This study demonstrates that work context matters in the consideration of skills. Workplaces are complex, dynamic social systems that defy simplistic categorization of skills and straightforward matching of skill requirements to jobs. The study provides a rich picture of skills and dispositions in the workplace, and offers the following general findings:
Although our sample of jobs and worksites is small, the issues raised in this research are not unique to these cases. Many organizations are grappling with changes in the business environment and feel pressures to respond. Many believe that they need workers with different kinds of skills than in the past and feel frustrated that educational institutions are not preparing individuals to face the challenges presented in the modern workplace. The conclusions we draw, then, can provide interesting and instructive examples from which others can learn.
The following sections recap our main findings and conclusions and draw implications for school reform, skill standards, and further research. One theme that arises repeatedly is the tension between different conceptions of skills and skill requirements. Public policy and discourse about skills remain rooted in a conception of skill requirements that downplays or ignores the work context. By taking a sociocultural approach to the problem, we hope to illuminate the limitations of research and policy that do not take sociocultural perspectives into account. This is one step toward expanding the public policy discourse.
The concepts of generic skills and work-related dispositions, as defined in this report, are salient to the workers, supervisors, and managers who took part in this study. Skills such as communications, problem solving, working as part of a team, and positive dispositions toward work are readily observed across different jobs, and, according to study participants, are essential to effective performance.
However, whereas generic skills and dispositions are identifiable in all jobs, their specific characteristics and importance vary among jobs. The characteristics of problem solving, teamwork, communication, and disposition are related to job demands, which in turn depend on the purpose of the work, the tasks that constitute the job, the organization of the work, and other aspects of the work context.
The fact that generic skills and dispositions vary has several implications for employers. One concerns job candidate selection. The available survey data indicate that employers believe that generic skills and dispositions (referred to as attitudes in most employer surveys) are important, and they place a high value on such skills in choosing among job candidates (NCEQW, 1995; Cappelli and Rogowsky, 1995). According to the most recent national survey, employers making hiring decisions rated an applicant's communication skills and attitudes higher than previous work experience, employer recommendations, industry-based credentials, and several schooling variables (e.g., tests, academic performance, teacher recommendations) (NCEQW, 1995).
These survey findings suggest that employers use general capacities like "communication" and "attitudes" as a screen to distinguish between job candidates. In comparison to other available evidence that employers might have, such as degrees earned, previous experience, teacher recommendations, and so on, "communication skills" and "attitudes" are not only more subjective, but employers can presumably assess them only during a face-to-face job interview. Our study, however, shows that communication skills or dispositions actually employed on the job can be very specific--for example, the negotiation skills exhibited by construction inspectors or the bedside manners of home health workers--and that they are strongly context dependent. "Communication" in an interview, then, seems a weak indicator of communications skills potentially employed on the job.
If employers want to use "communication" or "attitudes" as indicators of a job applicant's suitability, it makes sense to replace these broad, ambiguous terms with more specific descriptions. Better information about skills on the job can presumably be used to construct a finer screen, but would require employers to possess deeper knowledge about "communications" and "attitudes" in the work context. In our study, some employers had such knowledge and used it in an interview setting to screen applicants. Managers and supervisors of traffic signal technicians, for example, sought candidates who liked to used their hands and to solve problems. They reported asking job candidates if they worked on their own car, operated ham radios, or had other hobbies or interests that might show these skills. The managers we spoke to were former signal techs themselves and, like the incumbent techs we observed, identified "tinkering" as an important characteristic of a traffic signal technician. Managers who understand work practice can use that knowledge to refine hiring and selection criteria, whether such criteria are subjective or quantifiable.[30]
Employers and trainers can also use more specific information about generic skills and dispositions to support learning on the job or to improve training practices. Employers value teamwork--but all teams do not work alike, and some teams created by workers are invisible to managers. Some teams we observed had role and knowledge interdependencies that were formalized by job designations (survey crew) or regulation (home health care), while others were created by the workers themselves (construction inspectors and test technicians). We find similar variations in the types of problem solving, communications skills, and dispositions needed to function in different jobs and in different organizations.
We conclude that very general terms like problem solving, communications, teamwork, and attitudes are too broad or ambiguous to be of much use to employers for either screening or training. Employers report that "communication skills" and "attitudes" are essential, but these terms can refer only to a job candidate's general comportment at an interview, not specific skill requirements translatable to the job.
Our study suggests that employers do not uniformly possess accurate or useful knowledge of the skills required in their technical workforce. Managers far removed from the frontline workforce sometimes underestimate the capabilities of workers or have varying opinions about work requirements (e.g., test cell associates viewed their work as constantly changing; human resource staff called it repetitive). Transportation agency managers underestimated the capabilities of its frontline workforce to carry out planned changes to adopt TQM because they did not understand the quality control nature of inspection work.
Managers and supervisors who come up through the ranks are more articulate about specific skill requirements and have a sense of which capabilities could "make or break" success on the job (e.g., tinkerers make better traffic signal technicians; home health providers must accept supervision). Since generic skills and dispositions function in concert with job-specific knowledge and work context, employers with more specific knowledge can provide better information for designing instruction activities to teach skills. This has implications for school reform proposals, as discussed below.
In the firms and jobs we studied, managers generally felt that the supply of skilled labor was adequate to meet their employment needs. Selection and hiring policies, however, often constrained hiring decisions (e.g., in home health) or gave supervisors and managers little information about an applicant's job-related skills (e.g., traffic signal technicians). Some were operating under conditions of austerity that prevented any hiring at all; many departments were understaffed, with workers spread thin.
Employers and employees in all the firms felt that training on the job was essential to learn the job in the first place or to keep up with the pace of change. But only two--the health care agency and the microprocessor manufacturing firm--made any significant investment in formal training. In these firms, dedicated trainers, training classes, career paths linked to acquiring higher skill levels, and other policies indicated a commitment to training.
Other firms had policies that might contribute to skill development but did not always do so. Job rotation policies to support training for traffic signal technicians were, by management's own admittance, not always followed. And techs had little regard for the few opportunities offered for vendor training, which they saw as primarily sales pitches. Policies to attain certification (for construction inspectors at TA) or to gain technical knowledge and skills (for traffic signal techs) were only partially supported through reimbursement or time off the job. Since job-related courses did not affect workers' salaries, not every tech was motivated to invest in further education and training. Managers in firms making fewer training investments--transportation construction and traffic management--expressed openly their frustration in having few training resources and seemed resigned to do what they could with what they had.
Even when formal, firm-sponsored training is absent, however, workers continue to learn on the job. Structured on-the-job training originated in the tradition of apprenticeship to prepare craft workers. In our study, OJT was carried out within communities of practice that took up the slack when formal training was not provided or failed. For survey inspectors, the training provided by the union and by other crew members on the job was the only conceivable way to learn and grow as a surveyor: surveyors believed OJT was superior to any classroom training.[31] The expectation that inspectors would train themselves (beyond what they learned in union school) was the norm for both survey inspectors and construction management. The community of practice that supported training of traffic signal technicians and construction inspectors, however, was not always visible to higher management. In some cases (e.g., signal technicians), management policies seemed to undermine rather than support an atmosphere in which experts guided newcomers in the work.
This study's findings have several implications for school reform proposals to improve youth preparation for and transition to work. Many reforms encourage closer cooperation and collaboration between education providers and employers through education-industry partnerships. Such partnerships are expected to help education providers define the knowledge and skills that new workplaces demand in order to design appropriate instructional programs. This study suggests first that employers do not uniformly possess accurate or useful knowledge of skill needs; thus the individuals who work with schools should be carefully selected. It further suggests that skills must be defined more specifically than in the past, in a way that is sensitive to differences associated with jobs and work settings. At the present time, broad teaching of workplace competencies is hampered by the lack of instructional materials that put them in the work context (SCANS, 1992) and the absence of staff development programs that help teachers learn about skills in work practice (Stasz et al., 1993).
We also note that employers in this study had weak connections to schools. They did not consider community colleges or other providers as potential sources of new technical workers. Existing relationships centered on providing job-related skills or certifications to incumbent workers (e.g., certifications for construction inspectors, technical training for traffic signal technicians). The weak link between employers and education providers in this study is similarly noted by Grubb and his colleagues in their analysis of the subbaccalaureate labor market (Grubb et al., 1992).
Some employers (and workers) were of the general opinion that American schools do a poor job or have declined since they were in school. Traffic signal technicians and their supervisors generally felt that traffic signal work was too specialized and could be learned only through experience on the job. Managers wanted employees with a background in electronics or digital systems, but did not expect any amount of school learning to substitute for learning on the job. On the other hand, they wanted technicians to take advantage of employee assistance programs to go back to school to gain more technical skills. Managers had no funds to conduct their own training, but employees could be reimbursed for taking job-related courses. Course taking was encouraged in the absence of a firm-based training strategy. Other employers (HA and TA) had partnership relationships with high schools, but these were not seen as sources for potential workers in the departments or jobs we studied.
In sum, firms generally had low regard for high school education, few connections with schools at any level, and saw no urgent reason to pursue these connections. They encouraged employees to upgrade their skills through coursework, in part as a substitute for formal job training. Our findings suggest that reforms relying on partnerships between education and industry to create a more effective U.S. education and training system may be overly ambitious. At the very least, reformers must recognize that building such partnerships may not be easy. For school-to-work reforms to become widespread it will be important to understand what incentives might encourage employers to pursue and maintain such partnerships (see Bailey, 1995).
The skill standards movement represents another reform effort wherein reformers hope to effect changes in education that extend to the workplace. A recent review by Bailey and Merritt (unpublished) notes the progress made thus far to develop a foundation for the development of a broader system of skill standards and raises questions about current federally funded efforts. One limitation is the approach used to identify standards: most projects relied on job-analysis methods that delineate skills and narrowly defined task lists but ignore work organization and context factors. For the most part, workers played an advisory role in the pilot projects and were often brought into the process only after a complete draft of the standards had been developed. Their job was to "validate" what was already on the list (Bailey and Merritt, unpublished). Any approaches failing to take account of the social construction of work practice will produce only partial and incomplete information about the generic skills and dispositions that employers seem to care about the most.
Another rationale behind the skill standards movement is to create a better certification system for the participating industries. A certification system can indicate to students what they must learn, provide motivation for acquiring particular skills needed in the workforce, and provide better access to a national labor market (if certifications are portable and recognized nationally). While these arguments are logical, studies of whether certification has the desired effects are lacking. Some industries have been certified for a long time--health is a good example--but research has not systematically examined how certification in these industries affects outcomes of interest, or whether voluntary certification--which the federal legislation supports--in different industries would have similar effects.
In our study, voluntary certification was primarily used in transportation construction to demonstrate to the public and outside critics that the workforce met some industry-defined skill standard. According to respondents, certification reinforces the perception that workers are qualified, and this perception is important in an expensive project under constant public scrutiny such as the TA. The construction firms cooperated with the TA's desire to certify 90 percent of the workforce, but most respondents did not believe that certification affected job performance one way or the other. Industry certification was also available for survey inspectors and traffic signal technicians, but it was not required for job placement and rarely sought by workers. Further research on the current use of voluntary standards and certification may be useful to the federally funded pilot projects and other groups developing skill standards.
The findings from this study suggest several related directions for future policy-relevant research and development, in addition to those previously mentioned. Most urgent is work that continues to explore skills and skill requirements from a sociocultural perspective, particularly in the kinds of high-performance work environments that are expected to promote productivity and economic health. Recent anthropological studies provide deeper inquiries about how people actually work and how workplaces shape work and learning, but many more are needed. Our study also suggests that particular attention be paid to the role and function of communities of practice in organizations and how they contribute to learning, standard setting, efficiency, and the like.
Further research on the role of noncognitive factors such as dispositions or interpersonal characteristics for learning and performance on the job is sorely needed. It seems essential to understand the acculturation process by which dispositions are learned or modified; the nature of this process will affect whether and how public policy has a role to play in helping to improve the acquisition and development of work-related dispositions.
At the same time, tools for measuring and assessing skills in context need to be developed. Long-term ethnographic studies are essential to build our knowledge base, but are an impractical alternative to job analysis methods. Some recent research and development efforts are exploring alternatives to traditional task and job analysis methods by examining, for example, the implications of cognitive psychology for analyzing tasks and measuring job performance (e.g., Black, 1994; Black et al., 1995; Glaser, Lesgold, and Gott, 1991). In addition, there is need for validity studies of new skill taxonomies such as those developed by SCANS or the federally funded skill standards projects that link skill standards to productivity standards. These or other research efforts should at least provide guidance for determining the differential requirements for skills across jobs, even if they cannot predict how skills (or lack of them) affect performance.
Although public education is criticized for failing to adequately prepare youth for the labor market and thereby undermining the country's ability to compete in the global economy, much less attention is paid to conditions of work and employment that also undermine competitiveness. In just the small sample of firms and jobs that we examined, several other factors besides worker skills clearly affected job performance. Since workers' skills alone can not account for any firm's shortcomings in performance, by extension, educational reform alone will not solve America's economic problems (see Barley, 1995). An important line of research is to identify problems that prevent more organizations from adopting high-performance regimes and the role of public policy in encouraging organizational changes. Appelbaum and Batt (1993), for example, discuss several policy interventions, including job training for frontline workers (not just disadvantaged workers) and incentives for encouraging unions and management to adopt more participative work systems.
Other research could explore strategies for learning and skill development that support changing work environments. Stern (1994), for example, discusses solutions to meeting high-performance goals through the strategy of just-in-time learning--"acquiring skill or knowledge at the time and place where it is needed, instead of learning it ahead of time and in a different place" (p. 2). He outlines several emerging practices in the United States and in other industrialized countries that promote employee development through just-in-time learning, including cross-training by co-workers, job rotation, skill-based pay, suggestion systems, and written analysis of work problems. Stern's approach to developing a taxonomy of practices is appealing for several reasons: (1) it offers specific, concrete suggestions for supporting skill development; (2) it offers flexibility--approaches can be implemented naturally through communities of practice and/or through more formal organizational policy (e.g., skill-based pay, written analysis of work problems); and (3) it offers a consistent way to think about learning practices in work and in other settings, such as schools.
Further consideration of how learning happens and what conditions promote it is an important direction for future research. Attention to practices that promote learning should cut across institutional boundaries--such as school and work--and across somewhat artificial distinctions such as "formal" and "informal" learning. Such distinctions currently hamper the development of education and training programs for work and lifelong learning (e.g., Resnick, 1991; Berryman, 1992). The emphasis on measuring investments in formal training, either in school or in the workplace, ignores the fact that individuals learn and acquire knowledge and skills in all kinds of social settings. A promising line of work is the design of learning environments based on constructivist views of learning and understanding (e.g., Collins, Brown, and Newman, 1989; Collins, Greeno, and Resnick, 1994; Collins, in press).
All these lines of research will benefit from adopting a sociocultural conception of skills that is attentive to the contexts of job, community of practice, and the workplace. Findings and conclusions based on such a contextual conception of skill will be cast in terms that are appropriate for informing effective policies to promote the skills that are required for success in the new workplace.
[30]This was especially important in the traffic signal technician case, because the formal hiring process defined by civil service examinations did not adequately identify candidates with appropriate job-specific knowledge, let alone job-relevant generic skills or dispositions.
[31]This perception echoes Barley's (1995) studies of technical workers. His research suggests that much technical work resembles craft work and that "most valued skills appear to be those developed in a hands-on conversation with materials and techniques (Barley, 1995, p. 15). He refers to these as "artisanal," rather than formal, knowledge and skills.