Using importance–performance analysis to bridge the information gap between industry and higher education

Abstract

The goal of this viewpoint article is to introduce, critically analyse and further develop importance–performance analysis (IPA) as a framework through which strategic management recommendations can be extracted for higher education institutions. The article introduces a new method of combining the perspectives of two significant groups to bridge the information gap between industry and higher education by exploring the results of two differing IPA variants from the context of sport management. The first IPA matches the importance and performance of future competencies based on statements solely derived from the labour market. The second explores the same importance measures in comparison to performance measures derived from current graduates. The authors discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each analysis and recommend the use of this framework in the effort to decrease the existing information asymmetry between industry and higher education.