Unraveling the concept of employability, bringing together research on employability in higher education and the workplace

In different streams of literature employability has been defined in different, often related ways. We take an interdisciplinary approach, combining insights from research on higher education and workplace learning, taking a Western perspective. In doing so we take a multi-dimensional, competence-based approach. Our approach to conceptualizing employability responds to research from both disciplines arguing for a need of integrating approaches to employability, for a unified overview of conceptual frameworks and agreement on definitions of the concept. We conclude that models of employability from these different disciplines can reinforce each other. Certain dimensions of employability are less taken into account in one discipline, while receiving a lot of attention in the other. Hence, our work opens new avenues for conceptual and empirical research on employability in both domains. Moreover, it might influence how researchers and practitioners research and support (lifelong) learning for employability, both in higher education and in the workplace.