SOFT SKILLS AS CULTURAL CAPITAL: BRIDGING ACADEMIA AND INDUSTRY THROUGH EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING AND SUSTAINABLE BEHAVIORAL CHANGE

Soft skills are an essential type of cultural capital that has been instrumental in facilitating the process of bridging the gap between the educational and the professional experience in modern management education. This paper redefines the concept of soft skills training as experiential learning and cultural adjustment, which is needed to encourage long-term behavior change in future managers. The study incorporates the Four-Level Training Evaluation Model created by Kirkpatrick with the Structural Equations Modeling (SEM) in order to investigate the efficacy of soft skills teaching among 188 MBA students with different academic socialization levels. The results show that training in soft skills contributed greatly to internship performance (Impact 2 mean = 2.36; p < 0.001), behavioral internalization (Behavior mean = 1.81; p < 0.001), and long-term socio-professional resilience (Results mean = 1.64; p < 0.001). The reliability of the integrated model was confirmed by a Confirmatory Factor Analysis (0.83). The analysis indicates that students in the technical streams were initially perceived to have adaptation gaps and their learning curves were steepest in reflective and context-rich pedagogies. Mentor ratings also supported the behavioral change, which showed a perception-performance discrepancy which reinforced the social learning concept of competence development. The paper suggests a proven, scalable model of integrating experiential modules of soft skills, 360-feedback and mentorship-based learning into management education as a tool of cultural and institutional change. Connecting the idea of employability to the concept of social adaptability, the study places soft skills in a new context of professional property; however, it shows that they are the forces of sustainable educational and workplace culture.