Skills Development for Economic and Social Upgrading: The case of Asian Developing Countries in the Global Value Chains
By opening up access to higher-value markets, Global Value Chain (GVC) participation has given emerging economies in Asia and the Pacific an opportunity to diversify, drive employment and raise incomes (OECD, 2012b). At the same time, these connections to the global economy serve as a conduit for the transfer of knowledge, technology and organizational management into the region. Capturing these gains from GVC trade, however, has proven challenging. This chapter explores how a focus on GVC skills development, through the alignment of workforce development initiatives and stakeholders with international labour demands, can orient the export competitiveness of Asian countries to one based on an inclusive and productive agenda. The chapter takes on this task by discussing the role of skills development in GVC upgrading, followed by three case studies of Asian participation in GVCs to illustrate the relationship between skills development and both economic and social upgrading. Subsequently, skills strategies for GVC upgrading are presented, along with a typology of policy recommendations. Adequately aligning workforce development initiatives and their varied stakeholders to meet the demands of the more globalized economy, however, is challenging. The skills required for GVCs tend to differ from those of the local economy. Thus, workforce development systems in countries seeking to use GVCs as a platform for economic growth must realign these towards global requirements of specific sectors. Due to the complexity of doing so, this requires contributions and coordination from numerous stakeholders in the private, public and education sectors. For success, these stakeholders need to develop a skills strategy based on the economic-upgrading paths that a country can pursue. They need to identify policy approaches related to types of skills required for that upgrading. And they need to articulate the roles of different stakeholders in addressing workforce development gaps.
