Rhetoric but Whose Reality? the Influence of Employability Messages on Employee Mobility Tactics and Work Group Identification Rhetoric but Whose Reality? the Influence of Employability Messages on Employee Mobility Tactics and Work Group Identification

Over the last decade, employability has been presented by its advocates as the solution to employment uncertainty, and by its critics as a management rhetoric possessing little relevance to the experiences of most workers. This article suggests that while employability has failed to develop into a key research area, a deeper probing of its message is warranted. In particular, it is suggested that employability may have resonance with employees as workers rather than as employees of their immediate employing organisation. This demands a slightly different approach to studying employability than some other related phenomena such as employee commitment which has resonance only in relation to the employing organization. In adopting a social identity approach, the significance of the employability message is shown not only to lie in employees’ willingness to disassociate from their existing work groups and pursue individual mobility, but also in its capacity to undermine workers’ collective responses to grievances and unwanted organizational changes. A future research agenda is presented which highlights the need to address recent attempts to develop employability expectations among graduate career entrants, and for a closer critical engagement with management writings that attempt to justify the unnecessary espousal of the self development message. Introduction Over the last decade, the concept of employability has been frequently espoused both by managers and some academics as a critical idea affecting how employees and employers should respond to the changes facing work, employment and organizations. With the core idea of employability being that workers continually develop their skills to retain their attractiveness in the labour market, its claimed importance has been in offering a response to recent problems facing the employment relationship brought about by flatter structures, periodic unemployment as a normal work experience, more frequent skills obsolescence, and fewer career opportunities. Put simply, employability has come to the fore as a solution to the dilemma of what can now be offered to workers in the face of shrinking career opportunities and the passing of stable employment (Barley, 1996). For employers the appeal of employability is said to lie in replacing organizational career, promotion and security with a ‘new definition of the employee-employer relationship (which) offers employees the opportunity to develop themselves and increase their employability in return for the increased skills and output required of