School of Business

Job training as business and community development: reframing theory and practice

Document Type

Article

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. © 2003 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Publication Title

Research in the Sociology of Work

Publication Date

2003

Volume

12

First Page

103

Last Page

137

ISSN

0277-2833

ISBN

0762308869,9780762308866

DOI

10.1016/S0277-2833(03)12005-5

Keywords

job training, complexity theory, community development

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