ABSTRACT
The international economic success of Japan challenges much of the conventional wisdom of skills formation and work organization held by unions, management, governments and educators in Australia. Japan is a ‘learning society’ in which the financial, technical, human and organizational capital are not developed in isolation from one another. Management education, for example, is predominantly integrated into Japanese organizations’ general skill formation programmes. The Japanese have achieved an adaptable and innovative workforce because they have adopted a wider sharing of formal and informal opportunities for learning at the workplace.
By contrast, in Australia there is a general belief among corporate executives that technical and managerial education is a public responsibility. The nineteenth-century class concepts of unskilled, semi-skilled and skilled employees tend to mask the importance of making all workers skilled, while the rigid division of workers into operation and maintenance is another handicap to skill formation and the organization of learning. Australian organizations seldom provide incentives for process workers to update, upgrade or broaden their skills. This is true both of management and of many traditional craft unions. The 1985 Kirby Report contained 86 recommendations which could break the mould of the past and help overcome the cultural barriers to make Australia a learning society. Unfortunately, most of the early follow-up has concentrated on youth traineeships and not on the need for lifelong learning. Yet Australia is a multi-cultural society with a potential to follow examples from anywhere in the world.
