Keywords

Introduction

In the light of the new economic and societal realities of the twenty-first century against the backdrop of the emergence of the knowledge economy and the knowledge society, employability has become a major item on the national and supranational political agenda around the world (Oliver 2011, 2015). Additionally, economic and societal trends of globalization, increased mobility of labour and increased access to education have resulted in changed career perspectives whereby the onus has shifted to the individual in terms of career-management (Sook et al. 2012). The emergence of the knowledge economy in particular has reignited a debate that has been latent since the 1960s around how well HEIs’ perform in their contribution to the development of the required human capital for societal and economic progress.

Even though acknowledged as an issue for decades, the gap between the profile of new graduates that enter the world of work and the current labour market requirements remains a topic of discussion and concern (Jackson 2009, 2013; Vande Wiele et al. 2015). The scholarly understanding of the construct of employability has changed over the last few decades whereby extensive studies on the topic have illuminated its highly complex, relative (Clarke 2008) and continuously evolving nature (Gazier 2001). Up to date, however, the construct still suffers from ambiguity around what it is. The authors view the construct of employability from a holistic perspective meaning that a person’s employability concerns three influencing factors of intrinsic, extrinsic and actionable nature (Vande Wiele et al. 2014). Such view requires HEIs to give consideration to the elements inherent to the individual (e.g. competencies), elements in one’s direct or wider environment (e.g. socio-economic factors) and notions around engagement and experience in employability-related context (e.g. education, work experience, and networking) when designing and an educational value offering that will deliver on its promise of employability development.

Research Problem

Even though the address of HE towards employability has been given ample attention in the literature (Oliver 2015), its notion has more often than not been treated in a compartmentalized manner. The complexity of the employability construct and the HEI as a system are likely two of the reasons why holistically systematizing the interplay between both has only scarcely been attempted (Maher 2011). Up to now, destination data have been the standard measure to evidence employability as a result of HE (Bridgstock 2009); however, more attention is needed to evidencing the process of employability development to effectively tackle the issue (Mayur and Johnson 2014). In the light of the position employability has taken in the context of national and international quality assurance frameworks and purposeful HE; the development of a mechanism that allows for both evaluation and continuous improvement is highly relevant and timely giving rise to two research questions that frame this paper: RQ1. How can a HEI address employability? and RQ2. How can a HEI be diagnosed on its address of employability with the eye on continuous improvement?

Objectives of the Study

This paper aims to present the current state of a larger ongoing study that tackles the development of a diagnostic tool concerning HE institutional practice for employability: the employability development and assessment maturity model (EDAMM). The development of such model will identify and describe effective employability-conducive HE practices spanning across the totality of institutional activities—addressing RQ1. The descriptions will sketch different sophistication levels of the processes and approaches HEIs can take to address the goal of employability of its learners—addressing RQ2.

Research Methodology

Following a design science methodology, this study has adopted a qualitative approach for theory building through multiple case studies (Eisenhardt and Graebner 2007), principles of design science (Hevner et al. 2004) and principles of maturity modelling (Mettler 2011). The model is constructed using the three cycle approach by Hevner (2007) consisting of a central design cycle supported by a relevance cycle and a rigour cycle as outlined in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1
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Design science research approach in context of this study

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Three purposefully selected case studies were developed through thematic analysis of in-depth interviews with key information, institutional documentation, information in the public domain and personal observation. The selected cases concerned undergraduate business programs spanning across three continents to avoid a one sided perspective on education. The data per case study was coded in two rounds: (1) coding according to five themes identified through extensive literature review (Vande Wiele et al. 2014) and (2) coding at theme level according to emergent subthemes. After this within-case analysis, the findings of each case were subjected to cross-case analysis in search for literal or theoretical replication logic (Yin 2012) in order to develop gradient descriptions of employability-conducive institutional practices to reflect different levels of process sophistication.

Results/Discussions

The submission guidelines for this publication do not allow the presentation of the write up of the case studies or the various descriptions of subthemes that lead to the model. Therefore, the results will be presented in a summarized and synthesized manner by means of presenting the current, most up to date version of the EDAMM (Table 1) and a general overview and outline of the model’s components and content. The case studies identified five general levels of process sophistication and five themes with a total of twenty-two subthemes amounting to a structure as presented in Fig. 2.

Table 1 Employability development and assessment model
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Fig. 2
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EDAMM v1 structure

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These allow to comprehensively describe an institutional process to address employability, addressing RQ1. Maturity modelling from a potential-performance-perspective, following the perspective of Crosby (1979), allows not only for evaluating a process but also outline potential pathways forward towards improving quality results. Adopting such approach fits well with a suggestion towards answering RQ2.

Curricular activities concern the academic dimension of the transformation process for which the following five criteria were found to make an account of its composition: ‘Teaching and Learning’, ‘Outcomes’, ‘Faculty’, ‘Curriculum Development’ and Curriculum ‘Design and Course Sequence’. Given the fact that curricular activities are considered as core to the HEIs’ value chain (Cummings and Shin 2014), it is only obvious that this dimension is recognized as fundamental to the transformation process for employability. It is furthermore clear that an embedding approach is asserted as far more desirable compared to a bolt-on approach. Teaching and Learning must be student centred, authentic, collaborative, reflective and experiential. The holistic nature of employability must be used to craft the curricular outcomes. A faculty of academics and practitioners typically better reflects the realities of the twenty-first century, whereby through adjunct faculty the institution is more agile to attune to current industry practice and additionally gives learners opportunity to network in a professional environment. Curriculum Design and Development must use a scaffolding approach towards competency development towards the development of a ‘whole’ professional. Through consultation with a wide array of stakeholders (internal and external), the institution can further strengthen its currency with socio-economic trends.

The ‘Leadership’ theme captures the management-related practices concerning the totality of the institution which breaks down into ‘Organizational Culture’, ‘Institutional Practice’, ‘Decision-Making’, ‘Overall Strategy’, ‘HR Strategy’ and ‘Institutional Definition’. The Leadership theme confirms the place management practice has been attributed in the value chain according to the literature (Pathak and Pathak 2010; Cummings and Shin 2014). This paper approached leadership as the manner in which an organization as a whole navigates the quest for and effective employability transformation process. With institutional commitment as a key factor, the daily practice of the organization must reflect the inclusion of employability throughout the organizational modus operando whereby it is embraced by all participants. Institutional practice is as much about doing things right as it is about building knowledge capacity for future success with employability as a driving factor to decision-making, strategic direction and competitive positioning. The availability of relevant organizational expertise is equally fundamental warranting carefully crafted HR practices around recruitment, performance appraisal and professional development. Finally, particularly in the situation where a HEI is embarking on a path of change in terms of addressing employability, attention must be given to the manner in which the institution defines employability, since it directly affects common understanding and consequential actions.

‘Quality Measurement’ concerns the thematic activities around quality assurance and improvement in an employability context. Since employability is often referred to as one of the most important quality measures for the HE graduate-product (Reichelt and Schreier 2010; Eurydice 2014), its emergence in the model is not surprising. This component was found to consist of four underlying elements, i.e. ‘Data’, ‘Standard and Accreditation’, ‘Systems’ and ‘Analysis and Reporting’. In order to meaningfully appreciate the quality of HE transformation process to employability, various sorts of data are required, i.e. context, process, outcome. The EDAMM arguably adequately addresses the concern raised by Maher (2011) around the lack of consideration for an institutional approach and Bridgstock’s (2009) observation of the sole attention to destination data. A quality control mechanisms should consists of a systematic collection process involving internal and external stakeholders guided by key metrics that place employability transformation central to the conception of quality. Analysis and reporting needs to happen at the right level in order to result in actionable information and knowledge that effectively flows through the organization. Standards should be informed by credible and meaningful accreditation and quality assurance bodies relevant to the discipline in question.

As much as the potential value of industry to the employability transformation process is intuitively apparent from the above discussion, all three case studies reiterate its pivotal role, hence the theme ‘Industry Relations’. Three criteria have been identified in order to break this component of the transformation process down, i.e. ‘Approach’, ‘Form of the Relation’ and ‘Benefit/Result for the HEI’. The Approach must be systematic with effective initiation and development mechanisms towards meaningful and sustainable relationships with industry. Considering the ‘Form of the Relationship’ each of the case studies championed the idea of industry as partners in the pursuit of win-win and ultimately synergistic situations. Benefits for the HEI can range from straightforward input through collaboration in and on the process all the way to recruitment of graduates.

Support services refer to the transformational activities that are directly career oriented yet not necessarily traditionally curricular in nature. To explicate the finer detail of this component of the transformation process, the study has identified ‘Student Engagement’, ‘Organization and Orchestration’, ‘Staff’ and ‘Bridge to Labour Market’. Learners’ engagement with the support services, through its repeatedly reported challenging nature, was concluded as instrumental to this dimension. Careful orchestration of support activities with the rest of the transformational process and well-organized activities support the realization of a meaningful value proposition to the learners. Professional development of staff in order to create the needed knowledge bases to effectively realize support is highly instrumental to the success of this dimension. Finally, effective support services go back to its capacity to increase the learners’ exposure to the workplace and their field in both learning and career-related contexts on the one hand, but equally to assuming a pivotal role in enabling an employability-related knowledge flow in the organization.

Even though the objectives of this paper can be argued to have been met, the content and applicability of the model, however, require further validation in order to be confident in answering both research questions rigorously, particularly RQ2. This will be addressed in the conclusion section by outlining future next phases in this research endeavour. To comply with the paper guidelines, the authors have opted to limit the description to the theme levelFootnote 1 across the five maturity levels following typical maturity model development practice (Mettler 2011).

Contributions of the Study

A first contribution of this study is the strengthening of the methodological approach of design science to produce knowledge artefacts and in particular maturity models. This pragmatist methodology is rather novel compared to the longer standing traditional methodological lenses applied in the research field of theory development and modelling for complexity. A second contribution is the development of a model that considers and outlines the complexity of the HE process and its address of employability by means of identifying and qualifying critically relevant activities to employability development and assessment at an institution wide level. This contributes to the body of knowledge around effective HE practices for employability by investigating a variety of operational subdomains of HE such as curriculum, support activities, quality control, leadership and industry relations. A third contribution concerns the introduction of maturity modelling in the context of employability and purposeful HE. Maturity modelling has been widely used for diagnosis, process quality control and improvement in a variety of fields, inclusive of HE (Vande Wiele et al. 2014), but is a novel approach in the context of quality assurance for employability, addressing a dire need in today’s HE landscape.

Conclusions

This paper has concisely reported on the first phase of an in-depth approach to developing a mechanism to diagnose the address of HEIs to employability and simultaneously inform for improvement. This phase concerns the combination of exhaustive literature review and three case studies towards the design of a first version of the EDAMM. The second phase of the study has as its objective the validation of the model through expert consultation and scrutiny by means of a Delphi technique to result in the proposal of a valid diagnostic model for quality assurance in the context of purposeful HE for the twenty-first century.