Occupational Fields of Business Education Scientists – Evidence from Social Career Network XING

Abstract

It is not easy to answer the question about occupational fields of business education scientists (Sloane/Twardy/Buschfeld 2004, p. 10). The aim of this article is to examine the structure and level of occupations that business education scientists pursue outside the teaching profession. For this purpose, 2436 publicly available profiles on the social career network XING are utilized. The data were coded with the classification of occupations 2010 of the Federal Employment Agency in Germany. In terms of structure, 15 occupational groups cover more than 90 % of the business education scientists’ occupations. The two most frequent, with a share of over 40 %, are ‚human resource management and services‘ and ‚company organization and strategy‘. With regard to the occupational level, a positive influence of the level of the academic degree was found. The increase in occupational level is particularly pronounced in case of a PhD. There is no evidence that female business education scientists systematically pursue occupations at a lower level than their male counterparts. 16 % of the business education scientists in the sample are self-employed, most frequently as management consultants.