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Reasons for the importance of
skills development in a
globalized economy |
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First, globalization is leading
to increasing international
standardization of educational
challenges and systems.
Second, international
organizations increasingly
emphasize a largely common
program of competence
development and lifelong
learning.
Third, the widespread adoption
of international conventions
that form the normative basis
for the competencies. |
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Globalization and technological
change |
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The rate of technological
advance has accelerated at an
unprecedented pace, accordingly,
the development of skills
through training should be the
strategic response to
technological change,
globalization and other forces
affecting labor markets.
The new generation of
technology, especially
information and communications
technologies and certain
manufacturing processes has
likely effect on productivity
and on the demand for workers
with higher-level skills and
broader workplace competencies,
who can command higher wages.
The introduction of new
technologies has reduced the
demand for unskilled labor and
raised the value of advanced
skills and competencies in the
industrialized economies.
In the services sector
technological change has created
new categories of high-skilled
occupations in health care,
information processing, and
finance and business services;
in the goods-producing sector
too, the emphasis is now less on
physical strength and adherence
to routine and more on workers'
behavior, flexibility and
initiative.
Work practices associated
with increased employee
involvement – such as the
introduction of high-performance
work organization involving
devolved decision-making, and
reliance on team-based systems –
are perhaps the most important
of the management practices
affecting skill requirements.
Self-managed teams in particular
transfer management skills to
front-line workers as they are
exposed to the tasks other team
members are performing. |
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Globalization and job
instability |
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The pressure to sell off
unrelated operations and to buy
new ones as strategies change,
to reduce costs, especially
fixed costs, to shorten
production runs and to make
production more flexible all
have a pervasive effect on
employment, of which downsizing
– permanent job reductions
driven mostly by corporate
restructuring – has received
most attention. It is a process
that differs significantly from
the layoffs of earlier periods
that were caused by recessions
and were largely temporary.
The job insecurity that has
followed has often affected
people in the traditionally most
stable jobs in the "primary"
sectors of the labor market.
Employee turnover is an
important measure of the extent
to which employment
relationships have changed.
There is some evidence that
occupational attachment is
increasing even as tenure with a
given employer may be declining,
and this raises the whole issue
of investment in continuous
training.
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Globalization and Non-standard
forms of work |
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Another important labour market
consequence of restructuring is
the growth of non-standard forms
of work, defined as part-time
employment, temporary or
contingent work, and
self-employed individuals
working as independent
contractors.
Enterprises face two basic
pressures to expand non-standard
work. The first is the pressure
to shift labour from a fixed to
a variable cost, particularly in
countries where collective
agreements increase the fixed
costs of employment or when the
labour legislation does not
cover non-standard forms of
work. The second is to shift
work away from high-cost
internal labour markets to more
competitive, lower-cost external
labour markets |
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Reliance on the external labour
market |
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Restructuring and the
availability of qualified
workers seeking better-paid jobs
have also encouraged enterprises
to recruit on the external
labour market in order to
procure new skills rapidly and
meet increased competition. |
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Globalization and the informal
sector |
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Non-standard work has increased
in many developing countries as
informal sector employment has
grown. While the labour force in
these countries has grown fast,
little of that growth has been
in the formal sector. The
reasons are many and include
faltering economic and
productivity growth and an
unstable political and
macroeconomic environment that
is not conducive to investment.
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Formal and informal education
and training can greatly enhance
incomes and living conditions in
the informal sector, when linked
to other measures to improve
productivity, safety, working
conditions and product quality.
How national education and
training policies' programs can
effectively reach informal
sector entrepreneurs and workers
and encourage them to make the
necessary investment in terms of
time, effort and resources is
one of the issues that needs to
be discussed.
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