Addressing the workforce performance requirements of the post-industrial workplace

This paper is part of a thesis undertaken at Macquarie University. A transformation of the Australian vocational education and training (VET) system took place in response to a perceived need for a highly skilled workforce to drive an internationally competitive economy. This transformation however has been undertaken without fully defining the performance requirements of the post-industrial workforce. Without such a definition, it is difficult to fully evaluate the effectiveness of the transformation and address improvement. This paper addresses what this performance is. A starting point was adopting a concept of performance. A range of concepts exist each of which leads to different definitions of performance. As significant criticism existed from many researchers about the behaviourist concept of performance generally called competence, this study adopted a concept of performance termed capability modified from a concept developed by Professor John Stephenson in the UK. The modified concept addressed a range of perspectives about performance. The study explored the nature of the post-industrial workplace from literature and deduced a set of attributes that are required by workers. Using a modification to a framework developed by Peter Kearns, the attributes required for the post-industrial workplace were arranged under the parameters of the framework. This framework was used to ensure that a definition of post-industrial capability was holistic in nature to satisfy the concept of capability. The overall framework produced is termed post-industrial capability. The definition of post-industrial capability provides a useful benchmark to measure not only the performance of the Australian VET system including its elements such as training packages but also any improvements to this system.

Published abstract.

Available papers from the 9th Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) Conference are indexed from TD/TNC 86.226 to TD/TNC 86.262. Show less