Rethinking employability: New managerial competencies in a global labour market

The ongoing consequences of globalization include widespread industry rationalization and heightened competition at regional, national, and international levels. In fact, the business world is becoming more networked and glocal. Such changes do not impact only on how companies and organizations run their own businesses. They also shape the way business schools grant their graduates a long-lasting employability. The paper reports the results of a vast research project on employability conducted by a major Italian business school in 2010-2014. The study involved more than 200 top managers and results were obtained via grounded approach. Surprisingly, the traditional hard skills-related subjects (accounting, marketing, finance) were considered as must-haves (prerequisites), whereas employability (meant as desired employees’ game changers) resulted to be increasingly associated with behavioral, cross-cultural and social soft skills. I processi di globalizzazione stanno comportando la razionalizzazinoe dei modelli di business in molti settori, nonche l’inasprimento della competizione a livello regionale, nazionale e internazionale. L’arena in cui le imprese competono e sempre piu connessa e glocale. Tali cambiamenti non interessano soltanto il mondo delle imprese ma investono anche alle business schools e il modo in cui queste generano employability. L’articolo riporta i risultati di un progetto di ricerca condotto dal 2010 al 2014 in una delle principali business school italiane. Lo studio ha coinvolto piu di 200 figure aziendali di vertice. Sorprendentemente, le tradizionali hard skills relative ai canonici contenuti disciplinari della formazione manageriale (contabilita, marketing, finanza) sono state considerate quasi dei prerequisiti, mentre i fattori critici di successo sono risultati legati a quelle dimensioni comportamentali, cross-culturali e sociali generalmente ricondotte alle soft skills.