Rethinking Employability in a VUCA World: Towards a Negotiated Employability Framework in Private Universities in Delhi NCR

This study examined how employability is constructed, interpreted and operationalized in a volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA) environment. The study was conducted within private universities in the Delhi National Capital Region (NCR), a setting marked by rapid institutional growth, competitive pressures and a strong focus on graduate employability. Employability emerged as a central priority for higher education institutions, particularly in competitive and rapidly evolving contexts. Universities increasingly invest in structured interventions such as skill-based certifications, industry-integrated curricula and placement preparation programmes, assuming that employability can be systematically developed through institutional inputs. However, employability outcomes remained uneven, uncertain and often contested. Adopting a qualitative case study approach, this research drew on 63 semi-structured interviews conducted with multiple stakeholders, including students, faculty members, recruiters and placement professionals. The study employed the Gioia methodology to analyze data, moving from first-order informant-centric concepts to second-order themes and aggregate dimensions. This approach enabled a systematic understanding of how employability is constructed and experienced across institutional and market contexts. The findings revealed that while universities actively shape the conditions for employability through formalized structures and practices, significant breakdowns emerged in translating these efforts into outcomes. These included a decoupling between skill acquisition and practical application, signal dilution due to the proliferation of certifications and ambiguity in recruiter expectations. The study further featured divergent stakeholder interpretations of employability, resulting in persistent misalignment. Therefore, employability did not emerge as a stable or universally defined outcome but as a socially negotiated construct shaped by competing institutional and market logics. The study contributes to Human Capital Theory, Signalling Theory and Institutional Theory by challenging their assumptions of linearity, stability and alignment. It reconceptualizes employability as a dynamic, context-dependent and continuously negotiated outcome, offering important implications for theory and practice in higher education.