Elsevier

Journal of Hospitality, Leisure, Sport & Tourism Education

Graduate employability and higher education's contributions to human resource development in sport business before and after COVID-19

Abstract

The sport labor market's needs are susceptive to environmental factors. The situation regarding COVID-19 has particularly been influential in altering employment and education policies. The purpose of this research was twofold (1) to understand the graduate employability (i.e., hard and soft skills): and contributions that higher education institutions can make to produce human resources and (2) to identify the differences regarding the above factors before and after COVID-19. The results of Delphi study with executive-level experts in sport business identified various hard/soft skills and higher education's potential contributions. Moreover, experts' expectations are found to be intensified after the COVID-19 outbreak.

Introduction

The primary purpose of higher education institution (HEI) is to develop individuals to obtain the qualities demanded in the given labor market (Cai, 2013). In the relationship between higher education and labor markets, graduate employability has been considered an important concept (Clarke, 2018). Graduate employability is defined as "a set of achievements – skills, understandings, and personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations" (Yorke, 2006, p. 8). HEIs should enhance graduate employability by understanding the labor market's needs and providing opportunities that can help equip students with necessary skillsets (Harvey, 2001; Tomlinson, 2012; Tsitskari, Goudas, Tsalouchou, & Michalopoulou, 2017).

In the past two decades, many students have chosen sport management as a major due to their passion for the sport industry (Cohen & Levine, 2016; Eagleman & McNary, 2010; Todd & Andrew, 2008; Zhang, Wang, Min, Chen, & Huang, 2016). Nevertheless, acquiring a full-time job in the sport industry upon graduation has been challenging (de Schepper & Sotiriadou, 2018; Keiper, Sieszputowski, Morgan, & Mackey, 2019; Todd, Magnusen, Andrew, & Lachowetz, 2014). HEIs recognize the importance of producing attractive human resources to the sport industry (de Schepper & Sotiriadou, 2018). Meeting such an industry expectation is not an easy task due to the diverse characteristics of sport as an occupational field (Emery, Crabtree, & Kerr, 2012; Mathner & Martin, 2012; Minten, 2010). Many scholars have strived to understand graduate employability in sport (de Schepper, Sotiriadou, & Hill, 2020; Griffiths, Bullough, Shibli, & Wilson, 2017; Minten & Forsyth, 2014). Nevertheless, the labor market's needs can be susceptive to environmental factors such as geographic locations, cultures, and societal influences (Cai, 2013; Wiers-Jenssen, 2008), calling for more research that tackles various regions and trends.

Various industries, including tourism and sport, have been significantly influenced by the COVID-19 outbreak (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Sato, Oshimi, Bizen, & Saito, 2020; Uğur & Akbıyık, 2020), leading to potential changes in workplaces. For example, individuals and organizations have experienced drastic changes such as social distancing and remote work environments since the onset of the outbreak (Angelucci, Angrisani, Bennett, Kapteyn, & Schaner, 2020). Employers' expectations toward workers should be different between before and after the pandemic, requiring graduates to prepare for demanded skillsets for the new normal (Buheji & Buheji, 2020).

The purposes of this study are twofold: (1) to identify graduate employability and HEIs' contributions from the perspectives of sport business experts and (2) to identify differences regarding graduate employability and HEIs' contributions before and after COVID-19. The authors employed a three-round Delphi method that utilized surveys and a focus group interview. The current research can provide two significant contributions. The first contribution is to shed light on graduate employability in the eastern region. Past research regarding graduate employability in sport has been conducted in the western regions (de Schepper et al., 2020; Griffiths et al., 2017; Minten, 2010; Minten & Forsyth, 2014). Contributions from eastern regions have been surprisingly scant (Huang, 2013). The other contribution that the current research adds is the potential impact of COVID-19. Recent reports suggested that COVID-19 has been influential in altering sport consumers' perceptions and behaviors (Donthu & Gustafsson, 2020; Majumdara & Nahab, 2020; Sato et al., 2020) as well as various employment and education policies (Anderson, 2020; Chan, 2020; Winchester-Seeto & Piggott, 2020). Therefore, it is essential to understand what kinds of competences are demanded by labor markets and what contributions that HEIs can make to produce human resources under the influence of COVID-19.

Section snippets

Graduate employability and the role of higher education

Graduate employability is defined as "a set of achievements – skills, understandings, and personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations" (Yorke, 2006, p. 8). It is important to note that graduate employability is not merely an outcome (i.e., job acquisition). It also highlights the potential of individuals to continuously grow in the chosen workplace (Tomlinson, 2012). With regard to the operationalization of graduate

Procedure and participants

The current Delphi study consisted of three rounds of examinations in which questionnaires and a face-to-face discussion session were used (Duncan, 1995; Roberson, Collins, & Oreg, 2005). Delphi method is useful when researchers aim to summarize experts' opinions on the current and future status of the research topics (Martino, 1983). The current Delphi study recruited both practitioners and researchers with sport business expertise to acquire diverse opinions (Rupprecht, Birner, Gruber, &

The importance of hard and soft skills and higher education's contributions

In the first round using open-ended questions, 65 responses were listed as skills and abilities demanded in the sport industry. Of those, two experienced researchers identified 26 items as hard skills and 39 items as soft skills. Concerning the possible contributions of HEIs, the experts provided 25 responses. The extracted factors from the first round were further refined in the second round based on a focus group discussion. The results indicated that experts mostly agreed with the

Discussion and managerial implications

The current Delphi study was aimed to identify graduate employability and HEIs' contributions in the context of the sport industry. Sport business experts in Japan participated in the three-round investigations. Through the first open ended survey (N = 10) and the second focus group interview (N = 14), the authors identified nine hard skills (e.g., consumer psychology, busines strategies, marketing), 13 soft skills (e.g., networking skills, passion for sport, hardworking), and seven HEI's

Limitations and future research directions

Although the current research contributes to the literature on graduate employability and sport management education, some limitations should be addressed for future research. First, this study's findings should be exercised with caution in generalization because we focused on the experts from Japanese sport organizations only (e.g., professional sport teams/leagues, national federations). In other words, all experts who participated in the current study are "sport content holders" rather than

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Shintaro Sato: Conceptualization, data collection, Formal analysis, Writing – original draft, writing. Tae-Ahn Kang: Formal analysis, contribution included data collection/analysis, manuscript editing. Ebe Daigo: contributed to analyzing data and reviewing the manuscript. Hirotaka Matsuoka: collected data and approved the final version of the manuscript. Munehiko Harada: collected data and approved the final version of the manuscript.

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