ABSTRACT
Skill requirements have been widely discussed in terms of numbers of people trained and the types of training and formal qualifications they receive. It is often assumed that the nature and quality of skills in industry are determined by a country’s vocational training and qualification systems. Such a conception of the skill development process ignores skills utilisation patterns in the workplace and neglects work organisation and its role in shaping the real skill content of jobs and opportunities for skill development. This chapter takes up an increasingly important yet much neglected theme, namely the way firms utilise qualified labour and how work organisation shapes skill development in the workplace.
