JOB TRAINING AS BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: REFRAMING THEORY AND PRACTICE

Abstract

Job training, as traditionally conceptualized, is intended to improve the employment and earnings of disadvantaged individuals. Both theory and practice have approached the problem by segmenting the roles and responsibilities of the key stakeholders: the individual, the employer, and civil society. Such segmentation is problematic because it removes stakeholders from their contexts, and ignores the holistic and complex nature of the underlying problems and their remedies. Reframed as a form of business and community development, job training can focus on capacity building, stakeholder involvement, and expanded notions of skill achievement and geographic scope, thereby addressing stakeholder interests in context. The three cases presented in this chapter describe such reframing: from increasing human capital to building human capacity; from a partnership or individual business focus to a multi-stakeholder approach; and from job and employer-specific skill development to that which is multi-phased and geographically dispersed. Complexity theory will be used to explain these developments.

Citation

Ellen Boyle, M. and Boguslaw, J. (2003), "JOB TRAINING AS BUSINESS AND COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT: REFRAMING THEORY AND PRACTICE", Bills, D.B. (Ed.) The Sociology of Job Training (Research in the Sociology of Work, Vol. 12), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 103-137. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0277-2833(03)12005-5