Many business schools are focusing on developing the employability of their management graduate students. This study proposes academic engagement as a key source of management graduate students’ perceived employability, assuming a direct relationship between these two variables. We also posit that this relationship is mediated by career engagement and moderated by employability orientation. We tested these relationships using a two-wave study and a quantitative survey-based analysis. The two surveys were conducted with a one-year time lag. A total of 231 (Wave 1) and 148 (Wave 2) students participated in the study. The results supported our hypotheses and highlighted the impact of academic engagement activities on management graduate students’ perceived employability. This is one of the first studies to incorporate the notion of a career ecosystem at the meso level, thereby adding to the literature on the interplay between personal factors and an individual's response to contextual factors influencing career development.
Nimmi et al. (Wed,) studied this question.