Developing Technician Skills for Innovative Industries: Theory, Evidence from the UK Life Sciences Industry, and Policy Implications

Abstract

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Comparative institutional disadvantage: Small firms and vocational training in the British manufacturing sector in comparative perspective

“…The British government is also heavily involved in shaping the rules of the quasi-market to such an extent that employers are sometimes considered 'victims' of government's policy intervention in the VET arena, rather than of the 'free' market (Gospel & Edwards, 2012;Keep, 1999Keep, , 2006Ryan & Unwin, 2001). These analyses have not focused on SMEs specifically though; they have either analysed the causes of limited engagement of British firms with VET without differentiating by size (Gospel & Edwards, 2012;Keep, 1999Keep, , 2006Lewis, 2020), or they have identified the conditions leading to successful training initiatives, usually led by large (manufacturing) employers (Lewis, 2014;Ryan et al, 2007). Yet, this literature provides a useful starting point for the argument that we develop in this section, namely that SMEs' challenges originate from shortcomings in policy design.…”

The Contribution of Vocational Education and Training to Innovation and Growth

“…Unlike economics studies that frequently highlighted only the importance of academically educated workers, an important strand of more qualitative literature has long indicated that innovation requires workers with mid-and high-level vocational skills (e.g., Maurice, Sellier, & Silvestre, 1986;Thurley & Lam, 1990;Toner, 2010;Lewis, 2020). Furthermore, these workers contribute not only to producing incremental innovation but also in transforming radical inventions into high-quality, marketable products, as well as advancing new inventions through participation in R&D activities (Backes-Gellner, 1996;Berger, 2013;Hall & Soskice, 2001;Maurice, Sorge, & Warner, 1980).…”

Role of Cooperation with Stakeholders in WorkBased Learning Realization

“…Good organization of cooperation of education establishment and industry (Ismail et al, 2021). Researchers have analyzed the best and innovative approaches (Lewis, 2020) and have developed interesting and valuable practical suggestions for better organization of work-based learning. Many countries have studied and used experience in the Netherlands (Onstenk & Blokhuis, 2007), in Australia (Baker et al, 2017), in England (Esmond & Atkins, 2020), in Ireland (Eirí ksdóttir, 2020), in Swiss (Sauli et al, 2021), in Indonesia (Rahdiyanta et al, 2018), in Nigeria (Haruna et al, 2019), in European Union (Crisonà , 2021), in Germany and England taking into account cross-national training (Lahiff et al, 2019) with attention on possible future leaders (Aziz, 2020), to theory and practice joint importance (Orozco et al, 2019) and how it changes leaders (Raelin, 2011) and best possible organization of education process (Ciptono et al, 2021;Harris et al, 2013;Carpentier et al, 2011) using innovative and creative approaches (Fletcher & Haynes, 2020;Detgen et al, 2021) and special attention to teaching staff (Crane et al, 2021) to their professional competence regular update and research findings (Fergusson, et al, 2021) as well as innovative approach of work-based learning organization (Hamdani & Suherman, 2021).…”