Development of Key Employability Skills for Business Students in Higher Education. Evaluation of a Business Simulation game as a method to enhance employability

Abstract

Employability has been and continues to be the top of the higher education agenda. What is evident in the literature is that defining and measuring employability are challenging tasks. More specifically, little research has been carried out to define what constitute generic or key employability skills in the context of higher education. This research fills this gap by presenting a multi-dimension framework of key employability skills and methods to measure these skills in higher education. In addition, there are many methods implemented in HE to develop and measure the employability of students, including placements, internships, Work-Integrated Learning programmes, and business simulations. Most of these methods have been investigated in previous research. However, there are still very few studies that examined business simulations in developing the employability of students. To fill this gap, the study also investigates the role of a business simulation in enhancing specific key employability skills. The study uses a mixed-method approach involving two phases of data collection. The first phase was a Delphi technique used to collect data from experts in the field of graduate employability. This phase was analysed qualitatively using MAXQDA. The second phase was a quasi-experimental one-group pre-post-test method. This phase was analysed quantitatively using SPSS. The study contributes to knowledge by developing a holistic and multi-dimensional framework of key employability skills, definitions and methods for measuring these skills in HE. The framework highlights the links and dependencies between the dimensions and the skills. It also recognises the overlap between developing and measuring key employability skills. The study also found that business simulation can enhance several key employability skills of business students. Finally, some of the demographic characteristics, including gender and work experience, influenced students’ perceptions regarding several key employability skills. These findings are intended to help HEIs improve the development and measurement of key employability skills of business students.