Employability and innovation: development of a scale

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of the paper is to explore the antecedents of employability from the employer’s perspective to provide sustainable employment and to develop a measurement scale. Design/methodology/approach In the study, the survey-based approach has been adopted. The authors developed an instrument following extensive literature review and further pre-tested the instrument with experts drawn from the academics. The data collection was monitored following Dillman’s (2007) total design test method. Finally, 114 usable responses were collected. The data were further tested for normal assumptions. Orthogonal and parsimonious constructs were derived following exploratory factor analysis, and the construct validity was checked using confirmatory factor analysis. Findings The following antecedents of employability were obtained: innovative skills and innovative abilities along with the knowledge, innovative abilities, personality factors, career-building traits, emotional intelligence and efficacy beliefs. Research limitations/implications The authors observed that the present study like other survey-based research has its own limitations. Currently, cross-sectional data were used, which inherit some serious limitations like endogeneity and common method bias. However, utmost care was taken to minimize the effects of endogeneity and common method bias using some suggested measures in the existing literature. Social implications The findings and conclusions are expected to aid students, academicians and practitioners in developing an understanding of employability. Moreover, these antecedents can be developed in graduates along with their higher education as per the requirements of the industry. Originality/value This paper is an attempt to develop a scale for measurement of employability in the education sector.

Employability in the fourth industrial revolution

“…Moreover, employers are concerned with the shortage of employability skills, already demonstrated by the entry-level job applicants as this is considered a global issue (Teng et al, 2019). Despite employability importance, there are discrepancies in the visions on employability skills between higher education students and employers (Kőnig et al, 2016;Ahmad & Pesch, 2017;Singh et al, 2017). The main aim of this study is to analyze higher education students' perspective on employability skills, so we can compare it with the labour market skills demand in order and thus to evaluate the students' knowledge about future job skills as requested by employers.…”

Using PLS-SEM to build an employability confidence model for higher education recipients in the field of business studies

“…Employability started to be studied empirically only in the 1990s (Van der Heijde and van der Heijden, 2006). In this context, employability conceptual models and frameworks (Hillage and Pollard, 1998;McQuaid and Lindsay, 2005;Yorke and Knight, 2007;Rothwell and Arnold, 2007;Rothwell et al, 2008Rothwell et al, , 2009Dacre et al, 2014) were completed with different employability measurement models (Van der Heijde and van der Heijden, 2006; Rothwell and Arnold, 2007;Rothwell et al, 2008Rothwell et al, , 2009Álvarez-González et al, 2017;Singh et al, 2017;Van der Heijden et al, 2018;Chhinzer and Russo, 2018). These employability theoretical and measurement models were used to develop this study's conceptual model.…”

Emotional Intelligence and Its Relationship to Employability Skills and Employer Satisfaction With Fresh Engineering Graduates

“…Bande et al, (2015); Cullen et al, (2014); Nesbit and Lam (2014); Pulakos et al, (2000) consider emotional intelligence as an important factor for organization performance and customer satisfaction. Singh et al, (2017) had put the efforts to understand the determinants of employability skills from employer perspective, the research findings shows that knowledge, emotional intelligence, personality factors, innovative practices followed and self-efficacy are the significant determinant, researchers recommend the role self-assessment of employability skills by graduates play a vital role in their personal and professional development. Bar-On (2006) discussed emotional intelligence as managing social and emotional skills to recognize self, expressing self, understand emotions of others, and deal with life challenges.…”