The VET system and industrial SMEs: the role of employees with VET qualifications in innovation processes

From provider to partner? Main elements of the relationship between schools and small‐ and medium‐sized firms in vocational education work placements in the Basque and Navarre regions (Spain)

“…We do not expect this to apply in the school‐based Spanish case, but it is interesting to check whether there is a relationship between the reception of trainees, the dissemination of new knowledge and ideas, and the implementation of processes of organizational or technical improvement in companies, as pointed out by some studies about apprenticeships and situational learning from the international literature from both coordinated and liberal VET systems (EAFA, 2015; Fuller & Unwin, 2019; Hasluck et al, 2008; Hodge & Smith, 2019; Steedman, 2012; for the Spanish case see Brunet Icart & Rodríguez‐Soler, 2017; Cascón et al, 2019; Olazaran et al, 2019).…”

Does Initial Vocational Training Foster Innovativeness at the Company Level? Evidence from German Establishment Data

“…By contrast, recent approaches conceptualize the innovativeness of companies as an interactive learning process that is strongly based on informal exchanges within and outside of the firm (Asheim and Parrilli 2012a;Fitjar and Rodríguez-Pose 2013;Parrilli et al 2016). These approaches emphasize the importance of incremental and process innovation linked to manufacturing activities (Hervas-Oliver et al 2014;Trippl 2011;Trott and Simms 2017) and accentuate the role of vocationally trained workers (as opposed to scientific personnel) in this process (Albizu et al 2017;Brunet Icart and Rodríguez-Soler 2017;Thomä 2017). These insights have recently prompted the emergence of a number of studies arguing that the participation of businesses in the VET system fosters firm-level innovativeness (Lund and Karlsen 2020;Porto Gómez et al 2018;Rodríguez-Soler and Icart 2018;Rupietta et al 2021;Rupietta and Backes-Gellner 2019).…”