National Vocational Qualifications in the United Kingdom: a research based critique

YesThis article evaluates the British system of NVQs, focusing on their capacity to increase skill levels. It reviews the way NVQs were designed and argues that they are ill-equipped to encourage knowledge and skills, partly because they simply replicate the weaknesses which currently exist in the labour market and partly because of the focus on observed workplace behaviours. NVQs were intended to be 'employer-led' and the assumptions underpinning their design are unitarist. In contrast, the German apprenticeship system is developed and implemented by pluralist consortia and results in qualifications that are far better equipped to support skill levels

'Real' managers don't do NVQs: a review of the new management 'standards'

In 1997 the Management Charter Initiative (MCI) officially launched the new Management NVQs (National Vocational Qualifications), benchmarks which attempted to describe the work performed by British managers. This article is a review of those qualifications. It remembers some of the main problems associated with the original Management NVQs and, drawing on some of the best theoretical and empirical accounts of managerial work, argues that the new qualifications have failed to live up to the MCI¿s original promise, to assist the development and training of managers

Fragmented (working) lives

The paper considers Richard Sennett’s (1998) claims about the ways in which the traits of contemporary capitalism have impacted on personal and professional lives of people. It examines some of the main themes such as reduction of working lives, pressure on personal lives, emphasis on youth, devaluation of experience, demise of authority and teamwork, in the light of data from the film and TV industry. The data resonates with much of Sennett’s concern that when ‘pieces of work’ and ‘lumps of labour’ become the norm, people’s sense of who they are is corroded and (fragmented) work becomes a destabilising factor in one’s life. Considering the wider significance of such trends, questions are raised as to how symptomatic this type of employment is and whether it is indicative of the future of work in the Western societies

The future of professional work? The rise of the `network form¿ and the decline of discretion

This article explores the implications of `networked¿ and `flexible¿ organisations for the work and skills of professionals. Drawing on material from four different case studies it reviews work that is out-sourced (IT professionals and housing benefit caseworkers), work done by teachers contracted to a temporary employment agency and work done through an inter-firm network (chemical production workers). In each of these cases work that was out-sourced was managed very differently to that which was undertaken in-house, with managerial monitoring replacing and reducing employees¿ discretion. New staff in these networks had fewer skills when hired and were given access to a narrower range of skills than their predecessors. By contrast, the production staff employed on permanent contracts in the inter-firm network were given (and took) significant amounts of responsibility, with positive results for both their skills and the work processes. Despite these results, out-sourcing and sub-contracting are a far more common means of securing flexibility than organisational collaboration and the implications of this for skills is considered

The Role of Relapse Prevention and Goal Setting in Training Transfer Enhancement

This article reviews the effect of two post-training transfer interventions (relapse prevention [RP] and goal setting [GS]) on trainees’ ability to apply skills gained in a training context to the workplace. Through a review of post-training transfer interventions literature, the article identifies a number of key issues that remain unresolved or underexplored, for example, the inconsistent results on the impact of RP on transfer of training, the lack of agreement on which GS types are more efficient to improve transfer performance, the lack of clarity about the distinction between RP and GS, and the underlying process through which these two post-training transfer interventions influence transfer of training. We offer some recommendations to overcome these problems and also provide guidance for future research on transfer of training

Skills in the green economy: recycling promises in the UK e-waste management sector

In advanced economies the ‘greening’ of the economy is widely seen as promising extensive job creation and upskilling, alongside its other benefits. In popular and policy rhetoric, the growing importance of ‘green skills’ is asserted frequently. This paper critically examines these claims within the context of the electronic waste management sector in the UK. Drawing on the cases of a non profit organisation and a small private enterprise in North West England, we observe that despite government support for developing skills in e-waste, both the development and utilisation of skills remain minimal. Critically, the relatively more skill-intensive process of reuse is substantially less profitable than recycling and resource capture. The paper concludes by noting that the expectations from the green economy for high quality jobs need to be assessed within the context of similar, misplaced celebrations of previous transformations of work in order to avoid recycling the same promises