Qualifications 4.0

Post added by This blog is written by Vidmantas Tūtlys (Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania) and Georg Spöttl (Bremen University, Germany).

A new spectre is haunting the world – a spectre called the 4th Industrial Revolution.  The development of innovations based on combinations of technologies, such as the Internet of Things,  artificial intelligence, cybernetical–physical systems are radically changing the nature and contents of the human work, skills, and qualifications.  As it is noticed by the founder of the World Economic Forum Professor Klaus Schwab, the development of the 4th Industrial Revolution could increase the segregation between the low-skill and high-skill segments of the labour market by reducing the employment and career opportunities for the first segment and significantly increasing them for the second one thus increasing social discontent, insecurity and tensions (https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/). Other studies, such as the study carried through by the University of Bremen on the implications of Industry 4.0 for the metalworking and electronics industry in Bavaria (check here.)  disclosed that the vocational skills and qualifications of industrial workers and specialists will not lose their importance and applicability in the changed industrial work processes.  What are the possible implications of Industry 4.0 to qualifications and their systems?

When answering this question, many researchers and experts focus on the above mentioned expected change of the demand of skills, changing structures of the labour market and employment conditions. They stress, that digitalisation, automation and robotization are changing the work organisation (digital Taylorism), which not only threatens traditional routine jobs  but also those jobs that so far have been considered as highly-skilled. These are important issues for discussion, but there still remain some fundamental issues that are much less discussed and analysed.

• To what extent the technological and organisational changes of work processes triggered by Industry 4.0 imply the structural changes in the demand of qualifications?
• Would Industry 4.0 challenge the existence of vocational and professional qualifications in the current form leading to their fragmentation and dissipation into more flexible and easier adjustable elements?
• Is there any place for a qualification as we understand it now in the dynamically changing world of business and work depicted in the visions of the Industry 4.0?

 In positively answering these questions we can refer to several arguments. First, qualifications present by themselves a measure to ensure the quality of systemically provided sets of knowledge and skills that are needed to handle whole work processes. This is of crucial importance for the competent performance on the conditions of the Industry 4.0 that requires holistic capacities of performers in handling the work processes. Secondly, awarding and recognition of qualifications is one of the key pathways towards the access to high skill segments of the labour market where the employment and career benefits of Industry 4.0 are concentrated. At the same time qualifications can serve as important levy for the improvement of access to high skills and related employment opportunities.

Of course this does not mean that qualifications are protected from the requirements to change and to adapt to new  conditions. As Professor Klaus Schwab put it, the regulations and regulators of work and business must be capable to adapt to a fastly -changing environment by closely collaborating with business and civil society.  Referring to qualifications it is assumed that the adaptation of qualifications to the requirements of Industry 4.0 should be focused on the improvement of their responsiveness to the changes of the world of work. This can be achieved both through a more flexible structure of qualifications as well as through more open design and updating of qualifications with active participation of employers, employees and learners in this process. The latter point leads us to the issues of adjustment of the systems of qualifications to the requirements of Industry 4.0 which will be discussed in the upcoming blogs.