“Soft skills” in foreign studies: Sociological, marketing and educational approaches

Abstract

The article presents a wide range of foreign studies on the influence of soft skills on the success of business environment in the context of the dynamics of “soft skills” development. The subject of thematic analysis includes business research, sociological measurement data, information from career centers, a management perspective, academic research, and educational technologies. The heterogeneity of the fields of analysis is due to the authors’ twofold aim: to present the understanding of soft skills in the academic environment and to characterize the models of their formation at different stages of education and working life. In this regard, professional groups of students and workers (programmers, construction workers, MBA students) were analyzed, and significant differences in the amounts and sequences of their soft skills acquisition were revealed. Scientific works that propose variants of soft skills taxonomy are studied; attention is paid to objective difficulties in formalizing personalized competences. The conclusion is formulated that today the efforts of foreign research thought regarding the systematization of soft skills are fixed on the enumerative (non-hierarchical) principle, as evidenced by numerous lists of soft skills in Western and Asian interdisciplinary studies, while the problem of soft skills formation requires their clear ranking. In general, the article can be addressed both to researchers studying “soft skills” and their indicators within a particular professional group, and to scientists analyzing the general understanding of soft skills that has been consolidated in foreign scientific literature over the last two decades.