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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