Vocational Training and In-Company Organizational Development

Vocational education and training and organizational development in enterprises are seen as two independent dimensions of enterprise development and innovation in countries with developed vocational education systems. One reason for this dichotomy is the importance of vocationally organized work. An opposite pole is formed by the Japanese tradition of qualifying skilled workers through their participation in the processes of workplace organizational development. Based on the economic framework conditions, a team of experts defined five structural characteristics that an open information and communication technology architecture for the modern enterprise would have to meet. The thesis that practice precedes theory and research, which is not very popular in science systems, obviously finds some confirmation here as well and prompts all the more to seek dialogue between scientists and experts in company practice. In recent years, VET research has focused primarily on three topics: new technologies as the subject of curricula and occupational profiles in need of revision, action orientation as a central category of new teaching and learning processes in VET, and key qualifications as a response to a widely assumed process of despecialization of skilled work organized in occupational form. Only the critical reflection on deterministic approaches to skills research and the “design debate” conducted since the beginning of the 1980s have made the organizational dimension of company innovations in their interactions with technology development and skills training a topic that vocational training research and vocational education and training must also address with ever-greater urgency.