Advancing Employability through Skill Enhancement: A Comparative Analysis of Established Models and a Multi-Stakeholder Framework from Indian Management Education

Abstract

The persistent employability gap among management graduates in India has emerged as a pressing concern for academic institutions, employers, and policymakers alike. Despite the growing number of management education providers and graduates, the job market continues to report low levels of job readiness among fresh MBA holders. This disconnect is primarily attributed to a mismatch between academic learning and the skills demanded by the industry. While various skill enhancement practices such as summer internships, corporate connect initiatives, campus recruitment training (CRT), and curriculum improvements are being implemented across institutions, the effectiveness of these practices in delivering tangible employability outcomes remains underexplored—particularly from the perspective of all involved stakeholders.This study proposes and empirically tests a novel multi-stakeholder framework, grounded in established theoretical models such as Human Capital Theory, Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), the USEM Model, and Social Cognitive Career Theory (SCCT). The research design incorporates quantitative data from MBA students, faculty members, and recruiters across several Indian business schools. By analyzing their perceptions on key skill enhancement practices and the resulting employability, the study seeks to evaluate alignment, identify perception gaps, and provide evidence-based recommendations. The proposed model highlights the importance of skill enhancement as a mediating factor and incorporates stakeholder type and demographic features as moderators. The findings reveal that perception-based evaluations vary significantly among stakeholders, and that these differences must be acknowledged in designing effective employability strategies. The paper contributes both theoretically and practically to the discourse on employability in Indian management education, offering a holistic and context-sensitive model that bridges the existing gaps in the literature.