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Title: Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers
Resulting in 1 citation.
1. Leigh, Duane E.
Gifford, Kirk D.
Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers
Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 38,2 (April 1999): 174-191.
Also: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0019-8676.00123/abstract
Cohort(s): NLSY79
Publisher: Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California, Berkeley
Keyword(s): Job Training; Skills; Training; Training, Employee

Permission to reprint the abstract has not been received from the publisher.

How common is workplace transformation in the American economy? What are its implications for work force skill requirements and training investments? The existing literature addressing these questions is based on firm-reported survey data. Using new data available in the 1993 wave of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY), this article examines the same questions from the perspective of individual workers. Our empirical results suggest that workplace transformation is commonplace. Fully 40 percent of private-sector workers surveyed report that in the space of just one year, a change occurred at work that required them to learn new job skills. About 23 percent of all respondents reported experiencing a workplace change we term an organizational transformation. Incidence of formal training is positively related to indicators of organizational transformation, but the effect of these indicators is found to be sensitive to the inclusion of other important workplace change variables (namely, new products, new equipment, and new government regulations). While we expected to find strong positive relationships with product development and physical capital investment, government regulation has a surprisingly large impact on formal training.
Bibliography Citation
Leigh, Duane E. and Kirk D. Gifford. "Workplace Transformation and Worker Upskilling: The Perspective of Individual Workers." Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society 38,2 (April 1999): 174-191.