Conference

The University of Central England's research team conducted 258 interviews from 91 organisations. The organisations varied from large multinationals through to small organisations from both manufacturing and service industry. The private and the public sector were represented in the samples (table top left). In-depth interviews were conducted with a wide cross-section of employers and employees (table bottom left). Interviews of no less than 30 minutes were conducted with 84 strategic managers, 55 line managers, 84 graduates and 35 non-graduates employees.

The table on the right is the research team's "workplace profile", compiled "to help understand the relationship between graduate attributes and organisational change". The profile identifies the characteristics of a number of interrelated elements including organisational flexibility, the nature of employer empowerment, graduate attributes, employee loyalty and higher education-employer links. These were regarded by the researchers as "a set of parallel continua ranging from value-added through enhancing to transformative characteristics".

(Graphics not included on this database).