Abstract:

The main objective of this paper is to analyse the current factors related to dispositional employability in online university. Specifically, it takes into account the Fugate's five latent factors (2006): 1) openness to changes at work; 2) work and career resilience; 3) work and career proactivity; 4) career motivation; and 5) work identity. On this basis, it uses a survey data developed with 930 online students at the Open University of Catalonia in 2016.
Exploratoy Factor Analysis (EFA) and Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) done with 30 variables prove (p=0.000; CFI=0.92; TLI=0.91; RMSEA=0.07; SRMR=0.06) that there are eight latent factors related to dispositional employability: i) three factors are identical to Fugate's proposal: openness to changes at work; work and career proactivity; and work identity; ii) work and career resilience is divided in two new factors, which are related to self-concept, and employment security; iii) career motivation is divided in two new factors, which are related to organisational culture, and knowledge-related jobs; and iv) there is a new factor related to social capital, which is related to collaboration skills.
Results allow us to detect that dispositional employability needs to be adapted to new topics related to career development and lifelong e-learning for employability, such as the organisations' practices and knowledge workers' interests. Moreover, the analysis highlights the importance of social capital. Consequently, the research concretes dimensions that lifelong online learning has to take into account for developing the dispositional employability of its students.

Keywords:

dispositional employability, work and career resilience, work and career motivation, social capital, lifelong e-learning