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The purpose of this paper is to emphasise on demand supply skill gap of human resources in India which would help generate reasons for the same and the necessary steps to be taken to improve the situation and bridge the skill gap helping maximum number of the students becoming employable. It will put an impact on various stakeholders about the steps to be taken in bridging the gap in India.

A review of available literature was done in order to understand the reasons behind the increasing skill gap despite a vibrant and abundance of young population.

The findings of the paper implicitly point out that a vast skill gap is prevailing in the Indian labour market and there is a dearth of human intellectual capital in India. Also it emphasises on the role of various stakeholders in bridging the skill gap by investing in workforce of today for a better tomorrow.

Based on literature review, the paper makes specific recommendations to various stakeholders (industry, academia, and government) in bridging the skill gap and would serve as a roadmap for companies guiding them to follow certain strategies to improve skills of future workers by investing in them and growing their own talent pool; and is an attempt to highlight the fact that India’s jobless growth is not going to reap the demographic dividend and certainly the increasing skill gap needs to be bridged ASAP.

Skills development among construction stakeholders has become an increasingly urgent necessity for the successful implementation of Construction 4.0 in recent years. There is a lack of comprehensive analysis on the domain of Construction 4.0 implementation, with a focus on skills development. This study aims to address this gap through the use of the science mapping approach to show the gaps of research domain and propose future directions.

This study adopted a three-step holistic review approach, comprising bibliometric review, scientometric analysis, and qualitative discussion, to obtain a comprehensive overview of research in the field of Construction 4.0 skills development. f on a total of 57 articles published in three databases, the influential sources, keywords, scholars, and articles in the domain were analysed. A follow-up discussion aimed to identify main-stream research topics, research gaps, and future research directions.

Findings discovered that the topics were concerned about Construction 4.0 whilst skills development aspect was lacking in creation of policies, frameworks, strategies in different contexts. The study revealed research gaps such as presence of skills gaps and shortages in some countries, the lack of frameworks and roadmaps for successful Construction 4.0 implementation, and the lack of readiness assessments from professional, company and industry viewpoints.

This study contributes to the knowledge in the domain of Construction 4.0 and the contribution of skills development for its implementation and a comprehensive overview with research gaps and future research directions in the domain.

Managers claim that fresh graduates are unequipped to meet market demands. The aim of this study is to investigate the perception of employers in retail Islamic banks of Bahrain on newly graduated business students. The Singaporean Model of Employability Skills was implemented, to ascertain the mean ratings of employability skills in terms of their importance and the competency of business graduates.

This deductive research approach initiated with a literature review that identifies research gap and a model that was tested via a self-administration adopted survey by collected data from 220 senior employees at retail Islamic banks of Bahrain

The systematic of convenience sampling technique was used in selecting 161 samples and the researcher received only 85 completed questionnaire forms. Findings initiate that employers appreciated the importance of teamwork, risk management and decision-making skills. Their main recommendation was that employers should establish a durable bond with universities to enhance employability skills.

Because the researcher gathered all data from employers of different Islamic banks in Bahrain, this sector in addition will get the advantage of the results that banks will formulate their strategic plans accordingly to tackle the business graduates’ weaknesses. Likewise, universities and researchers might be motivated to look into new innovative methods that assist graduates to accommodate with market conditions.

Purpose. This chapter discusses the challenges and different strategies to increase skill development for the future workforce.

Methodology. Multiple sources on the topic were studied and reviewed in this chapter. The idea of skill and its development is discussed in the literature review.

Findings. Different nations’ governments have promoted human capital development by providing up-skilling and retraining programs to balance supply and demand. Skills gaps need to be brought to the attention of stakeholders, such as governments, businesses, and the educational system. Teachers, employers, and other stakeholders need to develop strategies and action plans to ensure that the skills gaps are appropriately identified and adequately addressed. These initiatives must be developed with input from various stakeholders.

Practical Implications. The research results would inform the curriculum, incorporating skill development processes tailored to various scenarios. These findings would aid business organisations in crafting skill development programs that address identified skill gaps. Challenges in skill development would be taken into account during course development, and relevant teaching–learning materials would be created. Key stakeholders, such as accrediting organisations, employers, and students, should exert more influence on academic institutions to prioritise societal demands for economic development.

Originality/Value. The uniqueness and significance of this chapter lie in its concise summary of the strategies to tackle the hurdles in skill development.

The purpose of this study is to investigate manufacturing industry leaders’ perspectives on the prevailing skills gap in the current Illinois workforce. The insights gained hold significant importance for the emerging generation of workers, helping them discern the essential proficiencies and plan their educational and career paths in response.

Guided by Becker’s (1962) human capital theory (HCT) framework, a qualitative study was conducted to identify the skills gap and explore the perspectives of manufacturing industry leaders. Fourteen industry leaders participated in this study, representing various occupational industries.

The findings underscore the prominence of the skills gap as perceived by manufacturing industry leaders, with notable aspects including limited durable skills and difficulty transitioning from content-based knowledge to practical skills.

The findings of this study can offer insights to researchers, scholars and practitioners in the field of human resource development, as well as to leaders in the manufacturing industry who aim to address the skills gap. Furthermore, this research can inform policy decisions and assist higher education institutions in preparing students for careers in the industry.

This paper investigates, theoretically and empirically, differences between blacks and whites in the United States concerning the intergenerational transmission of occupational skills and the effects on sons’ earnings. The father–son skill correlation is measured by the correlation coefficient (or cosine of the angle) between the father’s skill vector and the son’s skill vector. The skill vector comprises an individual’s occupational characteristics from the Dictionary of Occupational Titles (DOT). According to data from the U.S. National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY79), white sons earn higher wages in occupations that require skills similar to those of their fathers, whereas black sons in such circumstances incur a wage loss. A large portion of the racial wage gap is explained by the father–son skill correlation. However, a significant unexplained racial wage gap remains at the lower tail of the wage distribution.

The purpose of this paper is to address the role of cognitive skills and extent of skill use at work in explaining the immigrant–native wage gap in Europe. The study targets immigrant–native disparities in literacy and numeracy cognitive skills, as important, yet not exhaustive factor behind immigrants’ wage penalty.

The research relies on the Program of International Assessment of Adult Competencies data for 15 European countries. The empirical analysis employs multivariate regression analysis and incorporates the full set of plausible values for each skill domain, to correctly measure cognitive skills. To estimate standard errors, the authors employ Jackknife replication methodology with 80 replication weights and final population weight.

The authors document that, on average, immigrants achieve substantially worse scores in literacy and numeracy test domains. Only highly educated immigrants tend to improve their skills over time in host countries. The results of wage gap analysis indicate that having cognitive skills, demographic profile and occupation category comparable to natives does not yield comparable wage rate. The remaining wage gap results from the systematic differences in skills application at work, as immigrants use their skills to lower extent, relative to natives.

The research employs a novel measure of productive human capital, which accounts for cognitive skills in literacy and numeracy domains, and frequencies of skill use at work. It allows to more precisely evaluate the immigrant–native disparity in human capital application and its reflection on the wage rate.

The purpose of this paper is to identify relevant financial concepts and skills that are being taught and/or should be taught, as part of the financial management curriculum in undergraduate agricultural economics and agribusiness programs.

The skill gap analysis uses survey respondents' rankings of the importance and competence scores of recent graduates' skills. The scores help to identify opportunities for improvement in the most critical areas of importance. The skill gap is calculated as (Average importance–Average competence)*Average importance.

Generally, employers in the agricultural financial services sector saw greater opportunities for improvement in finance skills relative to non‐finance skills. The results also indicated a greater focus on business and financial risk might be helpful in increasing the competence of new hires. Finally, respondents strongly endorsed maintaining a focus on the problem‐solving skills in undergraduate agribusiness programs.

The value of the study would be that departments of agricultural and applied economics would use the results of this survey to enhance their financial management curriculum and their undergraduate program. By responding to the desires of employers, agricultural economics and agribusiness programs cannot only remain relevant as a source of employees for the industry but the first choice of agricultural financial services sector when they are searching for new hires. This should also help inform students of the desirability of the skills they acquire in their degree programs. This information will also benefit the agricultural finance services sector by assisting college and university instructors in developing and/or enhancing their agricultural finance course(s) so that the may provide their students with the requisite financial and non‐financial skills that they require.

This paper aims to examine the skills expected by employers and the skills demonstrated by accounting graduates with data from 160 employers of accounting graduates in Ghana. From the perspective of employers, the authors compare the expected skills to the skills demonstrated by accounting graduates and identify any significant gaps.

One-way analysis of variance, T-tests and factor analysis are used to test significant gaps that exist between expected and demonstrated skills by employers and accounting graduates using survey questionnaires and purposive sampling.

The results reveal that there are significant gaps between the expected skills of employers and the demonstrated skills of accounting graduates. The authors find generic skills to be more expected by employers, while technical skills are demonstrated most by accounting graduates. The top five skills expected by employers are: business ethics and integrity; problem solving and decision analysis; written communication skills; learning skills; and application of accounting principles.

The study focuses only on organizations that use fresh accounting graduates in Ghana. Further studies may consider other business-related fields like finance, human resource management and marketing.

The study provides insights on standards that serve as benchmarks for the conduct of accounting graduates as well as the development of accounting curriculum in Ghana. Accounting education should incorporate work-integrated learning as part of their curriculum to enable accounting graduates to solve problems and make decisions through a practical application of accounting principles, standards and concepts, especially in conducting audit and writing reports.

This study fills the gap in the literature on accounting education from employers’ perspectives in a developing country. It conducts a comparative analysis between the most important skills required by employers and the ones demonstrated by accounting graduates to provide insights on standards that should serve as benchmarks for the development of the accounting curriculum from an emerging economy perspective.

This paper aims to focus on Master of Business Administration (MBA) alumni and their ability to provide institution-specific insights into MBA program delivery. Given desired MBA positioning dimensions, a case exemplar is used to reveal gaps between “should have” program emphases and “actual” emphases. Departures from expectations are used to reveal either under- or over-emphases which require repair.

The study develops a gap assessment procedure and the theory of gaps, and it presents insights into the prioritization of gaps for closing through the revelation of gap themes of varying magnitude. It also reveals the benefits and the limitations of emphasis-based gap assessments. Additionally, the study addresses the complexity of creating the dimensional structure for MBA program gap revelation.

This paper reports on the issues of framing dimensions, including the possibility of dimensional omissions, with a particular emphasis on the utilization of an emphasis-based gap model within an a priori identified structure.

The methodological approach provides a blueprint for additional program review, and it produces a strong structural base for MBA program positioning. It is also is particularly important in evaluating newly created one-year MBA programs.

The work reveals the potential for the revelation of both under- and over-emphases in MBA program delivery and the possible issue of sub-optimization in gap closing (i.e. the closing of one gap while opening another).