Skills and Politics: General and Specific

Abstract

Skills and skill formation have become central topics in contemporary political economy. This essay traces a key concept in current debates -the distinction between general and specific skills -back to its diverse origins in American postwar labor economics, comparative industrial relations, and human capital theory. To show how the distinction has evolved over time and between disciplines, it is related to other dual classifications of work skills, like high versus low, broad versus narrow, theoretical versus experiential, professional versus occupational, explicit versus tacit, extrafunctional versus functional, and certifiable versus noncertifiable. The aim is to reconstruct how notions of skill generality and skill specificity came to be used as a foundation of an economistic-functionalist "production regime," "varieties of capitalism," or "asset" theory of welfare state development, and generally of politics under capitalism. ZusammenfassungBerufliche Qualifikationen und berufliche Bildung sind ein zentrales Thema gegenwär-tiger politisch-ökonomischer Forschung. Der Aufsatz untersucht einen Schlüsselbegriff der Diskussion -die Unterscheidung zwischen allgemeinen und spezialisierten Fähig-keiten -mit Hinblick auf seine diversen Ursprünge in der amerikanischen Arbeitsöko-nomie der Nachkriegsjahre, der vergleichenden Forschung über industrielle Arbeitsbeziehungen und der Humankapitaltheorie. Um zu zeigen, wie die Begriffsbildung sich mit der Zeit und zwischen den verschiedenen Disziplinen entwickelt hat, wird sie mit anderen dualen Klassifikationen von beruflichen Fertigkeiten -hoch und niedrig, breit und eng, theoretisch und erfahrungsbasiert, explizit und implizit, extrafunktional und funktional, zertifizierbar und nicht zertifizierbar -in Beziehung gesetzt. Ziel ist herauszuarbeiten, wie die Unterscheidung zwischen allgemeinen und speziellen Qualifikationen zur Grundlage diverser ökonomistisch-funktionalistischer Theorien der wohlfahrtsstaatlichen Entwicklung und allgemein der Politik im Kapitalismus werden konnte.

Liberalization Only at the Margins? Analysing the Growth of Temporary Work in German Core Manufacturing Sectors

“…While confirming the ‘dualization’ scenario, findings have suggested that employers’ interests in a stable workforce have been overestimated, corroborating existing criticism of the VoC concept of ‘specific skills’ and its usefulness in the analysis of labour market outcomes (e.g. Streeck ). Evidence has shown that the resilience and the erosion of industrial relations are fundamental for understanding how temporary work spread in German core manufacturing sectors, supporting research showing the impact of industrial relations institutions on workplace outcomes (e.g.…”

“…This claim is corroborated by existing research, suggesting that ‘specific’ skills are not necessarily coupled with stable employment. The skills provided by the German dual vocational training system are occupational and portable across employers (Marsden ; Streeck ; Thelen and Busemeyer ); furthermore, German companies sometimes train above their needs and therefore employ their young Facharbeiter in unskilled positions until a skilled position becomes vacant (Franz and Zimmermann ).…”

Closing in on Closure

“…I also introduce a new closure source, occupational specificity, which allows me to capture the exclusivity of occupational task niches and occupational task specialization. Task specialization is a feature that is often hotly debated with regard to its effect on employees' employment security (e.g., Emmenegger 2009;Streeck 2011). Based on these closure measures, I am able to address both shortcomings of conventional analyses of the determinants of temporary employment: the occupational fragmentation of the labor market and closure processes that may modify the occupational fragmentation of the labor market.…”

“…The concept of the task niche is often used in the literature on professions, but it had rarely been applied in quantitative research designs on occupational closure. The new closure source also allowed me the novelty of capturing the occupations' task specialization, a feature that is often the subject of heated discussions with regard to its effect on employees' employments security (e.g., Emmenegger 2009;Streeck 2011). All three measures make substantial contributions to the explanation of the varying probabilities of temporary employment.…”

Do People with Specific Skills Want More Social Insurance? Not in the United States

“…Hiscox and Rickard (), for example, argue that the Iversen and Soskice measures lack microfoundations and are conceptually unrelated to portability. Because this complaint has been reiterated and developed more fully in Culpepper (), Kitschelt and Rehm (), Streeck (), Tahlin (), we provide a discussion in the Appendix S1. One succinct way of capturing the problem with their empirical measure is via a simple summary statistic: their measures of relative skill specificity are negatively correlated with income (−0.22 with their preferred measure and the entire sample and −0.47 within just the United States).…”