Segmented Skilling: Static and Dynamic 'New Economy' Skills

Abstract

There are at least three problems in the measurement of skill - aggregation, dynamism, and codification. Skill is an individual and collective capacity, expressed in performance and reflected in outcomes. Aggregate measures relying on proxies such as occupational entry qualifications may not provide the best picture of segmentation and mobility processes. Statistics on training effort have the potential to create a misleading picture of an industry's or firm's commitment to skill-based innovation by failing to distinguish ad-hoc, just-in-time measures to maintain the current capability of a firm's workforce from interventions designed to develop a creative, adaptive capability. To be measured, skills must first be named. Workplace-level skill development requires frameworks for identifying growth opportunities. In exploring these three problems in the Australian and New Zealand context, the paper proposes a dynamic framework for classifying approaches to skilling (not confined to formal trading) on the basis of their contributions to adaptive capability, proposing three types of skill: threshold, platform and growth. The codification problem is particularly severe in 'new economy' service industries, and the paper critiques the attempt to capture under-specified service skills in concepts such as 'soft skills' or 'employability skills.' It suggests an alternative framework for classifying the adaptive and generative processes of workplace learning and their outcomes - an analysis that may have relevance beyond the service sector.