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BULLETIN 154
Training in the enterprise

Inter-American Technical Bulletin on Vocational Training

 

(Full text available only in Spanish)

 

THIS ISSUE

 

 

 

THIS ISSUE

Training and enterprise is, no doubt, one of the most important binomials in the world of education for work. The enterprise, be it big or small, formal or informal, producer of goods or services, technologically advanced or obsolete, public or private, rural or urban, - in synthesis: the universe of productive unites - constitutes the place where, finally, all the knowledge, abilities and attitudes acquired at the processes of vocational training are applied by the employed population of a given country.

Because of this fact, what is known in terms of social policies as the demand approach has gained thrust in the arena of training. This approach has a tendency to promote adjusting actions in a given field to the needs of the targeted public. In terms of training this implies that training should meet the real needs of enterprises and their workers (independently of the place they have in its structure and/or hierarchy scale).

The above does not mean in any sense, as can be appreciated in many articles of this Bulletin, that training is restricted to the field of work. More and more, training is understood and practised as training for citizenship, a concept that includes a plurality of dimensions among which, no doubt, the inclusion in the labour market is one of the more relevant.

But, from the standpoint of the enterprise and fundamentally of those who in one way or another manage them: what is training useful for? This question is present, implicit or explicitly in almost all the articles of this publication. In order to answer it, the authors focus their attention in different key aspects of the workings of an enterprise.

Some of the articles of this Bulletin underline the strong link between training, productivity and competitiveness, either from a standpoint mainly technological or from the perspective of the organization of productive processes. Others make a point regarding the absolutely central role of training (condition to its sustainability) in those issues related to technological innovation, both in terms of development and research as well as in terms of incorporation of new technologies to the processes.

As it can be appreciated, all these fields are intimately related and in all of them training assumes an outstanding role. This publication of Cinterfor seeks to make a contribution to the reflection and dissemination of knowledge in one of its central arena of action.

In the first place, a paper by Monica Sladogna is presented. The paper analyses the enterprises from the perspective of the demands that the world of work poses to workers in terms of knowledge and abilities. Since there is a relation of mutual obligations, the author also approaches the duty of the enterprise in maintaining and developing the resources that society provides to the enterprise.

The next article of Alain Alcouffe and Souhaila Kammoun is eminently theoretical. It aims at situating the problem of competences at the heart of the theories of the firm. The authors focus the analyses on the neoinstitutionalism and evolutionist theories of the firm and seek to show that the economy of competences is a synthesis of both theoretical approaches.

In the third place a work by Alfredo Hualde is presented. The paper is fundamentally empirical. In this article, he presents the main products of research conducted on training processes of different type of employed personnel of the maquiladora industry in the north border of Mexico. He provides both a synthetic and analytical perspective of these research endeavours.

Sara Silveira's contribution describes the linking strategies between the entrepreneurial sector and the productive and social local context in the countries where the Formujer Programme has been implemented. With that goal, the author presents an analysis of three experiences of intervention of the programme. These experiences illustrate the products of the conceptual and methodological approaches of Formujer.

The original version of the next article was the presentation of Teodoro Kunin in a conference. In this presentation, Kunin exposed the position of the Chamber of Industries of Uruguay on issues related to education, quality and innovation in enterprises.

The work by Karin Butchter approaches in depth the complex issue of identifying training needs on enterprises. It emphasises the fact that such an activity constitutes a process of social construction in which all the social actors of the productive units must have an active role. It offers an interesting conceptualisation of the enterprise as a social system (where all the components are interrelated) emphasising the fact that all workers should be considered in terms of training, as it was pointed out at the beginning of this presentation.

Finally, the article by Eduardo Martínez Espinosa deals with the various dimensions of the relation between training and economic performance of the enterprises and countries, fundamentally through key issues such as productivity, competitiveness and labour market.

The Bulletin concludes with a section of reviews of publications related to the issues approached here. The following books are reviewed in this section: Learning and training for work in the knowledge society: The Constituents' views. This publication is the IV (2) Report of the International Labour Conference, 91st Session, Geneva 2003. It is based on the constituents' opinions on a new Recommendation on human resources development.

In second place, there is a review of the book by Leonard Mertens, published by Cinterfor/ILO: Training, Productivity and Labour Competence in Organizations: Concepts, Methodologies and Experiences. The book approaches training from an integral perspective of the organization. Training is related to the approaches of knowledge management and learning organizations and the concept of training is extended to the whole organization.

 

 

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