Employability and innovation: development of a scale

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.