Participative Leadership and Youth Employability in Sidama Public TVET Colleges, Ethiopia: Explanatory Sequential Mediation by Staff Commitment, Industry Linkage, and Cooperative Training.

Youth unemployment in Ethiopia stands at approximately 25%, with only 38% of Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET) graduates in Sidama Regional State securing wage employment within two years of graduation despite substantial government investment. This mixed-methods study examined how participative leadership influences youth employability through staff commitment, industry linkage, and cooperative training in 14 public TVET colleges. Quantitative analysis (N = 443; Structural Equation Modeling with 5,000 bootstrap samples) revealed that participative leadership significantly predicted industry linkage (β = 0.61) and cooperative training (β = 0.23), with industry linkage serving as a significant mediator (indirect effect = 0.17). Notably, staff commitment did not significantly predict employability (β = 0.08, p = 0.182), explained qualitatively as organizational loyalty divorced from employment outcomes. Cooperative training emerged as the strongest predictor of employability (β = 0.38), with a significant sequential mediation pathway (indirect effect = 0.13) through industry linkage. The model explained 46% of variance in graduate employability. Theoretical contributions include extending participative leadership theory to TVET contexts, challenging organizational commitment assumptions through 'goal-aligned commitment,' and operationalizing the Capability Approach in educational leadership. Practical recommendations emphasize college leaders prioritizing industry linkage development, regional bureaus increasing institutional autonomy, and industry partners engaging actively with colleges. The study demonstrates that participative leadership improves graduate employability primarily through building industry linkages that enable high-quality cooperative training.