Q. Given the shift to service work, to what extent has our understanding of skills also changed?
Introduction
In the last 15 years, businesses in the United Kingdom have increased their reliance on skilled work groups or teams. Although the initial motivation for adoption of work groups and teams may be linked to well-publicized examples in Japan and Sweden, reports of many successful implementations in the United Kingdom have further spurred their adoption (Navahandi & Aranda, 1994). The continuing importance in the workplace was advanced by Jerry Junkins, CEO of Texas Instruments: "No matter what your business, these teams are the wave of the future" (Dumaine, 1990, p. 52).
Service Work and Skills
In the current scenario, whether the current popularity of work teams across U.K. industry will remain at its present level is unclear. However, work groups will be common in the workplace, and the ability to function effectively within them will be critical to the success of new comers.
Communication Skills Lab
English: Evolv - Leading English Communication, So...
A screenshot from DragonRealms showing examples of...In this paper, need of skills for the present day service work will be discussed. It will review the values of the group-project teaching technique, and propose a learning model to teach basic, yet highly important, workplace skills. (Dollinger, 1995)
For decades, the curriculum in most schools of business has been largely shaped by the Schools of Business. Until recently, with the adoption of its "mission-based accreditation," curriculum standards have promoted a broad array of core courses in a content-oriented program. A potential problem with this focus on providing all of the necessary content courses (accounting, economics, finance, information systems, management, marketing, etc.) is the failure to recognize the value of process in the educational preparation of students for the workplace. The development of important job skills may have been hindered by the concentration on cognitive knowledge.