Original Research

Enterprising human resource management education: A credentialism study of graduate pathways in South Africa

Tendency Beretu, Warren P. Charles

Received: 02 Feb. 2026; Accepted: 22 May 2026; Published: 03 Sept. 2026

Copyright: © 2026. The Authors. Licensee: AOSIS.
This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).

Abstract

Orientation: Graduate employability remains a significant challenge in South Africa, particularly in Human Resource Management (HRM), where formal qualifications do not always translate into sustainable employment or career progression. This study explores how HRM graduates navigate increasingly diverse and non-linear career pathways within a labour market.

Research purpose: The study investigates the relationship between HRM qualifications and graduate career trajectories through the lens of credentialism and examines credentials as signalling and stratifying mechanisms.

Motivation for the study: Limited research has explored how South African HRM graduates experience the tension between formal qualifications and evolving labour market expectations. This study addresses this gap by applying credentialism to graduates’ career narratives.

Research approach/design and method: A qualitative phenomenological case study was conducted by using written career narratives from 27 postgraduate HRM alumni at a university in Cape Town, recruited through snowball sampling. Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis informed by credentialism theory.

Main findings: Graduates followed predominantly non-linear career pathways across HRM, non-HRM and entrepreneurial roles. Career progression depended less on technical HR knowledge than on transferable capabilities, including adaptability, problem-solving and networking, highlighting a partial decoupling between qualifications and labour market outcomes.

Practical/managerial implications: HRM curricula should extend beyond credential-focused models by developing transferable and enterprising capabilities while recognising diverse career pathways.

Contribution/value-add: The study extends credentialism within professional HRM education by demonstrating how qualifications facilitate labour market entry and shape career mobility. It provides evidence to inform HRM curriculum renewal and graduate employability strategies in South Africa.

Keywords: HRM education; credentialism; graduate pathways; enterprise education; South Africa.

Introduction

Orientation

Graduate unemployment remains a persistent challenge in South Africa, raising concerns about the extent to which higher education and professional qualifications translate into sustainable labour market outcomes. According to Statistics South Africa’s Quarterly Labour Force Survey (2025), the national unemployment rate stands at approximately 32.9%, with youth unemployment exceeding 45%. Although graduates experience relatively lower unemployment rates, underemployment and skills mismatch remain significant concerns. These trends suggest that possession of formal qualifications does not necessarily translate into meaningful labour market absorption. Furthermore, these dynamics are deeply shaped by structural inequalities related to race, class and spatial disparities, which continue to influence access to economic opportunities in post-apartheid South Africa. This challenge is particularly evident in professional fields such as Human Resource Management (HRM), where graduates are expected to function as strategic partners capable of navigating organisational complexity, labour market volatility and changing forms of work (Agolla, 2022; Kambur & Yildirim, 2023). Despite these expectations, HRM education in South Africa continues to be strongly oriented towards technical compliance and regulatory knowledge, reflecting historical professional, institutional and accreditation priorities (Samuel & Moagi, 2022; Sheik et al., 2023).

At the same time, graduate careers are increasingly characterised by non-linear trajectories, occupational mobility and, in some cases, self-employment or entrepreneurial activity (Chen et al., 2025; Portocarrero Ramos et al., 2025). In this context, the assumption that an HRM qualification provides a stable and direct pathway into HRM employment is increasingly contested. National labour market data indicate that possession of a tertiary qualification does not guarantee employment or career stability (Statistics South Africa, 2025). This misalignment suggests that HRM credentials may function more as signals of formal attainment than as reliable indicators of applied capability, particularly in a volatile and saturated labour market. Understanding how HRM graduates navigate their careers, and which capabilities enable mobility and resilience, therefore offers an important lens through which to evaluate the relevance and limitations of current HRM curricula in South Africa.

This study applies credentialism as an interpretive lens to examine HRM graduate career pathways in South Africa, offering empirical insights into how credentials function within a saturated and unequal labour market. Rather than extending credentialism theory of Collins (1979), the study provides a contextual application that highlights signalling dynamics, labour market sorting and emerging patterns of credential inflation within professional HRM education.

Research purpose and objectives

This study aims to explore how HRM graduates experience and navigate their career pathways and to interpret how formal qualifications shape these trajectories through the lens of credentialism. Rather than conceptualising employability as an individual attribute or outcome, the study interrogates how HRM credentials operate within a professional education context and how graduates mobilise capabilities beyond their formal qualifications to navigate diverse career trajectories.

The study is guided by the following objectives:

• To examine the career pathways of HRM alumni and identify patterns of employment, mobility and entrepreneurship.
• To analyse the capabilities, graduates perceive as central to their career progression.
• To interpret the alignment between HRM education and labour market outcomes using credentialism as an analytical lens.
• To identify curriculum directions that support the development of enterprising and adaptable HRM professionals.

Literature review

The evolving human resource management function and the skills gap

The HRM function has progressively shifted from an administrative and compliance-oriented role towards that of a strategic partner contributing to organisational performance, innovation and change (Kambur & Yildirim, 2023; Khang et al., 2023). Despite this shift, competing interpretations of HRM professional identity persist (Nadiv & Kuna, 2025). One perspective continues to frame HRM primarily as a regulatory and procedural function, while another emphasises strategic influence, business acumen and value creation.

In the South African context, HRM education remains largely anchored in the former interpretation (Malatji et al., 2026). Professional accreditation requirements, the centrality of labour legislation and historical industrial relations priorities contribute to compliance-heavy curricula (Samuel & Moagi, 2022; Sheik et al., 2023). These institutional constraints help explain why curricular change has been incremental, characterised by limited adaptation within existing professional and regulatory frameworks, rather than transformative reconfigurations that prioritise strategic, enterprising and transferable graduate capabilities. As a result, graduates may be well credentialed but insufficiently prepared for the strategic and adaptive demands of contemporary HRM roles. From a credentialist perspective, this reflects credential inflation, where formal qualifications expand without a commensurate development of labour-market-relevant capability (Wheelahan & Moodie, 2025).

Enterprise and enterprise education

In this study, enterprising HRM education is defined as the intentional development of transferable capabilities including adaptability, opportunity recognition, problem-solving and strategic thinking that enable graduates to navigate complex and uncertain labour market conditions (Awashreh, 2026; Crammond, 2024; Hmama, 2025; Rajpal & Singh, 2024). Importantly, enterprising HRM education is conceptualised as a capability set rather than a guaranteed pathway to entrepreneurship or employment outcomes (Eppler-Hattab, 2022; Hooi, 2024). Within professional disciplines such as HRM, enterprise education is often positioned as more appropriate, as it supports intrapreneurial behaviour and strategic contribution within organisations (Abid & Polo, 2025).

However, the literature also highlights important critiques. Enterprise education may inadvertently responsibilise individuals for employment outcomes while underplaying structural labour market constraints, particularly in unequal and saturated economies (Gander, 2022; Hallett, 2024). In the South African context, resource limitations, professional regulation and restricted economic absorption capacity constrain the extent to which entrepreneurial or enterprising outcomes are universally attainable (Nieuwenhuizen, 2019; Owoseni & Ahwireng-Obeng, 2024). Accordingly, only selected elements of enterprise education are transferable to HRM education, particularly those aligned with strategic thinking, value creation and adaptability rather than assumptions of unrestricted self-employment (Ajani, 2024; Mizrak, 2023).

Credentialism and theoretical boundaries

Credentialism provides a critical framework for interrogating the relationship between education, qualifications and labour market outcomes. Credentialist theory challenges the assumption that qualifications function as reliable proxies for competence, arguing instead that credentials often operate as positional signals within competitive labour markets (Wheelahan et al., 2022). This emphasis on credentials can obscure the practical capabilities that underpin career progression, a phenomenon described as the ‘skills fetish’ (Wheelahan et al., 2022).

Although human capital theory assumes that increased investment in education enhances productivity and labour market returns, the findings of this study complicate this assumption by demonstrating that formal HRM qualifications do not consistently yield proportional employment outcomes. This suggests a decoupling between educational attainment and economic opportunity, particularly within saturated and credential-inflated labour markets. This study further contributes to debates on professionalisation by situating HRM within a regulated yet increasingly saturated professional field, where credentials serve as both entry requirements and exclusionary mechanisms.

While credentialism offers valuable insight into the decoupling of education and employment, it does not fully account for structural inequalities related to race, class, labour market segmentation or professional regulation (Kale, 2024). For this reason, credentialism is positioned in this study as an interpretive lens rather than a causal or totalising theory. Used in this way, it allows for a balanced analysis of graduate agency, institutional context and labour market structure and provides a theoretically grounded basis for examining HRM graduate career pathways. In labour market terms, this misalignment reflects intensified competition for a limited pool of professional opportunities, where educational credentials increasingly operate as signalling and screening devices rather than guarantees of employment (Gallagher, 2022). Consequently, graduates engage in positional competition, where the relative rather than absolute value of qualifications becomes decisive, contributing to credential inflation and the gradual erosion of returns on formal education (George & Baskar, 2024; Tomlinson & Watermeyer, 2022). In the South African setting, this dynamic is further compounded by persistently high graduate unemployment and structural labour market constraints, which reinforce the mismatch between higher education output and available skilled opportunities (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2022; Statistics South Africa, 2025).

Conceptual framework: From credentialism to capability

The proposed framework contrasts a traditional, credential-centric HRM curriculum with an enterprising, capability-oriented alternative. Rather than assuming linear causality between curriculum and employability, the framework incorporates mediating factors such as institutional support, professional regulation and labour-market conditions. The framework is explicitly heuristic, intended to guide curriculum reflection rather than predict employment outcomes. The synthesis of the literature on credentialism, employability, graduate identity formation, entrepreneurial capability and labour market transitions (George & Baskar, 2024; Tomlinson & Watermeyer, 2022) informs the proposed conceptual framework presented in Figure 1.

FIGURE 1: Comparative outcomes of traditional versus enterprising human resource management curricula on graduate employability and career impact.

These career pathways, including formal HRM employment, portfolio careers, entrepreneurial activities, interdisciplinary work and transitional forms of employment, reveal that graduates actively construct adaptive strategies to navigate uncertainty, often moving beyond the boundaries of formal HRM roles (Ambani, 2026; Yue & Ahmad, 2025). This suggests that HRM education, while foundational, does not fully prepare graduates for the complexity and fluidity of contemporary career trajectories (Wheelahan & Moodie, 2025). Instead, graduates rely on broader capability sets to negotiate transitions, indicating the limitations of credential-focused professional education in dynamic labour markets (George & Baskar, 2024; Tomlinson & Watermeyer, 2022).

Figure 1 illustrates the contrasting labour market and career outcomes resulting from a traditional HRM curriculum, which emphasises narrow technical and functional knowledge, versus an enterprising HRM curriculum that develops a broad capability set encompassing methodological, social and personal skills.

Research gap

Existing literature highlights persistent misalignment between HRM curricula and evolving labour market demands, where the function has shifted towards strategic value creation while many programmes remain anchored in compliance and regulatory content (Kambur & Yildirim, 2023; Malatji et al., 2026; Nadiv & Kuna, 2025; Samuel & Moagi, 2022). Although studies recognise graduate employability challenges and skills mismatches within HRM and related fields (Khang et al., 2023; Sheik et al., 2023), they also show that increasing educational attainment does not necessarily translate into improved employment outcomes, particularly in saturated labour markets characterised by credential inflation and positional competition (Gallagher, 2022; George & Baskar, 2024; Tomlinson & Watermeyer, 2022; Wheelahan et al., 2022). In the South African context, these dynamics are intensified by structural labour market constraints and persistent graduate unemployment (DHET, 2022; Statistics South Africa, 2025).

However, existing research remains largely institutional and macro-level in orientation, with limited attention to how HRM graduates themselves experience and navigate the tension between formal credentials and evolving capability demands across their career trajectories. While boundaryless and protean career perspectives emphasise adaptability and self-directed career construction (Ambani, 2026; Yue & Ahmad, 2025), these are rarely integrated with credentialist interpretations within HRM-specific graduate studies. Moreover, although enterprise and employability literature foregrounds transferable capabilities such as adaptability, problem-solving and opportunity recognition (Crammond, 2024; Hooi, 2024), little empirical work examines how such capabilities emerge through lived HRM graduate pathways. This constitutes a theoretical application gap in which credentialism, employability and capability-oriented perspectives are insufficiently synthesised to explain HRM graduate career navigation in practice.

Research design and methodology

Research approach

A quantitative approach would have been insufficient because it assumes predefined variables, linear relationships and measurable outcomes, which do not adequately reflect the complex, socially constructed and evolving nature of graduate career trajectories (Creswell & Poth, 2016; eds. Denzin & Giardina, 2018). In this study, HRM graduates’ experiences involve subjective meaning-making, identity formation and adaptive decision-making across changing labour market conditions, which cannot be meaningfully reduced to numerical indicators or standardised scales (Saunders et al., 2019).

Furthermore, the phenomena under investigation, such as credential value perception, career navigation strategies, and the negotiation between formal qualifications and informal capabilities, are context dependent and interpretive in nature, requiring rich narrative data to understand how graduates construct meaning over time (Creswell & Poth, 2016). A quantitative design would also limit the ability to capture non-linear career pathways, transitional employment patterns and boundaryless career movements, which are central to contemporary HRM graduate experiences (Ambani, 2026; Yue & Ahmad, 2025).

Therefore, a qualitative approach was selected as it enables an in-depth exploration of lived experiences, allowing for a more nuanced understanding of how graduates interpret and respond to the interplay between education, capability-development and labour market realities (Creswell & Poth, 2016; eds. Denzin & Giardina, 2018).

Research strategy

The research strategy employed was a phenomenological case study. Phenomenology enabled an in-depth exploration of shared meanings associated with HRM graduate career experiences (Van Manen, 2016), while the case study approach bounded these experiences within a specific institutional and programme context (Yin, 2018). The study constituted a single, instrumental case focused on one postgraduate HRM programme at a South African university.

This study adopts an interpretive phenomenological orientation, focusing on how participants make sense of their lived career experiences (Fréchette et al., 2020). Phenomenology serves as the primary methodological lens, while the case study design provides contextual grounding within a specific postgraduate HRM programme (Almusaed et al., 2025). This integration enables both depth of meaning and contextual specificity.

Research method

Research setting

The study was conducted within the alumni network of a postgraduate HRM programme at a public university of technology in Cape Town, South Africa. As a university of technology with a strong applied and professionally oriented focus on learning, it emphasises workplace readiness, industry engagement and practice-based education across its academic offerings while also providing postgraduate qualifications that include research components. The institution serves a diverse student population, often comprising first-generation university students and individuals from varied socio-economic backgrounds, reflecting broader South African higher education demographics.

Data were collected virtually via electronic communication platforms, enabling participation from alumni across different geographic locations and occupational sectors and facilitating access to a range of graduate career trajectories.

Entrée and establishing researcher roles

Formal entrée was facilitated through the university’s alumni structures. Participants were invited to take part voluntarily, and the purpose and scope of the study were clearly communicated. The researcher adopted a non-participant, interpretive role while also acknowledging a degree of insider positionality, as they have professional familiarity with HRM education within the same disciplinary field and institutional context. However, the researcher was not in a supervisory or direct academic relationship with participants at the time of data collection. Reflexivity was maintained throughout the research process to mitigate potential bias arising from this proximity, particularly during data interpretation and thematic analysis, thereby ensuring analytical rigour and credibility.

Research participants and sampling methods

The target population comprised graduates from the selected HRM programme who had completed their qualification approximately 10 years prior to the study. Non-probability sampling was employed. Initial participants were identified through purposive sampling based on programme completion, followed by snowball sampling to reach additional alumni (Patton, 2022; Saunders et al., 2019). A total of 27 participants took part. While snowball sampling enabled access to a dispersed alumni cohort, it may have privileged more professionally active or successful graduates, a limitation acknowledged in the interpretation of findings.

Participants were selected using purposive sampling based on the following inclusion criteria: (1) completion of a postgraduate HRM qualification and (2) engagement in the labour market post-graduation. The sampling frame was drawn from alumni of a HRM programme at a South African university of technology. A total of 27 participants were included, which is appropriate for phenomenological inquiry focused on depth rather than breadth.

Data collection methods

Primary data were collected using a semi-structured written narrative protocol, which consisted of standardised open-ended prompts rather than fixed-response items. Although responses were written, the approach was considered semi-structured because participants responded to the same guiding prompts while retaining full autonomy to construct extended narrative accounts in their own words. Unlike a questionnaire, this method did not include closed-ended questions or predefined response options but instead elicited rich, interpretive textual accounts of lived experience.

The use of narrative elicitation is consistent with an interpretive phenomenological orientation, which prioritises how individuals make sense of lived experience over time (Fréchette et al., 2020; Van Manen, 2016). Narrative approaches are particularly appropriate for graduate employability research as they enable participants to reconstruct career trajectories, transitions and identity development processes in a temporally structured manner (Parks, 2023).

Participants responded to four core prompts covering: (1) first post-graduation role, (2) current role, (3) anticipated future role and (4) reflections on the relevance of HRM education to career development. This ensured consistency across participants while preserving narrative depth and individuality.

Data were collected via email submission over a 2-week period, allowing participants time for reflection and meaning reconstruction. While this method supported depth of reflection, it did not allow for real-time probing or clarification, which is typically available in interview-based designs.

A pilot test with five HRM graduates from the same alumni network was conducted to assess the clarity and interpretive richness of the prompts. Feedback indicated that early versions of the prompts were too broad, resulting in uneven narrative depth. The protocol was therefore refined to focus more explicitly on career entry, progression, labour market challenges and perceived relevance of HRM education, which improved coherence and comparability of responses.

Data recording

All data were collected electronically and compiled into a single master analysis document comprising anonymised participant narrative transcripts. Each narrative was assigned a unique identifier (P1–P27) to ensure confidentiality and facilitate systematic comparison during analysis. The anonymised dataset was securely stored on a password-protected device with restricted access, ensuring compliance with ethical data management standards.

Strategies to ensure data quality and integrity

Trustworthiness was addressed through credibility, transferability, dependability and confirmability, consistent with Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) framework for qualitative research.

Credibility was enhanced through iterative coding and cross-case comparison of participant narratives during the data analysis process to identify recurring patterns, similarities and variations across career trajectories. In addition, peer debriefing was conducted with two colleagues familiar with qualitative HRM research, who reviewed emerging themes, coding interpretations and analytical decisions. This process provided critical feedback, challenged potential researcher assumptions and strengthened interpretive rigour.

Transferability was supported through thick description of the research context, participant characteristics (including gender and employment sectors) and the inclusion of verbatim excerpts to allow readers to assess the applicability of findings to similar contexts.

Dependability was ensured through systematic documentation of the research design, participant recruitment procedures, data collection processes, coding procedures and theme development, thereby creating a transparent audit trail of methodological and analytical decisions.

Confirmability was strengthened through reflexive journaling and the use of direct participant quotations. Reflexive journaling involved the researcher maintaining ongoing analytic and reflective notes throughout data collection and analysis to document assumptions, interpretive decisions, emerging insights and potential biases associated with their partial insider positionality within the HRM disciplinary context. This process supported transparency and ensured that interpretations remained grounded in participant narratives rather than researcher preconceptions.

Data analysis

Data were analysed using inductive thematic analysis informed by phenomenological principles following Braun and Clarke’s (2006) six-phase approach. This process involved familiarisation with the data, generation of initial codes, theme development, theme review, theme definition and naming and final interpretation. Although thematic analysis is not traditionally associated with phenomenology, it was selected because of its methodological flexibility and its suitability for exploring patterns of meaning across participants’ lived experiences (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Nowell et al., 2017). The approach enabled the researcher to systematically analyse subjective experiences while remaining attentive to the meanings participants attached to credential acquisition and employment pathways.

Credentialism theory informed the analytical lens but did not predetermine coding categories. This means that the initial coding process remained inductive and data driven, with codes emerging directly from participants’ narratives rather than being imposed from the theoretical framework (Braun & Clarke, 2021). For example, participants’ accounts of repeated job rejections, prolonged internships or pressure to obtain additional qualifications were first coded from the raw data before later being interpreted through the lens of credentialism theory. The theory therefore guided the interpretation of findings during the later analytical stages rather than restricting the emergence of inductive codes at the outset. This approach aligns with interpretive qualitative research, where theory is used to deepen analytical insight rather than constrain participants’ meanings (Creswell & Poth, 2016).

Although Braun and Clarke’s thematic analysis was employed, the analysis was adapted to support phenomenological interpretation by focusing on meaning units, subjective perceptions and recurring patterns within participants’ lived experiences (Alhazmi & Kaufmann, 2022). For instance, participants’ descriptions of frustration, uncertainty, resilience or perceptions of qualification inflation were treated as meaning units that reflected how individuals experienced graduate employability challenges. These meaning units were then grouped into broader themes representing shared experiential patterns across participants. Such an approach is consistent with phenomenological inquiry, which seeks to understand how individuals construct and interpret their lived realities (Alhazmi & Kaufmann, 2022).

The analysis moved beyond descriptive coding to interpret the underlying structures of participants’ experiences. This was achieved through careful engagement with participants’ reflective accounts and narratives collected during the study, allowing the researcher to examine not only what participants experienced but also how they interpreted and made sense of those experiences within the broader socio-economic and labour market context. Interpretive engagement with the data enabled the identification of deeper meanings associated with credential inflation, employability anxieties and perceptions of labour market exclusion. The lens of credentialism was applied during the interpretive phase rather than the initial coding process.

Reporting style

The results are presented in a thematic narrative format, supported by summary tables and conceptual figures such as visual representations illustrating the relationships between qualifications, employability expectations and career progression pathways to illustrate key patterns and relationships across participant career pathways. The use of conceptual figures enhanced the clarity of thematic relationships and assisted in visually presenting the interaction between credential acquisition and employment experiences within the South African labour market context.

Ethical considerations

The study received ethical clearance from the University of South Africa (UNISA) College of Economic and Management Sciences_ERC Human Resource Department Ethics Committee (Ref. No.: 2165). Key principles were strictly adhered to:

• Informed consent: All participants provided explicit verbal informed consent after the study’s purpose, procedures and their right to withdraw were explained. Consent was documented.
• Confidentiality and anonymity: No personal identifiers (names, specific company names) were collected or reported. Participants are referred to by codes (e.g. P1, P2) in the data. All electronic data were stored on a password-protected device.
• Voluntary participation: Participants were free to decline to answer any question or withdraw at any time without penalty.

Given the study’s retrospective nature and focus on career history rather than current workplace performance, seeking supervisor consent was deemed unnecessary and impractical, as it could compromise participant anonymity and willingness to share freely.

Results

The results are presented according to the study objectives, supported by illustrative participant narratives. Direct quotations are anonymised to ensure confidentiality and are reported using participant identifiers (number, gender, age and current role).

Objective 1: Career pathways of human resource management graduates

Analysis revealed four distinct career pathway typologies: (1) HRM specialists, referring to graduates who remained within traditional HRM functions such as recruitment, training, payroll and employee relations; (2) career pivoters, who transitioned into alternative professional fields outside HRM, including project management, administration and business records keeper; (3) enterprising integrators, who combined HRM knowledge with entrepreneurial activities such as consultancy and training services and (4) generalists, who occupied broad multi-functional roles that incorporated HRM responsibilities alongside other organisational duties. These typologies emerged from recurring patterns identified across participants’ narratives regarding employment progression, role transitions and career adaptation strategies. Graduates frequently moved across HRM, non-HRM and entrepreneurial roles, demonstrating non-linear career trajectories shaped by labour market demands, employability challenges and individual career aspirations:

‘I started as an HR clerk but later moved into project management; HR was just the starting point.’ (Participant 14, male, 33 years, project manager)

This extract illustrates the experience of a career pivoter, where HRM qualifications served as an entry point into broader managerial responsibilities outside the traditional HRM field.

‘My HR diploma gave me a foundation, but I ended up running my own training consultancy.’ (Participant 23, female, 29 years, training entrepreneur)

This participant represents an enterprising integrator, demonstrating how HRM competencies were transferred into entrepreneurial and consultancy-based career pathways.

These narratives suggest that HRM qualifications function as foundational credentials rather than deterministic career pathways.

Table 1 and Figure 2 summarise these career pathway patterns. Table 1 provides a summary of participant career transitions, categorised by previous, present and expected future roles.

FIGURE 2: Typology of human resource management graduate career pathways.

From Table 1, category transition indicates bidirectional movement between HRM and non-HRM roles across different career stages, including movement from HRM → non-HRM and, in some cases, non-HRM → HRM as participants re-entered HR-related functions after gaining broader workplace experience. This reflects fluid career mobility rather than a one-directional linear progression. The pathway theme reflects the dominant career orientation narrative constructed from each participant’s overall trajectory over time, rather than isolated job changes. In other words, ‘category transition’ captures specific job-to-job movements, while ‘career pathway typology’ captures the overarching pattern or direction of an individual’s entire career story as interpreted across their narrative data.

Objective 2: Capabilities influencing career progression

Participants consistently emphasised the primacy of transferable capabilities (rather than HR-specific technical knowledge) in achieving career progression. These capabilities clustered into four dominant categories across the dataset: (1) problem-solving and analytical thinking, (2) interpersonal and networking skills, (3) adaptability and learning agility and (4) communication and people management competence. Among these, interpersonal skills (especially networking, relationship management and stakeholder engagement) were the most frequently emphasised across participants’ accounts, followed closely by adaptability and problem-solving. Technical HR knowledge (e.g. labour law, compliance and HR procedures) was less frequently cited as a driver of career mobility unless it was combined with broader business or entrepreneurial competencies:

‘Problem-solving and networking opened doors that my HR knowledge alone could not.’ (Participant 5, female, 26 years, HR consultant)

‘Understanding people and managing relationships was more useful than memorising labour law.’ (Participant 16, male, 35 years, HR manager)

This pattern across multiple narratives indicates that career progression was primarily enabled by transferable and relational capabilities rather than narrow technical HR expertise, suggesting that employability in this context is strongly shaped by adaptable skill sets applicable across sectors.

Objective 3: Alignment between human resource management education and career outcomes

Graduates reported widespread and recurring misalignment (rather than universal misalignment) between formal HRM education and workplace demands across different career pathways. This misalignment was particularly evident in relation to entrepreneurial, managerial and cross-functional roles, where graduates indicated that formal curricula had limited emphasis on business development, innovation and applied problem-solving:

‘The diploma prepared me for compliance roles, but I needed entrepreneurial and business skills to succeed in consultancy.’ (Participant 10, male, 32 years, HR consultant)

‘Technical knowledge was useful, but the real-world challenges required initiative and adaptability.’ (Participant 1, female, 27 years, HR entrepreneur)

Across the dataset, this does not suggest complete irrelevance of HRM education, but rather a partial alignment, where technical HR knowledge provides a foundation but is insufficient on its own for diverse labour market trajectories. The dominant pattern indicates that graduates supplement formal qualifications with self-developed, workplace-acquired or informal learning to meet job demands.

Objective 4: Emergence of enterprising human resource management identities

This objective specifically drew on data from participants who demonstrated either (1) entrepreneurial career transitions or (2) explicit intentions to operate beyond traditional HR roles. Participants who expressed a strong intention to remain strictly within conventional HRM specialist roles were not the primary analytical focus for this objective, as the aim was to understand identity transformation towards enterprising orientations.

Some participants actively constructed enterprising and entrepreneurial identities, leveraging HRM knowledge as a foundation for business or innovative professional roles:

‘I don’t just run training programmes; I diagnose business problems and create learning solutions that impact the bottom line.’ (Participant 23, female, 29 years, training entrepreneur)

‘My HR experience allowed me to start my own HR consultancy and offer strategic services.’ (Participant 5, female, 26 years, HR consultant)

These narratives demonstrate a shift from role-based HRM identities to opportunity-driven and enterprise-oriented professional identities, where HR knowledge is repositioned as a strategic and commercial resource rather than a purely administrative function. This identity formation was most evident among participants engaged in consultancy, training entrepreneurship and hybrid HR-business roles.

The diverse career outcomes and the centrality of enterprising competencies are visually synthesised in Figure 2, which models the four distinct career pathway typologies identified in the data:

• HRM specialist – remains in core HR roles
• Career pivoter – transitions between HR and non-HRM fields
• Enterprising integrator – develops entrepreneurial ventures grounded in HR expertise
• Generalist – applies HRM skills across broad organisational functions

The model is derived directly from the coded career trajectory data presented in Table 1, where repeated transitions, skill transfer patterns and identity statements were synthesised into overarching typologies. For example, participants such as Participant 14 demonstrate ‘career pivoting’, while Participant 23 exemplifies ‘enterprising integration’, and these coded cases form the empirical basis for the typology construction.

The model demonstrates that the ability to become an enterprising integrator, as illustrated by Participant 23, or to transition between pathways is not accidental but is systematically associated with the presence of transferable, adaptive and relational competencies identified across the dataset. These competencies were consistently evident in participants who moved across multiple roles or created entrepreneurial ventures, suggesting a patterned relationship between capability-development and career mobility rather than isolated individual cases.

This provides an empirically grounded visual framework for curricular reform, supporting a shift from narrowly credential-based training towards the development of adaptable, multi-dimensional capabilities aligned with complex labour market realities in South Africa.

Figure 2 presents a typology derived from the career transition patterns identified in Table 1 (N = 27). Significantly, the model should not be interpreted as a strictly linear progression pathway. Instead, it represents a dynamic and recursive system of career mobility in which graduates may move in multiple directions between HRM, non-HRM, entrepreneurial and hybrid roles over time.

This means that the arrows in the figure do not indicate a one-way trajectory but rather typical or dominant movement tendencies observed in the dataset. Table 1 demonstrates that participants frequently moved from HRM to non-HRM roles (e.g. Participant 14), non-HRM to HRM roles (e.g. Participant 1 and Participant 18) and also engaged in cyclical or stable pathways depending on opportunity structures and individual agency.

The typologies (HRM specialist, career pivoter, generalist and enterprising integrator) therefore represent ‘career orientation patterns’ rather than fixed categories. Participants could and did shift between these orientations across time, which is reflected in the bidirectional ‘potential transition’ arrows and feedback loops illustrated in the model.

For example, HRM specialists (e.g. Participants 16 and 17) demonstrate continuity within HR roles but still show potential movement into consultancy or entrepreneurial HR services. Career pivoters (e.g. Participants 14 and 27) illustrate movement out of HRM into broader organisational or managerial roles, while some later re-engage with HR-related functions through consultancy or leadership roles. Enterprising integrators (e.g. Participants 5, 10 and 23) show the most fluid transitions, often moving between HRM foundations and entrepreneurial ventures. Generalists (e.g. Participants 8 and 12) reflect stable but cross-functional mobility across business domains rather than a single career anchor.

Thus, the model is an analytical abstraction of observed patterns in Table 1 rather than a prescriptive or sequential career pathway. It captures both directional movement and reversibility in career trajectories, consistent with the non-linear and adaptive nature of HRM graduate employability in the South African labour market context.

Discussion

Outline of the results

The study explored the career pathways, capabilities and professional identity formation of HRM graduates in South Africa. The findings provide empirical support for credentialism theory within this context (Wheelahan et al., 2022). The analysis revealed four distinct career pathway typologies: HRM specialists, career pivoters, enterprising integrators and generalists. Graduates frequently navigated non-linear trajectories across HRM, non-HRM and entrepreneurial roles, demonstrating that HRM qualifications function as foundational credentials rather than deterministic career guides (Table 1; Figure 2).

Broad methodological and social capabilities, including problem-solving, networking and interpersonal skills, were consistently emphasised as critical for career progression, while narrow technical HR knowledge played a supporting role. This aligns with existing literature suggesting that transferable capabilities underpin career mobility more strongly than formal qualifications (Brown et al., 2004; Wheelahan et al., 2022).

Participants reported misalignment between formal HRM curricula and the practical requirements of diverse career pathways, highlighting gaps in entrepreneurial, business and adaptive competencies. Nevertheless, some graduates actively constructed enterprising professional identities, leveraging HRM knowledge to innovate and create strategic business or professional roles. These findings suggest that graduates navigate a positional labour market in which access to opportunities is shaped not only by qualifications but by competitive differentiation, signalling value and strategic capability deployment.

Collectively, these results apply credentialism to the South African HRM education context and offer empirical insights into how credentials operate within non-linear graduate career trajectories (Wheelahan et al., 2022). The study also emphasises the importance of integrating real-world skills and entrepreneurial competencies into HRM education to enhance graduate employability and adaptability.

The findings suggest that credentialism operates not only as a signalling mechanism but also as a structural constraint within saturated labour markets. This reinforces the need to reconceptualise HRM education beyond credential accumulation towards capability development.

While the study highlights the importance of enterprising capabilities, it is important to acknowledge the structural constraints shaping graduate outcomes in South Africa. High unemployment, limited labour market absorption and persistent socio-economic inequalities constrain the extent to which individual capability development can translate into employment opportunities. As such, enterprising HRM education should be understood as necessary but not sufficient in addressing graduate employability challenges. This reflects a broader structure–agency tension, where graduates exercise agency through capability development and career navigation yet remain constrained by structural labour market conditions. The findings therefore support both perspectives, recognising that while enterprising capabilities enhance adaptability, they do not eliminate systemic barriers to employment.

Practical implications

The findings have several implications for HRM education, career services and organisations:

• Curriculum design: HRM programmes should transition from a content-focused model to a capability centred, T-shaped professional model, combining deep HR expertise with entrepreneurial, methodological and social competencies (Brown et al., 2004; Wheelahan et al., 2022). This requires a deliberate shift away from compliance-heavy curricula towards applied, experiential and problem-based learning aligned with labour market volatility.
• University career services: Career support should go beyond placement, incorporating mentorship networks, incubator spaces and support for student-led enterprises to facilitate career flexibility and entrepreneurship. This positions career services as capability-development ecosystems rather than administrative placement functions.
• HR practitioners and employers: Organisations should actively identify and develop enterprising integrators who can drive strategic innovation, act as internal entrepreneurs and enhance the strategic impact of HR functions. This requires a shift from role-based recruitment logic towards capability-based talent identification and deployment.

Limitations and recommendations

The reliance on written narratives may have limited the depth of data, as the absence of interactive probing restricted opportunities to explore nuanced meanings. Additionally, the sample size and contextual focus limit the generalisability of findings, positioning the study as exploratory. The single-institution and snowball sample limits generalisability. The reliance on self-reported retrospective data may introduce recall bias.

Recommendations for future research

Building on the findings of this study, future research should further explore the relationship between HRM education, graduate employability and evolving labour market demands. The following recommendations are proposed:

• Employ longitudinal designs to track career outcomes of graduates from capability-focused HRM curricula.
• Use mixed-methods approaches to quantify employer demand for enterprising HR competencies in South Africa.
• Incorporate the perspectives of HR managers and organisational leaders to triangulate the value of enterprising graduates.

Conclusion

The findings mapped diverse, non-linear career pathways (Objective 1) identified broad methodological and social competencies as key drivers of career success over narrow technical knowledge (Objective 2) and revealed a misalignment between formal HRM education and practical career demands (Objective 3).

These results validate credentialism theory in the South African context, demonstrating that in a volatile labour market, versatile capabilities hold greater value than specialised credentials. However, the findings also expose limitations in credentialism’s ability to fully account for the complexity of graduate career navigation in structurally constrained labour markets. Consequently, the study advocates a pedagogical shift towards a capability-focused HRM education (Objective 4), cultivating T-shaped professionals who combine deep HRM expertise with the entrepreneurial mindset, business acumen and adaptive social skills.

The study contributes empirically and theoretically to South African HRM education by:

• Challenging the assumed linear relationship between HRM qualifications and HRM employment,
• Applying credentialism to explain graduate career diversification and extending it by positioning credentials as both signalling and stratifying mechanisms in HRM labour markets and
• Offering a practical framework (Figure 1 and Figure 2) for designing curricula centred on versatility and entrepreneurship.

This study provides exploratory insights into HRM graduate career pathways and highlights important implications for curriculum reflection. While not generalisable, the findings point towards the need for more capability-oriented approaches within HRM education. Its contribution lies in challenging dominant assumptions about employability, credential value and curriculum adequacy in a structurally unequal labour market.

Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge all participants who contributed to this study, as well as the supervisory guidance and support of Dr Jo-Anne Botha and Prof Mariëtte Coetzee, who are not listed as co-authors of this article. The author, Tendency Beretu, confirms that the supervisors have no objection to this arrangement.

This article is based on research originally conducted as part of Tendency Beretu’s doctoral thesis titled ‘A Competency-Based Industry 4.0 Curriculum Development Framework for Developing Human Resource Management Graduate Employability in South Africa’, submitted to the Department of Human Resource Management, University of South Africa, submitted in 2026. The thesis is currently unpublished and not publicly available. The thesis was supervised by Dr. Jo-anne Botha and Prof Mariette Coetzee. The thesis was reworked, revised and adapted into a journal article for publication. The author confirms that the content has not been previously published or disseminated and complies with ethical standards for original publication.

We declare that AI-assisted tools (including ChatGPT and DeepSeek) were used solely to support language editing, clarity and structural refinement of the manuscript. The use of artificial intelligence (AI) was limited to ethically permissible assistance, was fully disclosed and did not replace the authors’ original research, independent critical thinking, analysis or authorship. The authors retain full responsibility for the content, interpretation and academic integrity of this article.

We just want to thank all who participated in this research.

Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no financial or personal relationships that may have inappropriately influenced them in writing this article.

CRediT authorship contribution

Tendency Beretu: Conceptualisation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review and editing. Warren P. Charles: Conceptualisation, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. All authors reviewed the article, contributed to the discussion of results, approved the final version for submission and publication and take responsibility for the integrity of its findings.

Funding information

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Data availability

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, Tendency Beretu upon reasonable request.

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and are the product of professional research. They do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of any affiliated institution, funder, agency or that of the publisher. The authors are responsible for this article’s results, findings and content.

References