Garo Case Analysis

The 7 C’s of Workforce Development

1) Consensus is the extent to which the major stakeholders, government, employers and trade unions are signed up to a commitment to upgrade the skills of the workforce.

2) Competitive Capacity.-Refers to the competitive capacity for productive innovation and change. A high skills economy depends on a high level of entrepreneurial and risk-taking activities, whether in terms of new business ventures or through innovation within existing enterprises, linked to new technologies, R&D and the upgrading of skills. This is best achieved in a context of ‘value added’ rivalry between companies rather than its ‘zero-sum’ variety that leads to cost cutting, down sizing and lose of competitive innovation.

3) Capability refers to the dominant model of human capability that informs the way people think about their abilities and those of others. In Western nations this has been premised on a scepticism towards intelligence that assumes that only a minority are capable of high skilled work and that the education system must be organized in order to identify and cultivate this limited pool of talent.An alternative view is that the development of a high skills economy clearly depends on a model of human capability based on an assertion that all have the potential to benefit from skills upgrading and lifelong learning. It depends on an inclusive system of education and training that achieves comparatively high standards for all social groups irrespective of social class, gender, race or ethnicity. It also depends on teaching generic skills to all.

4) Coordination This refers to the coordination of the supply and demand for labor. It recognizes that there is often an over-emphasis on supply-side issues of education, training and employability. This ignores the need to foster the demand for skilled employment that cannot be left solely to market forces. A key issue here is how national governments try to tailor their education and training systems to the perceived ‘needs’ of the economy, and how they seek to incorporate the expanding numbers in higher education into high skilled jobs.

5) Circulation focuses our attention on the way nations, regions and industrial clusters diffuse skills upgrading beyond ‘beacon’ companies, R&D institutes, research centers and universities. In a high skills society we would expect to find a high level of circulation or diffusion of knowledge and skills throughout the workforce.

6) Cooperation is a feature of all forms of economic organization on a large