Proceedings of the International Conference on Industrial Engineering and Operations Management Bandung, Indonesia, March 6-8, 2018 © IEOM Society International Self-Responsibility in Employability Competencies Development: Perceptions from Australian Engineering Student and Alumni Daudi Lazarus Department of Electrical and Information Engineering Pontianak State Polytechnic (POLNEP), West Kalimantan, Indonesia Email: daudilazarus.polnep@gmail.com, d.lazarus@polnep.ac.id Abstract As the competencies demanded by the labour market has changed, engineering graduates have to proactively be self-responsible by participating in competency-enhancing activities to possess competencies needed by the labour market. Without any learners’ sense of self-responsibility (SR), competency development only creates low quality engineering graduates. Therefore, this study examines the perceptions of 1056 students and alumni of Australian engineering schools regarding SR in their employability competencies development process. Findings show that the engagements of both participants were extrinsically motivated. However, the alumni participants had internalised their extrinsic motivations into positive behaviours, including self-initiation, persistence, motivation and independency. As a consequence, the alumni participants felt a greater sense that SR is an integral part of themselves, expressed through their capability to be self-initiated, highly persistent, motivated and independent in navigating their competency development without relying on their friends, families or instructors. In relation to the external circumstances affecting the perceptions of SR, the participants did not associate their perspective of SR with their prior development experience in high schools but rather they associated it with their recent experiences within the engineering school environments. This finding has implications for how SR could help learners at university level to internalise their external motivations. Keywords – Self-Responsibility, employability, competencies development, engineering graduates, Australian engineering students 1. Introduction When we talk about Self-Responsibility, several similar terms have been used within the educational context explaining the idea the personal responsibility of an individual to his/her actions. Allan (2006), for instance, conducted a quantitative study with a sample of 286 Australian students to measure their understanding about personal responsibility for learning. He found that responsibility is related with a capability of an individual to be autonomous and to self-control the learning process. In this regard, Mergler (2007) developed a construct which help adolescents and teachers comprehend the concept of personal responsibility. She argued that personal responsibility is related to one’s awareness and control over four components, namely: 1. Thoughts and feelings, 2. The choices, 3. The outcomes and 4. The impacts. Comprehensively, personal responsibility has been defined as “[the] readiness to account for oneself and one’s interiorized social judgment, not only for one’s own actions, but also and above all for what one is, and so for one’s personal qualities and dispositions. It is expressed in a constant readiness of the person to bear the social consequences of their actions” (Ciechanowska, 2014, p. 4). Through her definition, Ciechanowska linked student’s personal responsibility with his/her readiness for deeply integrating new construed information with the existing concepts. Despite of these studies, less attention is given by experts and scholars in the field of employability in to the research on SR. “Supporting students in their development seems to be marginalized in recent years … [because most people see] universities as a place to build economic capital … [where it] has become important only in the perspective of its usefulness and measurable financial and economic accountability (Ciechanowska, 2014, p. 2). This argumentation 495