Identifying dimensions of employer attractiveness in Indian universities: an approach towards scale development

Abstract

Purpose As the global war of talent is prevalent across different industries, universities are also facing an acute shortage of faculty members because of massification of higher education system in the past two decades. The tremendous increase in the number of higher education institutions has made attracting talented professors a challenging necessity for the university management as employers. The present study, therefore, carries out a scale development exercise and explores the attractive dimensions of Indian universities as employers. Design/methodology/approach With the help of principle component analysis, exploratory factor analysis was carried out to obtain five significant constructs of employer attractiveness in Indian universities. Findings The dimensions identified in the study includes fairness and work–life balance; teaching environment and compensation and benefits; research resources and career development; organizational integrity and commitment to quality; and organizational culture consisting of respect and recognition. Practical implications The finding provides valuable insights for the university management and government bodies and posits to assist them in formulating policies with regard to attracting competent teaching staff. Originality/value Although employer attractiveness has gained scholarly attention in the past two decades, study exploring the dimensionality of employer attractiveness in the context of academic institutions and universities has not been conducted so far. The present study, therefore, is one of the pioneers in this realm.

Reinventing talent management: How to maximize performance in higher education

“…Universities are knowledge-based organizations whose performance is mainly dependent on the teaching staff 's expertise, competence, and excellence (Priyadarshini et al, 2016). According to the company's resource-based view, organizations must have valuable, rare, and non-replaceable resources to gain a competitive edge (Barney, 1991).…”

Employer attractiveness, employee engagement and employee performance

“…From the above definitions, the EA mostly refers to potential candidates, although this concept can be applied to current employees. Accordingly, quite a few studies on the construct of EA: Priyadarshini et al (2016) who have studied to determine the most important values of EA, Pingle and Sharma (2013) have identified learning and development value and recognition of EA as the two most valuable factors for students, Dabirian et al (2017) has described eight values to evaluate IT employees and so on. In addition, the research as explores potential employee-related issues: turnover (Ranjan and Yadav, 2018), applying intention (Ha and Luan, 2018;Sivertzen et al, 2013) and so on.…”

Employee experience through academic culture emerges as a strongest predictor of overall performance of higher education institutes

“…Significant participation should result in the employees having an actual effect on the decisions (Pierce et al, 1991). Employee attractiveness which forms a major component of performance indicator for an institute includes various factors like teaching environment, compensation, research resources, career development, organizational integrity, work–life balance, commitment to quality, and recognition (Priyadarshini et al, 2016). With positive interaction, employees become aware of the problems, create a number of choices to solve these problems, and implement solutions that lessen costs and increase quality.…”