Bradley et al (2000: 111) stress that the notion that we are entering a ‘knowledge society’, wherein work organizations are increasingly characterized by the utilization of better-trained, more qualified and higher skilled employees, has lately become one of the most widely articulated propositions about employment in the advanced capitalist societies’. The purpose of today’s lecture is to examine these debates and link them to broader discussions about skill changes.
DIFFERENT THEORIES OF SKILL
There has been much debate concerning the way current jobs are constructed and whether or not trends suggest that capitalist development has succeeded in deskilling work, or in fact whether changes in the contemporary workplace are leading to upskilling tendencies:- 1) DESKILLING Braverman’s ‘Labour and Monopoly Capital’ (1974) places at the centre of its analysis the dual elements of skill and control or more importantly, the ways in which management progressively deskill work through the division of labour which enhanced the ability of capital to control the labour process.
Management influenced by Taylorist principles attempted to integrate deskilling into work organisation and machinery design. Management hence pursue a strategy of deskilling in two ways:- * Organisational Deskilling * Technological Deskilling Criticisms The deskilling argument has been widely criticised (Thompson, 1989; Wood, 1982; Knights and Willmott, 1990) for its failure to capture the processes and the specificities of how work becomes deskilled:- 1) Over-simplified management practices 2) Oversimplifies diversity between managers
3) Over-emphasises management control as a primary strategy. 4) Ignored labour resistance 5) Ignores the relations between gender and skill 6) Ignores changes in skill Despite some of the criticisms of Braverman’s work, it can be argued that his work is better understood as an overall tendency of capitalist development rather than a universal law which can be applied in all cases. His work is also significant for placing management practices and strategies at the centre stage in discussions of skill change. 2) UPSKILLING THESIS
This account focuses the individual and their ability to maximise their opportunities in the labour market through pursuing education and qualifications – Human Capital Theory. It is suggested that firms are increasingly investing in their workforce through greater training provision, so that the emphasis has shifted to ‘human capital’ as a central means of accumulating profit. Advances in technology require a more educated better trained workforce in order to cope with the increasing complexity of work tasks.
Therefore there is a general upskilling towards more complex work requiring higher levels of skill and discretion. More recently, this thesis is embodied in the concept of flexible specialisation (Piore and Sabel 1984). Technological advancement and flexible forms of production are hence requiring upskilled rather than deskilled workers. Criticisms 1) Causal relationship between technology and skill level. 2) Not all new technology requires upskilled workers. 3) Not all service sector work leads to skilled jobs 4) It assumes that a radical break with Fordism 5) There needs to be a global perspective
The upskilling thesis falls prey to the same kinds of problems as the deskilling thesis because it makes generalised and universal pronouncements that do not capture the diversity and complexity of current skill changes. The upskilling and deskilling thesis occupy polar extremes – these are sometimes conceived of as optimistic and pessimistic accounts of skill changes. SKILL & THE KNOWLEDGE SOCIETY In recent years it has been argued by management gurus (Handy, Drucker), Government policy makers and academics (Frenkel et al) that we have entered, or are on the brink of a ‘knowledge’ or ‘information’ society.
It is stressed that we are entering a general trend towards upskilling in employment which is a result of the growing importance of ‘knowledge work’ which is required by changes in the service sector as well as the increased reliance on new technology. One of the main problems is the definition of knowledge worker – Winslow and Bramer (1994) define knowledge work as, ‘concerned with interpreting and applying information in order to add value to the organisation through creating solutions to problems and making informed recommendations to management’.
It is argued that changes in the nature of work require different kinds of knowledge – theoretical knowledge rather than contextual knowledge. REVIEWING THE EVIDENCE To review the evidence of the knowledge worker in the contemporary workplace, we shall consider two methodological approaches to skill trends; quantitative survey data and qualitative data from case studies of specific occupations and organisations. 1) QUANTITATIVE DATA – SURVEY RESEARCH This data is based on two large surveys.
The first is undertaken by researchers involved in SCELI (Social Change and Economic Life Initiative) research. The SCELI study defined skills in terms of the person and the job setting the related this to the qualifications the person needed to conduct their work, the length of training they received, the length of time it took to do their job well, responsibility a person had for supervising the work of others and whether a person felt themselves to be skilled (Gallie, 1991).