Links between the requirements of the economy and the professional competence

The constant economic, social and technology change are bringing about profound changes in business structure and supply and demand in labour markets

Economic sphere

The globalization of markets and free movement of capital has meant that many products do not have national identity are investigated and developed in one country, in another are designed and its are manufactured in a third.

The classic factors of production (land, labour and capital), i adding a fourth factor, the information. The raw material in the new paradigm (techno-economic) is the information and knowledge.

To confirm the above statements we can see that currently the centre of the economy no longer hold only companies that produce and distribute products as thirty years ago but companies producing and distributing knowledge and information. Consider the value and market control exerted companies like Microsoft, Disney and CNN.

Social

The new age pyramid in most OECD countries, the level of education amongst the people, the emergence of new phenomena such as structural unemployment, labour discontinuity in the number of firms for which one provided their services and content of the trades that can be carried out during the working life, multiculturalism, the tendency to hedonism, namely, earn more, work less and have more leisure time, the cult of youth represented by the sport, leanness and dynamism as trends to follow.

Technological field

The development and innovation in the technological world, characterized by the ease and speed in creating new products and services and the explosion of telecommunications and information technologies are breaking into all areas of human life.Therefore, we can say that technological changes are not revolutions but one constantly changing structures.

Directly or indirectly, as discussed above, these changes have generated and are generating profound changes in the content, methods and means of employment and production systems, distribution and labour organization.

Here are some examples:

• Companies looking for new skills associated with new organizations "decentralized network as" where "workers perform a variety of tasks, instead of passing the work of one another."

• The need for greater flexibility "to deal with fluctuations in demand for their goods and services", and reliability in production processes means that production is mainly based on economies of scale, is moving into a production also continue to seek such economies of scale, is based on economies of scope and quality of products and services.

• Changing patterns of competition between companies to a "gradual elimination of barriers between product development, process development and human resource development." And "models and traditional management techniques are proving inadequate and inflexible in a workplace that requires workers and controls the opposite: the development of a new industrial and enterprise culture characterized by flexibility, trust, commitment and ability to anticipate change and reap its fruits. "

Changes in work organizations have resulted in a perceptible change in the structure and content of employment and therefore a demand for larger and increasingly diverse skills resulting in a clear imbalance between supply and demand of professionals in the call information society. "... The problem is that no new jobs, old skills. New jobs require new skills. The gap will continue to increase until governments and employers undertake a new policy, much more radical, to give people new skills and expertise related to developing new forms of work organization and the introduction of new technologies. EU "

Since the beginning of the 90, as a first step to reduce this imbalance, have been progressively defined professional profiles and training curricula in terms of professional skills by taking a quantum leap in this process, and passed to take into account alsoattitudinal and emotional aspects of workingnot just those of a technical and methodological.

But in addition to the powers specifically related to a job or a given sector, needs to acquire the so-called transferable skills, without being specific to a particular job or a particular profession, and therefore , transferable to a wide range of tasks performed in different work contexts are necessary to carry out different tasks at the level required for employment, with the dual aim of promoting the employability of students and to reduce the obsolescence of workers to proportion more likely to adapt.

Further action is needed and to go deep in the identification of its contents. For this it is necessary to start the one hand, the differential analysis between the cultural contexts of education and employment and the type of skills they generate. And, secondly, monitoring and analysis of the constant changes that are experiencing labor organizations over time where the products and / or services sold do not have a stable framework to define a linear fashion in the time the type of tasks that its members should be able to develop in the future

RafaelBarrio

Technical of public administration
Recognition of research proficiency
Post graduate Business Administration

Bachelor's degree in Philosophy and Education