Exploring the Intensity of Relationships with Vocational Education Centres: A Typology of Spanish SMEs
Even though the availability of skilled labour and technological know-how is critical to the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the relationships between industry and the vocational education system have received little attention in the recent literature about social aspect...
| Autores: | , , , |
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| Tipo de recurso: | artículo |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2021 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad del País Vasco |
| Repositorio: | Addi. Archivo Digital para la Docencia y la Investigación |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:addi.ehu.eus:10810/71282 |
| Acceso en línea: | http://hdl.handle.net/10810/71282 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | SMEs vocational education and training VET innovation Spain |
| Sumario: | Even though the availability of skilled labour and technological know-how is critical to the sustainability of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the relationships between industry and the vocational education system have received little attention in the recent literature about social aspects of innovation. The objective of this paper is to analyse the intensity of relationships between industrial SMEs and vocational education and training (VET) centres from the firms’ perspective. The study is based on a survey carried out to a sample of 1,388 Spanish industrial SMEs which had vocational education graduates among their employees. Multivariate hierarchical segmentation techniques were used in order to identify the main explanatory variables. As a result, a typology (‘tree’) of eight organisational profiles was obtained which are associated to different intensity levels (from higher to lower) of relationships between firms and schools. The results obtained show that most industrial SMEs maintain relations with vocational education centres, which reflects the importance of the latter for the companies. The organisational type having the highest level of relations refers to SMEs with experience in external cooperation (cooperation with other actors in innovation projects) which have vocational education employees (graduates) in technical areas and which are bigger in size. Likewise, the results suggest that fruitful collaboration between SMEs and vocational education centres depends on the existence of an established culture of innovation among the smaller firms. |
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