This research focuses on the relationship between higher education and the world of work to situate and examine dynamics of change and organizational adaptation of Chilean universities through the development of new management capacities associated with a global employability agenda.To this end; the emergence and spread of employability as a concept; practice and political instrument in higher education worldwide was analysed. The Chilean case was looked into as an iconic example of the economic transformations that the global university sector is currently experimenting. A detailed empiric examination of the main aspects of the discourses on employability in Chile was carried out. The national scenario was described in terms of the insertion and functioning of new management capacities to boost employability at universities. Finally; the origin; development and status of these organisational capacities in relation to the evolution of the formal structure of said organisations was studied in depth.The results allow for the visualisation of significant effects of pressures that comes from universities’ institutional environments. At the same time; it reveals ways in which market disputes become opaque and are ideologically neutralised under the blanket of supposedly shared global aspirations; such as what occurs with the employability agenda.
