Abstract
The aggregate of skills is without doubt a fundamental source of socio-economic progress, and the unprecedent structural changes of our time have accompanied heightened pressure for higher-level skills. Skills, however, are in large part the product of deliberate investment by a variety of actors including employers and states. Skills being influenced by the institutional context further suggests that as much as the forms and levels of skills are heterogeneous, skill formation systems and processes hugely differ by state. Therefore, we can assume that the national vocational education and training (VET) system is not developed in isolation merely within the educational domain, but rather shaped jointly by a state’s unique political-economic environment and various labour market dynamics. The divergent political economy of vocational skill formation has been rigorously examined focusing particularly on advanced capitalist economies. Both theoretical and empirical research on the political economy of skill formation of developing economies, however, is surprisingly scarce. The case study of Thailand and Malaysia, the most rapidly growing economies in Southeast Asia, shows that they share similar features of skill formation generally observed in a liberal skill regime in terms of the state’s emphasis on general education and low public commitment and passive involvement of firms in the development and management of initial VET. On the other hand, their institutional setup exhibits some distinctive features of hierarchical market-type skill formation as multinational enterprises play a significant role in the process of skill formation in initial vocational training in the first stages of employment career.
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Political Economy of Skill Formation, Employment, Vocational Education, GVCs
