We are pleased to announce that an open seminar will be held as follows:
■Date
14:00–15:10 Thursday, 17 April 2025 (JST)
■Theme
Who decides what counts? Employers, universities, and the negotiation of graduate employability through a sociology of conventions approach
■Venue
Hybrid (In-Person & Online)
In-Person: Room 112, Research Institute for Higher Education (RIHE), Hiroshima University
Online: Zoom
■Language
English
■MC
Kim, Yangson (Hiroshima University)
■Discussant
Xin Li (Hiroshima University)
■Lecturer
Lena Nuechter (University of Giessen / Visiting Researcher at Doshisha University）
■Abstract
As higher education institutions (HEIs) worldwide face governance and policy pressures to produce skilled workers and demonstrate graduate outcomes in knowledge economies, research has called for broader institutional response strategies that extend beyond mere adaptation to employer needs (Tomlinson, 2021). Drawing on 15 qualitative interviews with managers and HR professionals across industries, this study explores how private sector employers navigate and justify hiring humanities graduates – a group often perceived as “untypical” and endowed with degrees of uncertain labour market value. These hiring decisions serve as a lens for examining how employers construct the value and mandate of higher education more broadly. Rather than framing employability as an issue of individual skill deficits or social closure, I conceptualise it as a problem of coordination and as a co-production of graduates, HEIs, and employers. This perspective shifts focus from what graduates bring to the table to how employers construct, recognise, and negotiate graduate value. Drawing on the sociology of conventions (Diaz-Bone, 2018; Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Eymard-Duvernay and Marchal, 1997), it highlights how hiring decisions and the warranting of graduate capitals (Tomlinson, 2017) are embedded in shared cultural frameworks of evaluation and justification that are referred to as conventions. The analysis develops a framework of multiple vocabularies of valuation, offering a basis for further exploration in international HE contexts. Beyond evaluations of graduates’ human capital (industrial convention) and competitive skills advantage (market convention), four additional conventions emerge: the domestic (trust and similarity), interaction (discursive performance), inspiration (originality and “talent”), and network (“future skills”) conventions. These alternative valuation logics shape employers’ hirings of untypical candidates, indicating fertile ground for HEIs to develop employability strategies that engage employers beyond skills framings. The findings indicate that HEIs do not operate within a straightforward skills market, but rather within communicative arenas of selection that are epistemologically complex. A conventions-based approach to employability could open new pathways for positioning graduate outcomes within employer engagement, policy, and institutional discourse. The framework can be further tested across national contexts to examine how employers negotiate graduate value within different HE landscapes. This talk will explore how integrating graduate capitals with the sociology of conventions can provide fresh insights into employer decision-making, contributing to graduate employability research and practice. It will also present first ideas from an in-progress chapter that considers the affordances and limitations of HEI activities in light of these results.
■Bio
Lena Nuechter (lena.nuechter@gcsc.uni-giessen.de) is a PhD candidate at the International Graduate Centre for the Study of Culture (GCSC), Justus-Liebig-Universität Giessen, and a Visiting Researcher at Doshisha University, Kyoto. Her project explores cultural structures of (e)valuation in employer decision-making, integrating graduate employability and organisational sociology.
■Note
・Participation fee is free.
・Registration is open noon on Wednesday, 16 April 2025 (JST).
・Internet access and a camera/microphone device required to participate online.
・Use your full name as your personal meeting ID when you enter the meeting room. If you do not, you may not be allowed to enter the meeting room.
・Recording/screenshots not allowed.
・The meeting URL will be emailed to you separately by the day before the meeting. If you do not receive the e-mail, please contact us at k-kokyo(at)office.hiroshima-u.ac.jp
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