Skill Formation

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'I don't know where they learn them': skills in film and television

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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

Whatever Happened to Skill?

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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

Clear, rigorous and relevant: publishing quantitative research articles in work, employment and society

According to the recent benchmarking review of the discipline, UK sociological research is predominantly based around qualitative research methods (BSA/HaPS/ESRC 2010: 23). Further, evidence suggests that the overwhelming majority of empirical articles published in mainstream UK sociology journals are qualitative in their focus (Payne 2007: 903). In this context, WES has always been something of an outlier within UK sociology in that a relatively high proportion of articles published in the journal employ quantitative analysis (Rainbird and Rose 2007: 212; Stuart et al 2013:382). However, one consequence of the relative neglect of quantitative methods within UK sociology is that there is a lack of shared understanding about what constitutes appropriate ways of framing and presenting quantitative sociological analysis. This lack of shared understanding can then create problems for researchers seeking to publish articles based on quantitative research, because in contrast to social science disciplines where quantitative analysis is the norm, there is no clear, well established template or set of expectations for quantitative sociological research articles

Managerial work and management training : a critique of the Management NVQs

This thesis is a critical evaluation of the Management NVQ at level 4. It draws on two principal sources of literature: accounts and analyses of the nature of managerial work; and observations and critiques of Competence Based Education and Training (CBET). The Management NVQ is an attempt to set out, in behavioural terms, the activities managers engage in. These may then be used to assist individual development and assess competent performance in managerial work. This study starts by considering contemporary academic accounts of managerial work. Drawing on these, it argues that management may subsume such a wide variety of tasks, roles and responsibilities that attempts to define it in functional terms are unlikely to succeed. Moreover, such attempts do little to distinguish the peculiarly managerial aspect of management work. By contrast, the writings of more radical theoreticians, which focus on the power and authority that managers exercise, provide a far more resilient basis for distinguishing managers from their non-managerial peers. Clearly, this theoretical construction of managerial work is in marked contrast to the model put forward in the Management NVQ and that conflict is explored here. Since this study sought to focus on the NVQ's educational contribution at an individual level, an ethnographic approach was adopted in the fieldwork. Three exemplary case studies were sought out, since in these, the contribution of a competence-based approach to training and development might better be evaluated, and eighteen candidates followed through the qualification. Throughout the study, in all three organisations, the activities that these candidates engaged in, were driven by the demands of the NVQ. The conduct of the workshops, the increasing levels of paperwork in the candidates' workplaces and the emphasis on systems and procedures were all inspired by the need to supply documentary proof of managerial competence. Ultimately, most of the candidates observed in this study failed to do this successfully and gain their NVQs, and the nature of NVQ assessment, together with its impact on the candidates is considered. Finally, the thesis concludes by arguing that many of the problems noted here stem from the rigid and performance-oriented way NVQs are constructed and, consequently, many of the difficulties reported in this study may be expected elsewhere