Sara Lombardi (University of Florence) – "Be Alert. Be Employable. A test of entrepreneurial alertness process and its effect on self-perceived employability"

The Human Resource Management & Employment Relations Group of King's Business School organises research seminars in HRM. These seminars usually take place in Bush House on the Strand, on Wednesdays.

This week we welcome Sara Lombardi (University of Florence).

If you would like to attend, please contact Brian Somerville, Group Support Officer.

Abstract: “Be alert, be employable. A test of entrepreneurial alertness process and its effect on self-perceived employability”

"While the construct of entrepreneurial alertness has been extensively studied in the field of entrepreneurship, less is known on its impact on career-related issues, such as students’ self-perceived employability. Building on the importance of students’ becoming entrepreneurs of their own career, we argue that developing entrepreneurial alertness can significantly affect their ability to find and maintain a job.

Grounding on Tang et al.’s (2012) conceptualization of entrepreneurial alertness as comprising three different yet related dimensions (i.e., alert scanning and search, alert association and connection, and evaluation and judgment), we firstly tested their sequential relationship and then relate each of them to self-perceived employability.

A structural equation model (SEM) analysis based on a sample of 404 students showed that the three entrepreneurial alertness components are sequentially related, confirming Tang et al.’s (2012) model. Moreover, results demonstrated that, among the examined dimensions, only evaluation and judgment has a direct effect on self-perceived employability, with the remaining ones having an indirect influence.

The findings highlight the importance of individual cognition to employability, pointing to a number of implication for students, universities, and companies."