ employment attitude can affect or determine the employability and observes whether it is possible to use soldiers’ employment attitude to evaluate their employability based on empirical research. 2. Literature Review The study of the employability by the academic world has got articulated results, and the concept of employability has also developed into a new stage. The concept of employability was first put forward in the 20th century by the British economist Beveridge (1909). They thought employment is the capability of one individual obtaining and -568- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 keeping jobs. Since the 21th century, the technological advance and reform had improved the speed of destruction and creation of vocations, the boundary less career also required employees to switch between different vocations, different functions, different majors, different roles and different organizations. The employability (containing all kinds of professional specifies and common skills, such as communication skills and learning skills) of labors and their adaptability to the changing occupational environment are also very important for the firms to gain and keep their competitive advantages. Therefore, connotation of the employability is further enriched and the denotation of it is keeping extension. Jos and De Grip (2004) gave the views that the core of modern concept of employability comes from the willingness and ability of those who were hired, the limit of organizational and institutional conditions, and the attractiveness to the labor resources market. Further, they found employability is the willingness and ability to remain attractive in the labor resources market, is the ability to forecast and respond to changes in working conditions and tasks, and is the facilitation in human resources development process. Fugate, Kinicki and Ashforth (2004) told that employability is the ability to identify opportunities to achieve success. Van Der Heijde and Van Der Heijden (2006) pointed out that employability is reflected in continually implementing, acieration and creation of tasks. McQuaid and Lindsay (2005) introduced a numerous of factors affecting individual employability, including individual factors and external factors. Employment attitude, on the other hand, is not an important content in economics research. As solders can get limited opportunity to participant in job skills training, their employment attitude may have a significant influence on employability. Employment attitude in this paper is defined as job seeker’s overall view on career choice, career assessment and career orientation, reflecting job seeker’s basic beliefs and attitudes. De Vos and Soens (2008) found that employment attitude played a mediating role between quality development and career success. Kalyal, Berntson, Baraldi, Näswall and Sverke (2010) found that employees with higher employability are more likely to leave when a high degree of job insecurity appears. Silla, De Cuyper, Gracia, Peiro and De Witte (2009) researched that job insecurity has an interaction with employability. Based on the existing research, this paper expands the study scope from the soldiers’ job skills to the employability, initiatively introduces the employment attitude which has obvious impact on the employment of soldiers, and analyses the influence that employment attitude can play on employability. The arrangement of this paper is as follows. The 3rd part gives hypothesis based on the analysis of employment attitude and employability. The 4th part shows the questionnaire design, data acquisition and initial treatment of data. The 5th part gets the empirical results. The 6th part gives conclusions and policy recommendations. -569- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 3. Hypothesis Referring to the research purpose, this article needs to build up a transmission mechanism from the soldiers’ employment attitude to the employability. Before that, this paper observes how the existed law and regulation are ruling the soldiers job skills training. On the aspect of law and regulation, Law of the PRC on Military Service System (2011) and Retired Soldiers’ Resettlement Regulation (2011) specified that conscripts and retired officers should be organized to take professional education and skills training for free by the local people's government, and be given the corresponding academic certificate, professional certificate with employment opportunities recommended after passing the examination. Interim Measures of Placement of military cadres told that the protection of skill training for military cadres should be kept in aspects of policy and funding. In aspect of policies and regulations, two levels exist, one is the central government, and another is local governments. Central government policies mainly includes Opinion of the State Council (2010) on strengthening the occupational training to promote the employment, Administrative Measures of the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Civil Affairs (2011) on the use of retired soldiers’ vocational education and skill training funds, Notice of the Ministry of Finance, the Ministry of Civil Affairs and the Headquarters of the General Staff on the Strengthening and Improvement of the Retired Soldiers’ Educational Training (2014). Local governments, military region, department of education, department of finance, department of human resources and social security should publish notices on improving the skill training for retired solders and help to promote their job seeking, except Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan. Thus, based on the existing research results, the legal policy and the implementation condition, this paper attempts to analyze the mechanism of influence soldiers’ employment attitude has on employability based on the hypothesis. The hypothesis can be divided into three dimensions: First, the concern level of soldiers on employment. This dimension has on employability lies in that if the soldiers cares about the employment, they will try to get to know what kind of skills they need, so as to achieve the improvement of individual employability. Second, the confidence level of soldiers towards their employment. This dimension has on employability lies in that the more confident the soldiers have on their employment, the more active they will be to achieve their own wishes. Third, the recognition level of soldiers on skills training. This dimension has on employability lays in that the more recognition the soldiers have on the skills training, the more active they are on the participation of the skills training, which will bring more training revenue. -570- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 So we get the following hypothesis: H1: The concern level of soldiers on their employment impacts their employability positively; H2: The confidence level of soldiers towards their employment influences their employability positively; H3: The recognition level of soldiers for skills training impacts their employability positively. Then, the empirical analysis will be done to prove the hypothesis put forward in this article, and some conclusions can be got. 4. Questionnaire design and data acquisition Data of solders’ employment attitude and employability for empirical analysis is collected by questionnaire. Questions which aimed at gaining quantifiable data contain multiple choices that measure solders’ employment attitude, and self-scoring questions that measure solders’ employability. Detail of questionnaire is shown in appendix. The survey is conducted in different military regions. 419 pieces of questionnaires are delivered and 372 pieces of questionnaires are taken back, accounting for 88.78%. Totally 308 questionnaires are available after excluding invalid questionnaires, accounting for 82.80% of the recovered questionnaires. As 8 multiple choices and 23 self-scoring questions are listed, it requires to reduce dimensions. Questions in the same dimension are given different weights so that they can be described by only 1 variable. We choose Entropy Method to calculate the weights. According to Information Theory, information entropy measures the uncertainty and reverses changes with information. Entropy Method, with the advantage of good objectivity, gives the weights depending on the information of the data, which is a proper way to exclude the influence of subjective factors. All the multiple choices can be divided into 3 dimensions, denoted by X1, X2, and X3. Questions 1~3 discuss solders’ concern level towards employment; Questions 4~6 discuss solders’ confidence level towards employment; Questions 7~8 discuss solders’ recognition for skill training. All the self-scoring questions can be divided into 4 dimensions, denoted by Y1, Y2, Y3, and Y4. Questions 1~5 discuss solders’ psychological qualities; Questions 6~17 discuss solders’ basic skills; Questions 18~21 discuss solders’ social skills; Questions 22~23 discuss solders’ job skills. -571- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 After calculating the information entropy, we find that, in every dimension, weights of each variable is basically equal, which indicates that each variable has substantially equivalent information. We name X1~X3 and Y1~Y4 as the employment attitude indicators and the employability indicators. Descriptive statistics results are shown in Table 1. Indicator Mean Median Std. Dev. Skewness Kurtosis Jarque-Bera test Statistic Prob. X10.4817 0.4455 0.2058 0.4643 3.1663 11.4223 0.0033 X20.6259 0.6391 0.1679 -0.1521 2.5184 4.1642 0.1247 X30.6882 0.6667 0.2445 -0.7333 2.6978 27.6197 0.0000 Y10.7513 0.7500 0.1880 -1.1738 4.9961 121.8560 0.0000 Y20.7037 0.7083 0.1760 -0.6518 3.8896 31.9630 0.0000 Y30.6810 0.6875 0.1992 -0.5963 3.4725 21.1194 0.0000 Y40.5524 0.5001 0.2649 -0.0783 2.1587 9.3989 0.0091 Table 1. Descriptive statistics of X1~X3 and Y1~Y4 As shown in Table 1, we can find that: •All the indicators, except for X1 and Y4, are far bigger than 0.5. Solders have a high expectation on career prospects; and have praise on skill training. Also, they are confident in psychological qualities, basic skills and social skills. On the other hand, they are of relatively poor performance in concern level towards employment and job skills. •Y1 appears to be left-skewed and fat-tailed. Solders tend to have a unanimous praise on their psychological qualities, which is highly reasonable. •All the indicators, except for X2, do not obey normal distribution. As the sample size is large enough, indicators should be normal distributed if they meet special conditions. If an indicator is affected by many factors and none of them play a leading role, the indicator usually obeys normal distribution. Thus, we can infer that all the indicators except for X2 are affected by a few indicators or they are affected by a leading factor. 5. Empirical Analysis 5.1. Solders’ Employment Attitude First, we observe difference between high score group and low score group to ensure our date is valid and find data’s differentiation characteristics. We choose the top 25% of each indicator as high score group; choose the bottom 25% of each indicator as low score group. ANOVA result of each indicator is shown in Table 2. -572- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 Indicator Mean of high score group Mean of low score group F-Statistic Prob. X10.7790 0.2774 745.1856 0.0000 X20.8334 0.4031 1326.1387 0.0000 X30.9480 0.3463 953.2327 0.0000 Table 2. ANOVA results of X1, X2 and X3 As shown in Table 2, significant difference between high score group and low score group exists in each employment attitude indicators, indicating that all the employment attitude indicators have polarization characteristics. Respondents do not just select the average option. Second, we analysis the correlation between each employment attitude indicator. Since it’s not easy to recognize the regression equation form through plot, we use regression analysis directly. OLS results are shown in Table 3. Dependent variable Independent variable Coefficient Constant Prob. R-squared X1X20.0458 0.4532 0.0433 0.3397 X1X30.0756 0.4296 0.0116 0.4036 X2X30.0464 0.5940 0.0237 0.3279 Table 3. OLS results of correlation between each employment attitude indicator As shown in Table 3, all the three regression functions are proved, but the R-squared are not satisfactory. We can conclude that correlation does exist between each employment attitude indicator, but the linear relationships are relatively weak. These results show that, though not strong, solders’ concern level, confidence level and recognition for skill training are interrelated. 5.2. Solders’ Employability First, we observe difference between high score group and low score group. Similarly, we choose the top 25% and the bottom 25% of each indicator as high score group and low score group. The results are the same as employment attitudes that significant difference exists in each employability indicator, which are shown in Table 4. Second, we do the regression analysis, results shown in Table 5. Indicator Mean of high score group Mean of low score group F-Statistic Prob. Y10.9571 0.5013 563.3780 0.0000 Y20.9145 0.4748 902.4622 0.0000 Y30.9196 0.4188 878.2594 0.0000 Y40.8799 0.2062 1660.3044 0.0000 Table 4. ANOVA results of Y1, Y2, Y3 and Y4 -573- Journal of Industrial Engineering and Management – http://dx.doi.org/10.3926/jiem.1479 Dependent variable Independent variable Coefficient Constant Prob. R-squared Y1Y20.8054 0.1845 0.0000 0.6683 Y1Y30.5831 0.3542 0.0000 0.5815 Y1Y40.2123 0.6340 0.0000 0.3694 Y2Y30.7455 0.1960 0.0000 0.8120 Y2Y40.3387 0.5166 0.0000 0.4599 Y3Y40.3628 0.4806 0.0000 0.3928 Table 5. OLS results of correlation between each employability indicator As shown in Table 5, all the 6 regression functions are proved and R-squared of regressions of Y1-Y2, Y1-Y3 and Y2-Y3 are quite large. The regression of Y1-Y4, Y2-Y4 and Y3-Y4 are satisfactory. We can find that solders’ job skills are of weaker correlation with psychological qualities, basic skills and social skills. Referring to the descriptive statistics above and the development method of soldiers’ job skills, we can infer the reasons of such phenomenon: •Solders’ job skills have objectivity and absoluteness that are not misled by the respondents’ estimated biases. •Solders’ job skills differentiate high and low level significantly before they join the army. •Solders have little opportunities to develop their job skills in active service. 5.3. Employment Attitude and Employability Before the analysis of the relationship between employment attitude and employability, we have the correlation coefficient matrix between employment attitude and employability indicators, which is shown in Table 6. X1X2X3 Y10.2989 0.3645 0.3405 Y20.3677 0.3796 0.3676 Y30.3444 0.3980 0.3770 Y40.2019 0.4027 0.2747 Table 6. Correlation coefficient between employment attitude and employability indicators As shown in Table 6, we find that the employment attitude indicators have linear influences on the employability indicators, which can support the 3 hypothesis above. -574-