Employability characteristics and their impact on social impact: An exploratory study on women's small social enterprises

Ali Al-Tahitah; Mohammed Ali Al-Awlaqi; Nasser Habtoor; Saib Sallam Thabet; Mohammed Abdulrab; Ishaq Ibrahim

doi:10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21178

Employability characteristics and their impact on social impact: An exploratory study on women's small social enterprises

Heliyon. 2023 Oct 18;9(11):e21178. doi: 10.1016/j.heliyon.2023.e21178. eCollection 2023 Nov.

Authors

Ali Al-Tahitah¹, Mohammed Ali Al-Awlaqi², Nasser Habtoor³, Saib Sallam Thabet⁴, Mohammed Abdulrab⁵, Ishaq Ibrahim¹

Affiliations

¹ Islamic Science University of Malaysia, Malaysia.
² Lebanese International University, Yemen.
³ University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.
⁴ Sana'a University, Yemen.
⁵ Community College of Qatar, Qatar.

Abstract

This study seeks to understand and explore how women social entrepreneurs select their employees and how this can affect their social impact. This study has two objectives. The first is to explore the most attractive employees' employability characteristics chosen by women entrepreneurs. The second objective was to explore the relationship between employability characteristics and the social impact of the social enterprises. This study used an exploratory quantitative paradigm to reach the study's findings. Multiple correspondence analysis (MCA) explores employability characteristics the women social entrepreneurs select and the relationship between the selected employability characteristics and the social impact of the women's social enterprises. The data were collected using a cross-sectional questionnaire. Data were collected from 382 employees working in 174 female social enterprises. Women social entrepreneurs were found to prefer employees with high interpersonal skills, high ethics, high physical abilities, high abilities to learn, high implicit knowledge, high reliability, and low soft skills. Linking these employability skills to social impact revealed that implicit knowledge and interpersonal skills are the most influential. A paucity of research discusses how women social entrepreneurs recruit their employees. This problem is getting worse when it comes to small social enterprises. This study led to a discussion about employability characteristics in women's social enterprises and their impact on social impact.

Keywords: Employability characteristics; Exploratory study; Multiple correspondence analysis; Women's social entrepreneurship; Yemen; social impact.