Between vocational education and training centres and companies: study of their relations under the regional innovation system approach

ABSTRACT

In the current context of economic crisis, the European Union seeks to promote the integration of the vocational education and training system (VET) system and foster greater cooperation between this system and enterprises. Education and innovation are part of the answer to achieve this goal. This research explores the relationship between the VET centres and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), and what aspects of that relationship could be improved. Methodologically, it combines case studies of VET centres in relation to local SMEs and the use of a survey to SMEs in two industrialised Spanish regions. The paper examines, in the context of the regional innovation system approach, how the local environment and the characteristics of local actors are crucial to understanding the level of interaction between the VET system and companies, and the contributions of the former to the innovation system of the regions.

KEYWORDS:

• Vocational education and training
• innovation
• school business relationship

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Joan Rodríguez-Soler is an Assistant Lecturer at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) and is teaching at the Faculty of Political Sciences and Sociology and the Faculty of Law at the UAB. He is member of the Centre d’Estudis Sociològics sobre la Vida Quotidiana i el Treball (QUIT) and the Institut d’Estudis del Treball (IET) from UAB. His research interests are employment policies with special regard to youth and genre, local development policies, industrial relations and collective bargaining from a comparative perspective. His research projects are as follow: Labour Market, Vocational Education Training and Innovation, Youth and Social Exclusion, Genre and Labour Conditions.

Ignasi Brunet Icart is a Professor of Sociology at the Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV). He is the director of the research group Social and Organizational Analysis (ASO), the director of the specialized journal International Journal of Organizations (RIO) and the director of the research committee on Organizational Sociology in the Spanish Federation of Sociology. He has authored and co-authored several books and published many articles in scientific journals on topics such as sociological theory, economic sociology, sociology of work and sociology of education. He has been directing or participating in research projects on the same fields.

ORCID

Joan Rodríguez-Soler http://orcid.org/0000-0003-0062-6401

Ignasi Brunet Icart http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4148-2264

Notes

1 These joint projects are demands of companies to VET centres (under a commercial relation) in order to achieve technical assistance to develop a new product: a mechanical piece, a new fabric, and so on. In this way, VET centres become an external agent of innovation such as technology centres.

2 In recent years, there have been different general education laws that have modified the educational policy framework in Spain (i.e. LOE in 2006 and LOMCE in 2015).

3 National Classification of Economic Activities from Spanish Statistical Office, according to the NACE Rev.2.

4 Sistema de Análisis de Balances de la Península Ibérica (Balance Analysis System of the Iberian Peninsula), database with 2.000.000 Spanish and 500.000 Portuguese companies.

5 It refers to the perception of companies on their innovation capabilities. In the survey, we have distinguished between ‘less innovative companies (or non- innovative companies)’ and ‘innovative companies’. The first are those who consider themselves equal to or less innovative than their competitors. The second ones are those who consider themselves more innovative than their competitors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación [grant number CSO2011-29410-C03-02].