Giovanni Schiuma (p)

Ilona Bartuseviciene

In the context of public organisations that are increasingly challenged to become transformation systems, a critical role as a transformation catalyst is played by people who can exercise a leadership position by activating, facilitating, and supporting initiatives for transformation. In the context of public organisations, a leader can be seen as any professional who is responsible for fostering and supporting an organisational cultural attitude aiming at the development of an existing business, or even contributing to the creation of a new one, by having at the core or embracing transformation as the continuous development and application of knowledge for companies’ value creation. This paper aims to analyse the fundamental competencies distinguishing a transformative leader. For this reason, the framework of the Transformative Leadership Compass is introduced as a model for descriptive and normative purposes. It outlines the critical competencies that distinguish a Transformative Leader able to engrain transformation and foster sustainable organisational growth. Specifically, seven critical competencies are identified and analysed.
The Transformative Leadership Compass is proposed as a descriptive framework to assess the distinguishing competencies of people that can play a transformation catalyst role in their organisations. Accordingly, the framework can be deployed to assess and define initiatives for developing leadership competencies, organisational culture, and behaviours to support organisational transformation. On the other hand, it can also be used for normative purposes to design and develop management initiatives to develop the essential competencies distinguishing organisations engaged in successful transformation.For developing the transformative leadership compass, we have formulated the hypothesis grounding the framework by a deductive analysis of the management literature. A preliminary assessment tool is proposed to test the framework and make it operative, and some preliminary pieces of evidence of its applications are reported in the paper. The paper concludes with a critical discussion of the limitation of the research and the future development venues.

Helena Barachino (p)

Giovanni Schiuma

The Covid-19 pandemic and the policies implemented to control it, functioned as a disruptor to the world economy, displayed in both macroeconomic settings – such as (local) labor markets, and microeconomies like universities. This comes at a time when the concept of Graduate Employability is gaining relevance. Yorke (2004) coined Graduate Employability as “a set of achievements – skills, understandings and personal attributes – that make graduates more likely to gain employment and be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits [...] the economy.” Prior to the pandemic universities were already engaged with the interplay of provided education and labor market participation, however, this does not mean that graduate’s skillsets are a complete and sustained match to labor market demands. In fact, those reported lacking are generally skills that go beyond core competencies of specific degrees, such as interpersonal skills and teamwork capabilities. Implemented policy measures are mainly designed to amplify Graduate Employability from within the body of education, however, this decision is based on the assumption that higher education is indeed capable of enhancing Graduate Employability through targeted academic training.
The body of literature on Graduate Employability is rich with varying theories on the apportionment rate of the stakeholders; elucidating the role and characteristics of the individual, the role of educational institutions, labor market behavior and the impact of economic developments on the matter. These papers often lack vision with regard to the dynamics of Employability, and so hinder the formation of a cohesive perspective for effective policy recommendations.
In this paper we present a dynamic framework of graduate employability based on leading and adjacent theories, in order to elucidate the set of actors, their dynamics, and the consequential power of individual actors - or lack thereof - to effectively influence Graduate Employability. The validity of the framework is underscored by a systematic literature review, examining the degree to which Interventions in higher education display positive influences on graduate employability. The research papers analyzed are based on empirical research measuring localized changes for academic graduates who underwent a targeted educational reform to enhance employability. The framework serves as a basis for determining efficacious modi operandi and policies in the future, and to further elaborate on the role of higher education institutions with regard to Graduate Employability.

Ilona Bartuseviciene (p)

Helena Barachino

The aim of this study. Previous analysis of scientific research has shown that the concept of resilience is transforming into a structural concept, based on the underlying idea that a resilient organization (OR) can not only withstand complex situations and return to its pre-crisis position, but can also use the experience of shocks as a driving force to bounce forward. This study distinguishes the bounce-back stage, oriented towards organizations’ adaptive capacity, and the bounce-forward stage, which aims to enhance learning capacity.
Methodology/methods. Literature review, CFA, SEM.
Results. This study aimed to explore dimensions of OR, i.e. learning and culture (LC), networks (N), and change-readiness (learning) (CRL), in organizations of various sizes and in various industries. The structure of this scale followed the framework of the Resilience Benchmark Tool (RBT-53) and its shorter version, the Resilience Benchmark Tool (RBT-13), validated for Lithuanian organizations. The sample consisted of 434 organizations. The structure of a randomly selected sample consisted of: 65% privately held limited liability companies; 15.9% individual proprietorships; and 5.3% public institutions. The results of CFA confirmed the three-factor structure of OR. To investigate different aspects of associations between the factors, SEM analysis was conducted. Best model fit was evaluated based on the following indicators: CMIN = 2.562; CFI = 0.934; TLI = 0.919; NFI = 0.995; and RMSEA = 0.060. This partially confirmed the hypothesis that bounce-back dimensions, i.e. LC and N, are directly linked to the CRL dimension. These results show that the N dimension is linked to LC dimension, and that the LC dimension alone is linked to the CRL dimension. No supportive evidence was found to suggest that the N dimension is linked directly to the CRL dimension, which is treated as a component of the ability to bounce-forward.
The originality and the value of this study are in its attempts to provide empirical evidence that identifies the links between the bounce-back and bounce-forward stages of OR. These results contribute to the development of OR theory, confirming the conceptual statements that resilience is the ability to return to the routine and to adapt to the changed environment by overcoming dynamic events, stressing the idea of the importance of enhanced learning capacity, which allows for growth by constantly learning from oneself by gaining unique experiences.

This research project received funding from European Social Fund No 09.3.3-LMT-K-712-19-0218 under grant agreement with the Research Council of Lithuania (LMTLT)