“The great divide”: skill gap between the employer’s expectations and skills possessed by employees

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to emphasise on demand supply skill gap of human resources in India which would help generate reasons for the same and the necessary steps to be taken to improve the situation and bridge the skill gap helping maximum number of the students becoming employable. It will put an impact on various stakeholders about the steps to be taken in bridging the gap in India. Design/methodology/approach A review of available literature was done in order to understand the reasons behind the increasing skill gap despite a vibrant and abundance of young population. Findings The findings of the paper implicitly point out that a vast skill gap is prevailing in the Indian labour market and there is a dearth of human intellectual capital in India. Also it emphasises on the role of various stakeholders in bridging the skill gap by investing in workforce of today for a better tomorrow. Originality/value Based on literature review, the paper makes specific recommendations to various stakeholders (industry, academia, and government) in bridging the skill gap and would serve as a roadmap for companies guiding them to follow certain strategies to improve skills of future workers by investing in them and growing their own talent pool; and is an attempt to highlight the fact that India’s jobless growth is not going to reap the demographic dividend and certainly the increasing skill gap needs to be bridged ASAP.

Globalization and Its Impact on Business Education in Emerging Economies: A Case of India

“…The present shape of management education is one of universalism and minimal customization. This is supported by Chopra (2017), Khare (2014) and Malik and Venkatraman (2017).…”

“…Further, some institutes have retired academicians occupying prime positions, but they do not exhibit much interest in upholding the quality of education. This is supported by Kawatra and Majumdar (1998), Nayak and Sahu (2016), Malik and Venkatraman (2017) and Rao (2009).…”

“…Management education in India is plagued by issues, such as inadequate infrastructure, paucity of qualified faculty and corporate insight, lack of ethics and values in business schools and scarce development of industry with respect to institute linkages, emphasis on research, inculcating global mindset, exposure to real business issues and multiple perspectives (Chopra, 2017; Jagadeesh, 2000; Khare, 2014; Malik & Venkatraman, 2017). All these need to be resolved to produce managers who meet the requirement of the industry and the global society.…”

Versatile Learning Ecosystem: A Conceptual Framework

“…Interpretivist philosophy of research requires the researcher(s) to understand and respect the differences between the objects of study and grasp subjective meaning of a phenomenon (Bryman, 2016). The stimulus to this conceptual article was the apprehension on the skill penury of graduates in the evolving digital era, which was well documented in the extant of literature (Belwal et al, 2017;Fung, 2017;Irlbeck et al, 2006;Lane & Van Drop, 2011;Loseke, 2017;Malik & Venkatraman, 2017;Mishra, 2014;Trilling & Fadel, 2014;UNESCO, 2015;Verma et al, 2018;WEF, 2015WEF, , 2016. The research team deliberated on the topic and had consensus on the proposed framework to, amply, overhaul the present learning environment.…”

“…Institutions of higher education, in future, are going to face a challenge of how to adapt quickly to the rapidly changing and continuously evolving complex global environment and stakeholder requirements. Several of the past studies have highlighted the growing graduate skills gap (Abayadeera & Watty, 2014;Abbasi, Ali, & Bibi, 2018;Belwal, Priyadarshi, & Al Fazari, 2017;Bowers-Brown & Harvey, 2004;Malik & Venkatraman, 2017;Moore & Morton, 2015;Verma et al, 2018). Employers are experiencing difficulties in finding the graduates with required skill sets and personal attributes (Verma et al, 2018).…”