AbstractSkill, the complicated ingredient of the work process: Challenges with its measurement, determination and supply The expression, ‘if you cannot measure, you cannot control’ aptly captures the essence of scientific

management principles. The application of scientific principles in the labour process for the enhancement of

economic efficiency which translates to maximised labour productivity has, however, proven to be

challenging as labour is not a linear process. The fact that skill is not a quantifiable commodity and is

subject to various ontological and epistemological assumptions makes ascertaining the required amount of

skills complicated. This paper seeks to demonstrate that the labour process is intricate and transcends

scientific principles like observation, measurement and analysis. It further depicts the pitfalls associated

with the simplistic conception of skill. The dynamics in the skills discourse include employers’

overestimation or underestimation of the required skills, conflicting voices regarding skills status quo,

qualifications inflation, and distortion of the skills status quo for the purpose of excluding outsiders and

thereby pushing the salaries of the insiders high.

This paper appreciates the role of the positivist view of skills, but due to its limitations, it demonstrates the

wisdom of shifting away from it. It shows the contradictions in the definition of skill from different

perspectives with human capital theory arguing that skill is a result of schooling and that it is technical and

can be measured. Conversely, the social capital perspective argues that skill is a social construct which is

not technical and therefore cannot be measured (Blackmore, 1997). It holds that the value of skill is

dependent on the context as one’s social contacts and the prestige of learning institution attended also

plays a crucial role in determining the value of skill. The cultural capital perspective adds that skill is a

cultural construct as family background, race, gender and ethnicity play a crucial role in determining the

value of skill (Bourdieu, 1977). The reputation capital perspective, however, holds that the value of skill is

determined by the brand your name carries - public perceptions of one’s t rustworthiness, popularity,

authority in the field, ethics and integrity. In light of the various conceptions of skill, this paper then explores

the policy implications as these contradictions have a bearing on skills development and planning.

Thembinkosi TwaloHuman Sciences Research Council (HSRC), Pretoria, South Africa

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1. IntroductionSouth Africa is experiencing several socio-economic challenges to which skill has been rightly or wrongly

proposed as a possible solution. Specifically, skills shortage has been attributed to challenges such as low

economic growth, unsatisfactory job creation rate, unsatisfactory delivery of basic services and

misappropriation of resources. Stokes (2010), for instance, attributes the poor performances at SAA (South

African Airways), the Land Bank, Eskom and the SABC (South African Broadcasting Corporation) to the

lack of management skills. In some sectors, the skills shortage phenomenon is said to have reached crisis

levels and Stokes argues that evidence includes the appalling state of government’s books as many

municipalities and other government entities pass their audit.

To avoid the skills shortage phenomenon, there has to be a regular update of the status quo which draws a

clear picture of their availability, shortage, excess, levels, nature, geographical area and skill bearer profile

which indicates age, gender and race especially in light of South Africa’s equity and transformation agenda.

This is also helpful in cases like where the labour force is ageing, there should be proactive replacement

measures. This, however, seems easier said than done because of the challenges of determining the

status quo echoed in the expression: ‘if you cannot measure, you cannot control’. This expression aptly

captures the essence of the scientific management principles which would have been ideal for analysing

the ways in which skills enhance economic efficiency, as a result of maximised labour productivity.

However, the application of scientific principles in the labour process has proven to be challenging, as the

labour process is not linear. Instead, it is intricate and transcends what can be understood through the

scientific principles of observation, measurement and analysis.

Generally, the skills discourse has been characterised by lack of clarity around skills status quo and lack of

common understanding about the concept of skill which then undermine the country’s skills development

agenda. This paper points out the challenges with the measurement, determination and supply of skills

which are aggravated by the apparent dissonances around the concept of skill. In light of the various

conceptions of skill, this paper then explores the policy implications as these contradictions and grey areas

have a bearing on skills development and planning.

2. Definition of skill

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The many definitions of ‘skill’ complicate the skills discourse as it is sometimes not clear if people mean the

same thing as this concept includes technical capability, dexterity, proficiency, experience, competence,

and technique all of which are as a result of several factors which include formal education, informal

education, background, culture, age and gender. The multifariousness of the factors which contribute to

skills formation is indicative of the fact that the many pronouncements of skills shortage are not self

explanatory as the same word means many different things and the concept is a concoction of many

factors. Making an introduction to his presentation entitled ‘Beyond Obsession with Skills ’, Badat (2009)

refers to Humpty Dumpty’s and Alice’s conversation in Lewis Carroll’s (2009 [1871], 41) Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There. Humpty Dumpty says, “When I use a word, it means just what

I choose it to mean — neither more nor less”. Alice says, “The question is, whether you can make words

mean so many different things”. Humpty Dumpty says, “The question is, which is to be master — that’s all”.

Badat (2009) holds that Humpty Dumpty’s practice of making words mean whatever is not helpful as it

neither clarifies concepts nor distinguishes them from others. Humpty Dumpty’s suggestion that what only

matters is “which is to be master” is equally problematic as there is no universally accepted basis for

determining which is to be master and such judgement reveals the society’s asymmetrical power relations

since historically, the elite and privileged get to decide, on behalf of everyone else, which is to be the

master.

Badat (2009) uses three discourses on ‘skill’ to explain this concept. Two of the discourses refer to

technical capability, but emphasise different occupational levels. One occupational level refers to, inter alia,

electricians, plumbers, welders, brick-layers, plasterers, tillers, machinists, mechanics and tool makers and

another occupational structure refers to professions in, inter alia, construction (e.g. engineers, architects,

quantity surveyors, project managers), health (e.g. surgeons, general practitioners, therapists and nurses),

and financial services (e.g. accountants, actuaries, and economists). The third discourse on skill Badat

(2009) identified refers to knowledge, expertise and attitudes.

Badat’s distinction between the two interpretations of skill with technical capability connotations is unclear

because the only line of demarcation is that others are professions and others are not. This is rather

inconsistent of him as he initially showed the problem with the practice of making words mean whatever

because this practice neither clarifies concepts nor distinguishes them from others. Therefore, his use of

‘professions’ as a line of demarcation without unpacking what constitutes a profession, where professions

begin and end, and what is not a profession, does not take the skills debate forward. It is, however, clear

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that he is using the dichotomous mode of defining skill. Mothata (2000) refers to this dichotomy as South

Africa’s past experience of rigid division between education and training with education being the province

of education institutions and the training being the province of the employment institutions. The education

and training rigid divisions were also seen in terms of ‘head’ and ‘hand’, theory and practice, educators and

trainers, and learners and apprentices. Such dichotomisation concurs with Bloom's (1956) taxonomy of

learning categories in which knowledge refers to mental ability, that is, cognition and skill refers to manual

or physical ability. This translated to the perception of education as an academic tool designed for personal

social mobility and the perception of training as more inclined towards the workplace and the economy at

large but with minimal opportunities for personal social mobility.

With regard to the third discourse on skill Badat (2009) identified, that is, knowledge, expertise and

attitudes, he argues that while it is taken as self evident that the dearth of technical capabilities has a

stifling effect on economic growth and social development, the dearth of knowledge, expertise and attitudes

seems to be overlooked due to the obsession with technical capabilities. Hence, he advocates for

education, training and development approach which encapsulates the overall and particular configurations

of knowledge, skills, expertise and attitudes as the technical skilling of people alone is insufficient.

Badat’s observation of the obsession with technical capabilities at the expense of knowledge, skills,

expertise and attitudes is usually evident in recruitment processes wherein mostly academic qualifications

are taken into consideration. Some institutions or companies, however, do screening for the purposes of

getting security clearance, doing qualification verification, checking criminal records, credit records and

previous employment, and verifying knowledge of the subject area. The use of behavioural tests and

attitudinal tests is, by and large, still peripheral as most of the screening mechanisms do not verify the

incumbents’ values, ethics and attitudes. This could be attributed to, inter alia, difficulty in ascertaining

values and attitude and the assumption that they are not static as one’s values and attitude today may not

necessarily be the same ones tomorrow. Therefore, if incumbents have appropriate values and attitude

when recruited, that does not mean that they will remain the same throughout their tenure as a lot could

happen during their tenure that may cause their values and attitude to change to the detriment of the

employers. Employers thus have a challenge of ensuring that they employ staff with appropriate ethics and

values in light of the fact that such staff are an asset to the company, but staff with inappropriate ethics and

values are a threat to the company despite their possession of technical skills as they may use their

technical skills to compromise the company. A caveat is in order in this regard as in the attitude strength

debate, there is a view that attitudes are stable and crystallised in the memory and its counter view which

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suggests that attitudes change because they are evaluative judgments formed on the spot (Schwarz 2007).

Whether they are stable or fluctuating, currently the dominant recruitment practice seems to focus mostly

on academic credentials and give little or no attention to ascertaining values, ethics and attitudes.

This paper appreciates the role of the positivist view of skills, but due to its limitations (the limitations are

further explained in section 3.1 below), it demonstrates the wisdom of shifting from the narrow positivist

conception of skill to a broader conception which encompasses more components of skill beyond what is

measubale and observable. The positivist human capital perspective is economistic in nature and only

recognises the narrow skill. Winterton, Delamare and Stringfellow (2006, 7) who make no distinction

between narrow and broad skill describe skill as a “level of performance” or a “goal-directed, well organised

behaviour that is acquired through practice and performed with economy of effort”. They, however,

acknowledge that competence is multifaceted, holistic and integrated as conceptual competences include

cognitive competence (knowledge) and meta-competence (facilitating learning of other competences) and

operational competences include functional competence (skills) and social competence (attitudes and

behaviours). Broad skill is, to a certain extent, thus captured by these competences as they cover the non-

economic aspects of skill formation and non-linear nature of the labour process. Several scholars have

discussed several aspects of the non-linear and non-economic aspects of skill formation and they include

Bourdieu (1977) and Bourdieu (1997), who foreground cultrural capital, Blackmore (1997) who foregrounds

social capital, and Ingbretsen (2011) who foregrounds reputation capital. The next section seeks to unpack

and show the interconnection between the economic components of skill formation -human capital- and the

non-economic components -cultural capital, social capital and reputation capital- for the purpose of

demonstrating the dynamics and complexities of the concept of skill.

3. Human capital, cultural capital, social capital and reputation capital3.1 Human capital

The principle of manipulating material for the creation of physical capital which is necessary for production

was extended to humans which meant effecting changes in a person (imparting skill) to enhance capability

for performing specific tasks (Bekker 1964, Schultz 1961). With assets that will generate income in the

future being called capital, the human capital concept was clearly based on the economic perspective of

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education and it suggests that the skills humans acquire will generate income in the future for personal and

societal gains.

Interestingly, while human capital is said to increase labour productivity and quality, Barker (2007, 125) is

emphatic on his view that the “quality of the labour force probably has the biggest impact on productivity”.

Schooling is but one factor that contributes to labour productivity and quality; others of similar importance

include attitude, ethics, values, environment, background, and culture. It is then evident that there are

intrinsic and extrinsic factors that contribute to productivity as Barker (2007), McConnell, Brue and

Macpherson (2010) and Ehrenberg and Smith (2009) add that wage increase also has an impact on

productivity. They also refer to the efficiency wage hypothesis which is a theory that suggests that wage

increase can lead to productivity increase under certain circumstances which include high wages induced

morale, health, low absenteeism and skills development to be fit for the job. By and large, the call for more

skills to be added in the labour market is informed by the assumption that increased productivity is due to

schooling which overlooks some of the variables that account for increased productivity like attitude,

physical and mental state, and technology. Therefore, to attribute increased productivity solely to schooling

is rather an unreliable inference.

Generally, in the skills discourse, the ability to do a job refers to technical capability and it overlooks the

other components of the ability to do a job. People, for instance, go through driving schools to learn driving.

At driving schools, they get taught road signs, road rules and vehicle control. As drivers, they share the

road with other motorists who may differ with them in virtually everything - driving abilities, mood, stress

level, behaviour, speed, urgency, concentration and other potentially distracting activities like cell phones,

kids, pets and music. What also differs are the car types, roadworthiness of the vehicles, state of the road

and weather conditions. Therefore, the army of drivers, despite their differences and other varying factors

on the road, get to use the limited resource – road- but the driving school instructions do not fully prepare

them for all these conditions. As road users, in addition to their technical capability (driving) they are

expected to react appropriately to vehicle hijacking, fellow drivers swearing at them, stray animals which

may appear at anytime on the road, emergency vehicles and blue lights vehicles of government officials

which demand other road users to give them preference, inconsiderate fellow drivers, and bribery requests

and/or threats from traffic officials. According to the Department of Transport (2006), poor driver behavior

and attitude are crucial for road safety as up to “95% of crashes follow a traffic violation”. This shows that

as much as technical capability is a prerequisite for driving, it evidently is insufficient for preparing a driver

to competently handle all the road challenges. It, however, needs to be established if it may be practical to

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expect driving schools, in addition to driving instructions, to teach road manners, hijacking management

and prevention, reaction to inconsiderate drivers and reaction to bribery requests and/or threats from traffic

officials. Due to all the internal and external factors impacting on the drivers, as a coping mechanism or as

a manifestation of the lack of broad skills for dealing with all the conditions on the road, road rage and

accidents occur and this explains the irony Plato, Aristotle and John Locke tried to resolve: How is it

possible for a person who has been taught what is right to act contrary to the principles he has learned?

Bailey and Noyelle (1990) emphasise the importance of a balanced training intervention because in the

services industry, for instance, quality service is essential for giving customers an experience that they will

want to repeat. In retail, customer service and sales are crucial to company image and maintenance of

market share and this implies training staff for more intricate applications than just repetitive tasks. In an

effort to stay ahead of competitors in the marketplace, in retail for instance, the training content includes

four main areas namely company rules, culture and policies; product knowledge; technical skills and

customer relations or people handling skills. Contrary to the human capital theory’s assumption that skill is

a result of schooling, this shows that skill is too broad to be constructed only through schooling and the next

section expands on this to specify the other components of skill formation.

3.2 Social CapitalSocial capital is another component of skill and it refers to the contribution of social relations or social

networks in achieving a productive activity. Blackmore (1997) perceives the human capital structuralist-

functionalist view of linear education-work relationship as out of touch with reality. She points out that the

human capital theory overlooks the fact that skill is a social construct, hence it’s ahistorical and gender

blind view of the education-work relationship.

Winch and Gingell (1999) problematise the human capital theory’s assumption that the quality of education

is homogenous as they argue that good education covers substantial values, knowledge, skill and

confidence. It also has “positional good ... meaning that the value of one’s education depends to some

extent on prestige (emphasis original)” (127). Prestige comes about as a result of accessing high status

education in terms of institution and content, and confidence about acquired knowledge. Confidence is

further enhanced if the school has a network of social contacts (the ‘old school tie phenomenon’) as

learners get to benefit more than just learning but social prestige and success which is crucial for accessing

employment opportunities through the extended internal labour market (this is discussed in section 5.2

below). Consequently, Winch and Gingell (1999, 128) argue, there is competition for accessing specific

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prestigious institutions as their learners stand a better chance of accessing employment opportunities and

this “puts the high-status schools in a very powerful position”. The positional advantage of the school

increases demand for access and thereby push the access costs high enabling access only to the rich as

they can afford to buy the education from these schools.

Akoojee, Nkomo and Twalo (Forthcoming) point out the unfairness of the high status institutions in the

South African context as the inequitable access to education is reflected in institutional practices, resources

and perceptions. This inequitable access to education translates to the sustenance of the asymmetrical

access to employment opportunities between historically black universities (HBIs) and historically white

universities (HWIs) as is evident in recruitment practices with students from HWIs preferred in the labour

market at the expense of students from HBIs”. They argue, for instance, that the non-accreditation of some

academic programs in some HBIs and their accreditation in HWIs is, to some extent, a reflection of capacity

and resource challenges as

HWIs are generally affluent institutions with considerable infrastructure, capacity and resources and the opposite is true for HBIs. So, if for argument sake, one of the accreditation criteria is the availability of textbooks to students, chances are that almost all students in HWIs would have them while only a few may afford them in HBIs as two or more students may be sharing a textbook or may have to photocopy it and risk violating copyright regulations. So, if employers require students who have enrolled in accredited programs, then they will obviously overlook those from HBIs.

Such realities of the education socio-political context emphasise the view that skill is not a neutral concept

as its value is socially, culturally, economically and politically determined. This is illuminated by the social

reproduction perspective of conflict theory which portrays a negative view of education as it shows that the

education system also serves to perpetuate the social reproduction of inequality because of the vying social

groups with different aspirations, interests, life opportunities, privileges and benefits. Inequality is caused

and maintained through social relations that are mainly based on exploitation, oppression, domination and

subordination. Education also contributes to maintaining the asymmetrical power relations as, for instance,

the academic performance of students from poor families is held back by their lack of access to

performance enhancing amenities like books, libraries, exposure, assistance with homework (as the

parents usually have low education levels), and tutorials while the opposite is true for students from middle

class families. Consequently, the children develop anti-school tendencies, thus poor academic performance

could be a sign of rebellion against the system, after all, the system is designed to fail the working class

children (Sargent 1994). While the working class children have to work extra hard to make the grade, for

the middle class children, maintaining their superior position in society requires little effort because they

have language and cultural advantage (i.e. capital). Neville Alexander’s study confirmed this as it reflected

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that English-speaking students in the Western Cape did better than their Xhosa speaking counterparts in

content subjects because they had the language command leverage since the subjects were taught in

English. This buttresses Bourdieu’s (1997) argument that the success of human capital is based on the

cultural capital and social foundation laid by the family, hence, students from elite family backgrounds have

leverage over their counterparts from poor socio-economic backgrounds.

Furthermore, due to the economistic and positivist view of education, qualifications are simplistically used

as a reflection of capacity and productivity. This is based on the assumption that students are taught skills

which capacitate them to perform tasks that are related to their qualification and the certificate is thus

documentary evidence that they have learnt what they were taught. The recognition of the certificate,

however, falls short of appreciating the dynamics of the teaching and learning process and uncritically

accepts the value of the certificate. Besides the fraudulent production of certificates, which seems to be on

the rise as reports of their production are not uncommon, there are more nuanced factors to be taken into

consideration in order to determine the certificate holder’s technical capability and knowledge in the field in

question as well as the development of social and cultural capital which are other important components of

skill and all the components of skill serve to enhance or compromise one another.

Another issue with qualifications is the fact that they do not have an inherent value, they derive value from

the socio-economic context. As the saying goes, ‘A one-eyed man is the king in the valley of the blind’, so

does one who is able to read and write in a community of illiterates. The scarcity of the reading and writing

skills in such a community will enhance the value of the qualification on condition that there is demand for

these skills. The same qualifications would be useless if hypothetically the holder was living in a community

which has no need for reading and writing, therefore, it needs to be acknowledged that the value of skill is

context-dependent.

To show that the value of a qualification is context bound, Machin and McNally (2007) observed conflicting

evidence with regard to the consequences of the expansion of tertiary education as in some countries the

increasing supply of workers with tertiary qualifications lead to a decline in the value of a degree as the

wage premium reduced while in most European countries the value of a degree continued to increase as

the wage premium increased which may be suggestive of a demand that outstrips supply. This then attest

to the fact that skill is context-dependent. Its context-dependency echoes Bourdieu’s (1977) assertion that

skill is a cultural construct as family background, race, gender and ethnicity play a crucial role in forming it

and determining its value.

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3.3 Cultural capitalThe structure and agency as theorised by Bourdieu (1990) analyses the tension between structure and

agency with the latter referred to as the people’s capacity to act independently and to make their own free

choices and the former acting as an impediment in the form of recurrent patterned arrangements which limit

the choices and opportunities that individuals have. Contrary to the education and social reproduction

theory which holds that one's class position determines one's life chances, the structure and agency theory

maintains that the structures determine the individuals' chances, together with the internalisation of

acceptable demeanour, conventional ideas, representation of the world, self representation, knowledge and

assumptions. Bourdieu (1990) investigated the discomfort between the conservative reproduction and the

innovative production of knowledge and experience. His finding was that the considerations of which the

particular cultural past and present is to be conserved and reproduced in schools aggravated the tension.

In schools, the culture of the dominant groups is then legitimated, embodied, assumed to be natural and

the only proper type of cultural capital.

Munro (1997) observes that structural-functionalists maintain that the purpose of education is to sort and

rank individuals for placement in the labour market. The ranking is done on the basis of ability as high

achievers are trained for more challenging and important jobs and are highly rewarded while the least

achievers are trained for less challenging and non-essential jobs with the least income. It is, therefore,

misleading to attribute income to ability only as Meighan (1981) argues that many capable students from

working class backgrounds fail to achieve satisfactory standards in school and therefore fail to obtain the

income they deserve. Because of the middle class power and influence over the education system which

alienates the working class children as they cannot identify with the cultural experiences provided at school,

the working class children find it difficult to understand the lessons thus the system sets them up for failure.

They then exit the system with the least qualifications and consequently get the least desirable jobs and

thus remain working class.

Alexandre (1972), as far back as the sixties, noticed that the knowledge of English or French was

tantamount to the acquisition of cultural capital to the detriment of those who use African tools of linguistic

communication whom the system rendered devoid of cultural capital and thus unqualified to economically

participate in the modern world. He explicates that this is a special kind of capital since it is an instrument of

communication and not one of production but it is powerful because it “makes possible the organization of

the entire modern sector of production and distribution of goods” (Alexandre 1972, 86). In a context where

globalization is used to describe changed modalities of the world economy, the use of a means of universal

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communication, French or English, got an unfair advantage because, Alexander (1999) argues, their

acquisition represents a form of cultural accumulation. It is interesting that Alexandre (1972) views

language only as an instrument of communication and not one of production and this mode of thinking

disintegrates the components of skill which translates to the emphasis of some components at the expense

of the others. Language is a critical component of the production process and the fact that the requirements

of many job adverts explicitly state the required language proficiency underscores the importance of

language in the production process.

Shujaa (1994) adds that in a multicultural context, it is the politically dominant cultural orientation that

exercise the most influence on the ‘concepts, values and skills’ that schools transmit and the same applies

with regard to the language used in the production process. Hence, Levy (2005, 14) argues that “much of

what the children are taught in school is biased, racist and Eurocentric making cognitive reconfiguration

necessary if Black children are to excel from a strong cultural reference point”. It goes without saying then

that under such circumstances, the subordinate group finds success harder in school due to the fact that

they must unlearn most of what they acquired from their cultures and learn a new way of being, new way of

relating to the world, and a new way of communicating using channels, instruments and language that are

sometimes foreign to them. Levy (2005) echoes Fanon’s (1967) sentiments who observes that language

acquisition transcends the ability to use syntax, lexicon and morphology as it, above all, means assuming a

culture and supporting the weight of a civilization and the penalty for failing to do so means deprivation of

life improvement opportunities like schooling. Levy adds that in such an environment, Black children

eliminate themselves from the system, thus reduce the subordinate group population in the system while

the privileged group continues with schooling. This shows how effective language is as a tool for eliminating

the subordinate group and depriving it skills development opportunities

The elimination process haunts the subordinate group before and after dropping out of school and Forojalla

(1993, 64) aptly captures this when he identifies the schooling side effects as “lowered self-esteem and a

sense of failure on the part of the dropouts, or more appropriately ‘push-outs’. Because of the accepted

legitimacy of the system, blame for failure may be imputed to oneself and internalised, having a deleterious

effect on self-images”. Freire (1968) buttresses this in his analysis of how the schooling process impairs the

self-confidence of students in generating new ideas and renders them incapable of trusting themselves. He

observes that they hardly realise that they too ‘know-things’ as they learn in their relations with the world

and with other humans.

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Such contextual impediments as stated by Alexandre (1972), Alexander (1999) Shujaa (1994) Levy (2005)

Fanon (1967) Forojalla (1993) and Freire (1968) buttress Bourdieu’s (1997) argument that the distribution

of the types and sub-types of capital represents the social order which determines the extent of limitations

and chances of success of the individuals in a specific society at a given moment in time. It is thus

impossible to give a precise skills status quo without taking into consideration all forms of capital, as the

human capitalist economic theory erroneously does - relying only on one form and overlooking the others.

Bourdieu (1997) observes that cultural capital exists in three forms – embodied state (mind and body

attributes), objectified state (cultural goods like pictures, books, instruments and machines) and

institutionalised state (as educational qualifications recognise and attach value to academic credentials, so

are cultural assets recognised and valued through cultural capital). Bourdieu hypothesised that cultural

capital explains the asymmetrical academic achievement of children from different social classes and their

concomitant profit or value in the labour market. This diverts from the human capital conception of

academic progress or lack thereof as an indication of purely academic abilities. It also brings in an

additional dimension to the measurement of education investment. While the human capitalist economic

theory takes into account only pecuniary investments (schooling costs and opportunity cost), the notion of

cultural capital foregrounds cultural investment and the assets accrued from such. Bourdieu (1997, 48) then

avers that the human capital theory omission “let slip the best hidden and socially most determinant

educational investment, namely the domestic transmission of cultural capital”. Its fixation on economic

explanation overlooks the fact that the success of human capital is influenced by the cultural capital

foundation invested by the family.

3.4. Reputation CapitalIngbretsen (2011) describes reputation capital as “the brand your name carries – the sum total of your good

name, good works, and your history”. It includes public perceptions of one’s t rustworthiness, popularity,

authority in the field, ethics, integrity and resilience. It is subjective and prone to bias because gaining

people’s trust, for instance, is subject to a number of things which include appearance, gender, race and

age. At the Goedgedacht Forum for Social Reflection (2004, 4), it was confirmed that people “whose eyes

are brown with dagga ... get marginalised” and struggle to get employment because potential employers

find it difficult to trust them. This is the same kind of perception many ex-offenders get because some

people find it difficult to remove the prison stigma from them and this explains why the probability of

reoffending is high among ex-offenders in relation to non-offenders (Bierens and Carvalho 2011). This is

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corroborated by Holzer (1996) who learnt that more than 60% of employers admitted that they would not

knowingly hire an applicant with a criminal record.

Like human capital, reputation capital is sold and bought and the greater the reputation, the greater its

demand and the greater the price. The value of human capital gets compromised when reputation capital is

low and vice versa, hence people with criminal records struggle to get jobs despite their skills. The same

applies to human capital and cultural capital as people with the required educational qualifications may

struggle to get jobs if their interpersonal skills are weak. Collectively, human capital, cultural capital, social

capital and reputation capital determine one’s skill value.

4. Challenges in ascertaining skills status quo Determining skills status quo when the value of academic credentials is socially, economically, culturally

and politically determined is very challenging especially because of additional complications like academic

credentials inflation (this is discussed further in section 5.1). The fact that skill is not a quantifiable

commodity and is subject to various ontological and epistemological assumptions makes ascertaining the

required amount of skills complicated. The task is further complicated by the fact that in addition to not

being able to quantify a skill, the multiple variables that could be responsible for enhanced productivity,

service delivery and accountability make it difficult to confidently attribute such to skills. Furthermore,

precisely ascertaining the extent of skills contribution is also challenging because since skill is a product of

multifarious factors, so singling the contribution of each is not possible. For instance, if a nurse proficiently

executes a task, it is not possible to then ascertain the extent and specific role of each of the variables like

formal education, informal education, background, culture, age and gender. This is reminiscent of Yeats’

(2012 (1928)) rhetorical question in his poem ‘Among School Children’: ‘how can we know the dancer from

the dance?’, which echoes McConnell et al’s (2010) assertion that labour (the ability to work) is inseparable

from the labourer, as labour is embodied in human beings. Therefore, any measurement of skill should take

into cognisance the skill bearer and this is problematic because the objectives of the skill and the skill

bearer are not always in harmony. This is evident in the cases of priests who sexually molest kids (Ganeva

2010), police who sell police uniform to criminals (News24.com 2012) and doctors who accept bribes from

drug companies as incentives to use their products despite being aware of more helpful drugs (Reuters

2012).

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The skills discourse is dominated by suggestions of skills shortages in some sectors which is manifest

through economic underperformance, exorbitant salaries and unemployment. Interestingly, the

unemployment of university and high school graduates is usually not referred to as skills excess, but as an

indication of the labour market’s poor absorption rate. Skills excess admission is usually made in the

analysis of graduate output wherein the oversupply of social science and humanities graduates and

undersupply of science and commerce graduates gets conspicuous. Some of the reasons given for this

imbalanced graduate output are that people are studying wrong subject areas, attend inappropriate

institutions that are not recognised by employers and do not have sufficient prior work experience that

might enable them to be absorbed by the labour market (Altman 2007).

How to tell that there is skills shortage or skills excess is, however, a contested task as the current

measures used for doing so are not reliable as they, inter alia, use interviews with sampled individuals and

data on applicant/job ratios, recruitment lead times and job fill rates (Sharp 2011). The challenge with

interviews is that the interviewees report on skills shortage or excess based on their perception of job

requirements and this is depicted in the Chairman of the Employment Equity Commission, Jimmy Manyi’s

argument “in 2007 that the shortage of skills in South Africa was not as ‘chronic’ as it was made out to be

but had been stated over and over again to such an extent it had become an urban ‘legend’” (Breier 2009).

For a business manager post, for instance, one may argue that the requirements are a Bachelor of

Business Administration and someone else may perceive the requirements to be an Honours Degree in

Marketing. Interestingly, the HSRC Factsheet 8 (2004) reports a growing pattern of employment of

graduate engineers within the financial sector because of their strong analytical and project management

skills. Political appointments make this conundrum even more complex as they are not based on academic

credentials. For instance, there are no academic prerequisites for one to be the country’s president and the

case of President, Jacob Zuma who only has primary school education clearly demonstrates this fact.

When this issue was raised, Leon (2009), in defence of the president said, "character overcomes

qualification". He also noted that the Zuma case is not an isolated incident as several international leaders

like US president Harry Truman, former British prime ministers Winston Churchill and John Major

discharged their responsibilities despite their lack of academic qualifications.

Regarding the data on applicant/job ratio, Sharp (2011, 1) explains that it reveals the “shortage or surplus

of skills in a particular occupation, ranging from 4 applicants per position in highly-skilled and specialized

roles (such as gold dealers and credit derivatives traders) to 1,200 applicants per position in generic roles

requiring limited prior work experience (such as bank tellers and call centre agents)”. Similarly, job fill rates

14

which is “the percentage of open positions that are filled by suitable candidates” and recruitment lead times

which is “the average time taken to successfully fill a position” also contribute in drawing a picture of the

skills status quo (Ibid). The fact that only a small portion of jobs are intermediated through employment

agencies and most of the employee-employer matches are done through the various employers doing their

own recruitment in silos, internal labour markets and extended internal labour markets translates to

unreliable statistics on job search processes. This is so because the collection of employment data does

not cover everyone, thus it is difficult to draw a precise picture of who gets employed or loses a job, where,

why, when and how.

The unreliable statistics on job search processes is aggravated by the multiple variables that may be

responsible for improving services or production since skill is a concoction of multifarious factors. According

to Bourdieu (1977), it includes family background, geographical area, race, gender, ethnicity and

personality because skill is a cultural construct. According to Blackmore (1997), it also includes context,

history and gender because skill is a social construct. According to Ingbretsen’s (2011), it includes public

perceptions of one’s trustworthiness, popularity, authority in the field, ethics, integrity and resilience

because skill is a reputational construct. In the case of reduced corruption, for instance, an educationist

may attribute that to a lesson on financial management the workers may have received; a theologian may

argue that there could have been a change of heart from the people because of some religious intervention

and therefore the people decided to desist from acts of corruption; a strategist may argue that the people

became clearer about what they may use for their own benefit after some intervention by the management

clarifying this and; a cultural activist may argue that the people may have come to realise that according to

the values of their ethnic group, they are not supposed to engage in corrupt activities. So, attributing only

one component of skill to curbed misappropriation of resources is could be erroneous as there are different

disciplinary vantage points from which to interpret a phenomenon. However, like a coffee concoction, as

much as it is difficult to separate its individual components, like milk, water, sugar and coffee beans, it is not

difficult to tell which component is lacking or excessive and address it specifically. With skill, however, the

difficulty of isolating the various components tends to lead to the practice of equating the lack of one

component to the lack of skill in general, hence the all-encompassing declaration of skills shortage when

upon proper analysis, it may be established that it is just some components of skill and not the entire skill

that is lacking.

Klees (1986) observes that attempts to analyse the education-economic productivity link have been strewn

with theoretical and empirical failures because demonstrating a causal relationship between the two is

virtually impossible due to power relations as well as the social and technical determinants of skills demand

15

and supply. Therefore, measuring the required skills is rather a challenge especially because in addition to

the other variables, one needs to be cognisant of the quantity and quality of labour – the skill bearers.

Having a standardised measurement of the quality of a skill bearer is also a very complicated task because

unlike the deterministic human capital theory stance, Bourdieu (1977) and Blackmore (1997) argue that skill

formation cannot only be attributed to formal education as the human capital theorists do, because it is also

a result of cultural capital and social capital. The cultural and social value of credentials compromises the

claimed fairness in the recruitment process since culture is not neutral, so making an assessment of a

culture that you either do not understand or do not belong to compromises the reliability and validity of the

recruitment process as it is not practical to suggest that for recruitment purposes, applicants should be

assessed by people with common culture, gender and background.

Moreover, it would be naive to assume that people of the same social strata or culture share uniform values

and standards, therefore, applicants should be interviewed by people with common culture, gender and

background. Gender relations clearly demonstrate this challenge because they reflect complex and

sometimes conflicting interests among women themselves, hence Elia (1999, 137) argues that “there is no

such a thing as ‘universal feminism’, an abstraction that would unite women across national, racial, ethnic,

socio-economic, and other boundaries”. Floya and Yuval-Davis (1983, 62) add that “sisterhood is powerful”,

but it “can also be misleading unless contextualized”. Floya and Yuval-Davis (107) question the “implicit

feminist assumption that there exists a commonality of interests and/or goals amongst all women . . .

[Instead they argue that] every feminist struggle has a specific ethnic [racial, religious and class] context”.

So, although Blackmore’s (1997) criticism of the human capital theory is valid as she argues that this theory

has an ahistorical and gender blind view of the education-work relationship, the measurement of the role of

gender in skill formation is clearly a very complex task especially in light of the differences within the same

gender. On the basis of the multifarious factors which form a skill, she disputes the positivist view which

holds that skill is technical and therefore can be measured.

Furthermore, there are pitfalls associated with the human capital positivist conception of skill such as the

fact that it is common for employers to overestimate or underestimate the skills required for undertaking

certain tasks. For instance, the employment of highly skilled professionals to do work that less qualified

people could do has been raised as a dynamic in the skills shortage debate (Van Zyl 2008). It transpired in

the FASSET Case Study 2011: Skills Development for the Financial Sector report that there are conflicting

voices with regard to accounting skills status quo as the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants

(SAICA) holds that there is skills paucity while some employers observe that there are enough or even too

16

many chattered accountants (CAs) consequently a number of them are struggling to find jobs, hence they

take long to be employed or settle for less. Similarly with engineers, Excell (2010) argues that the skills

shortage suggestion is insulting to the engineers who cannot find jobs. Interestingly, while Greve (2011)

reports that the paucity of engineers leads to infrastructure deterioration, the HSRC Factsheet 8 (2004)

reports that the importance of engineers is declining, because of a declining employer demand for their

skills since there is a large decline in significant traditional areas of engineering employment such as the

military and mining sectors and a shift instead towards electrical and electronic engineering. These

conflicting voices do not augur well for skills planning and development as allocating resources towards

enhancing the number of available CAs would be a waste if there are already too many of them, but not

enhancing the number of CAs when there is paucity of such skills would undermine the country’s economic

growth and aggravate its concomitant challenges like job creation and poverty reduction.

Another dynamic in the skills discourse is the attribution of socio-economic challenges to a lack of skills

(capacity) when this is due to something else. The service delivery challenge is a classic example as one

school of thought attributes it to lack of skills (Stokes 2010) and another one attributes it to poor work ethic

(Faling 2011). Faling argues that “the ‘skills shortage’ has become a convenient scapegoat for most

shortcomings in service delivery by municipalities, public utilities and government departments. Businesses

in the private sector often use the same lament as an excuse for sloppy service”. He argues that most of

the service delivery grievances require the most basic of skills as one does not “need a B Sc Chem Eng

degree to detect sewerage running into the streets” or “a CA qualification … to sort out a R12 000

municipal account presented to a pensioner living in a cluster home” ( Ibid). For this reason, he attributes

the lack of service delivery to a pervasive poor work ethic and argues that without discounting the legitimate

skills problems, the country is suffering from a work ethic problem.

The challenge with Faling’s (2011) point is that it identifies the problem but falls short of addressing it

because it does not show how to identify legitimate skills problems as opposed to work ethic problems. The

difficulty of distinguishing between the two then translates to the practice of conflating them under the skills

shortage umbrella.

5. The impact of screening devices on clouding the skills status quo5.1 Qualifications inflation as a screening device

The lack of a precise relationship between occupations and educational qualifications in many professions

makes the labour market system vulnerable to abuse. Although job adverts usually indicate the required

17

qualifications from the applicants, one cannot be sure that such qualifications are really necessary as, for

instance, many managers without qualifications have efficaciously executed their responsibilities and some

with the required qualifications have been abysmal. Paci (1977, 341) recalls the 1940 – 1945 social

mobilisation situation due to the war wherein in the United States labour without “any kind of secondary

education or professional qualification (such as women, coloured people and young men) showed

themselves to be perfectly capable of performing those functions of skilled labour left vacant by the men

called to the front”. Paci views this as the systematic under-utilisation of human resources as it excludes

those with skill but without qualifications from productive life and allocates those with the formal

qualifications to appropriate and sometimes inappropriate jobs for their qualifications. The case of

practitioners who, despite their fake qualifications, continue to practice for a long time without being

detected suggests that the absence of academic certificates does not necessarily mean ignorance about a

particular job and the availability of academic certificates does not necessarily mean being knowledgeable

about the job. The cases of such bogus practitioners who practised with fake qualifications include the

lawyer who practised law for over 12 years (RIA Novosti 2012 ), Congolese doctor who worked as a

neurosurgeon in three Gauteng health facilities for four years (Makhubu 2012), drivers who use licenses

bought at various places around the country (Star 2011) and the pilot licenses sold in India to people

“without even elementary scientific knowledge about flying” because "if one has the money, obtaining a

SPL [student pilot license] isn't difficult at all” (Anand 2011).

Furthermore, Kraak (1993) observes that qualification inflation was used for the purpose of maintaining

white hegemony and black subservience after the official demise of the Job Reservation Act. Through this

strategy, entrance qualifications for black work-seekers entering skilled jobs were raised to bar them from

entering and the barring practice was legitimised through the rapid expansion of educational facilities which

was faster than job openings for school leavers. To cope with the high quantity of graduates, qualifications

were then devalued which meant the raising of the level at which job selection takes place. To substantiate

the qualification inflation claim, Kraak cites the example of the changed entry requirements in the metal

industry when black apprentices joined, from standard seven or eight when it was only Whites, to standard

ten certificates with maths and science. He adds that while the blasting certificate holder, locomotive engine

driver and onsetter occupations were reserved for Whites, when Blacks were allowed in them, stiffer

entrance requirements were introduced which included passing a test administered by a commissioner of

examiners appointed by the government mining engineer. This test included command of language,

educational qualifications and security which all meant possession of standard eight certificates while white

workers previously did these jobs without any educational qualification requirements. One needs to bear in

18

mind the language impediments experienced by Blacks in relation to skills development discussed in

section 3.2.

Interestingly, the FASSET Case Study 2011: Skills Development for the Financial Sector report reveals that

the CA qualification has now become an elitist qualification with CAs being fastidious about who to work for.

The elitist hallmark of some qualifications, Ndzimande (2011a) and Ndzimande (2011b) argue, serves as a

gate-keeping device that makes it difficult for new entrants to join the profession thus pushing the salaries

of the insiders high because the system has been designed to appear to be experiencing skills shortage.

Such dynamics adumbrate the skills status quo and negatively affect skills development and planning

because it gets unclear as to whether there is a shortage or excess of skills. Robinson, et al. (2006) notes

that the government acknowledges its lack of clarity around the nature and extent of skills shortage. The

consequences of planning from an unclear position are dire and economic under-performance, graduate

unemployment, skills shortage, skills excess, underutilisation or overutilization of resources are just some

of them.

5.2 Internal labour markets as screening devices The internal labour markets are labour allocation mechanisms within a firm or profession or sector which

follow a set of internally accepted rules and procedures. It is, for instance, an accepted rule in the legal

profession that to be a practicing lawyer, one needs to do articles and pass the board exam in addition to

obtaining a bachelors degree. Workers in the internal labour market system experience career mobility in

the form of promotions or transfers and this shields them from the competition of external labour markets as

those who are not within the system may not meet all the internal requirements, rules and procedures like

having certain years experience in the profession, the particular field’s tacit knowledge and other on-the-job

training qualifications like articles in the case of lawyers and accountants. With pilots, for instance, although

they may have obtained the Commercial Pilot Licence and working as pilots, the South African Civil

Aviation Authority reports that “it is difficult to get employment with less than 500 hours of flying experience”

due to, inter alia, insurance requirements (South African Civil Aviation Authority 2012). Therefore, if one is

outside the system, s/he may find it difficult to fulfil this requirement and thus automatically gets excluded

from flying commercial flights.

Kraak (1993) argues that internal labour markets and qualification inflation are some of the screening

devices that were used in South Africa for racial exclusion. The internal labour markets in South Africa

served to ensure and protect jobs for mostly Whites through the shielding practices of white craft workers

19

and employment of White in high level jobs through privileged access and internal promotion paths. Kraak

(1993, 149) further observes that the other strategy capital used was to try and reshape the worker’s

behavioural characteristics “with the aim of making them more sympathetic to free market values and

submissive in the face of managerial authority”. He alludes to the President’s Council report which stated

that, the white management understood that many Blacks resist capitalism and the free-market ideals

because they were of the view that it does not serve their interests but those of Whites, because it was the

Whites and not Blacks who derived sufficient benefit from it. Through these strategies, the management

together with white labour controlled the formation of the internal labour market to the detriment of black

labour market entrants. Drawing sympathy for free market values, Kraak argues, yields “the development of

a white dominated ‘extended internal labour market’ which constitutes a new form of racial recruitment”

(150). Enhancing submission in the face of white managerial authority required the capital and state to

place more emphasis on the ideological reconstruction of skill amongst black workers. For this reason,

Kraak (219) avers that “skill is not merely a technical capability, but it is also a social and ideological

construct shaped by the behavioural attributes required by employers of their work-forces”.

The concept of an extended internal labour market is used by Moore (1991) to explain “the way in which

the discriminatory criteria used by enterprises for internal labour market formation are expanded ‘externally’

onto the external labour market”. The extended internal labour market functions within a given context and

religious, political, cultural and social networks of the labour market which include word of mouth, referrals

from members of the internal labour market and recommendation of family, friends and comrades for

vacancies and promotion. “Potential new recruits acquire from their family and friends the tacit work

socialisation skills that will be required in their future employment context. ... [and they in turn] will have to

uphold the good reputations of their sponsors” (Ibid) and this is what makes this system an effective tool for

labour control.

The micro/localised theories of labour market segmentation are very useful for explaining the persistent

racial discrimination in the labour market long after the official demise of apartheid and its racial exclusive

Acts. Moore (1991) holds that the social networks are often based on racial exclusivity as it helps white

beneficiaries of internal labour markets to protect their employment privileges from equivalently qualified

black applicants. Due to apartheid reversal laws, like affirmative action, the same argument is now being

made by some qualified white applicants who feel discriminated against on the basis of their race.

20

Furthermore, the operations of the extended internal labour market continue to be a thorny issue in post-

apartheid South Africa as allegations of comrades rewarding each other with jobs and promotions at work

are frequently made. Fourie (2006) reports that “seventeen top directors employed at Limpopo’s

municipalities are trained teachers with no management-related qualifications”. Their positions include

municipal managers and directors of finance, integrated development planning, corporate services, local

economic development, accounting and human resources. These alternative career mobility channels like

the extended internal labour market compromise the skills development agenda as they demean the value

of skills and this is aggravated by what Akoojee, Nkomo and Twalo (Forthcoming) perceive to be a “bling-

bling culture and ‘tenderpreneurism’ practices which devalue the importance of education as they place

chances of economic prosperity on political and social networks rather than education merits”.

6. Conclusion This paper has underscored the fact that for the skills development agenda to succeed, nothing should be

taken for granted, because the multifarious components of skill serve to enhance one another if they are all

nourished or compromise one another if some are neglected at the expense of the others. Skills

development initiatives thus need to be balanced and address all the skills components as opposed to the

currently dominant positivist practice which only focuses on the technical capability component. The

analysis of the human capital, social capital, cultural capital and reputation capital has shown that the skills

shortage declaration is not unproblematic as it fails to notice all the components of skill and the fact that

skill is not a neutral concept as its value is socially, culturally, economically and politically determined .

Therefore, drawing a reliable picture of the skills status quo is crucial as some of the current perceptions of

the status quo are unreliable due to being based on unreliable data, cultural and political bias, and self-

made status quo for the benefit of increasing salaries of the insiders and block entrance into the labour

market.

21

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