Print version Recommend this page Press release
2/ 2010
Bonn, 04.02.2010
What do those working in commercial occupations today need to be able to do and what do they need to know?
There are now in excess of 50 commercial occupations in Germany, and more than half of all training contracts are concluded in the trade and commerce sector. A research project being conducted by the Federal Institute of Vocational Education and Training (BIBB) is investigating how these occupational profiles need to be updated, systematised and adapted to meet increased requirements in future. The results of the project's opening workshop are presented in "Requirements facing commercial and business management occupations from a vocational education and sociological point of view", a volume published as part of the BIBB "Vocational Training Reports" series.
Those working in commercial occupations have experienced particularly significant change as a result of the globalisation of the economy, the deployment of modern IT and the restructuring of the organisation of work. This has led to the development of a large number of new initial and advanced training occupations. The BIBB research project analyses the changes which have taken place in activities in the fields of trade and commerce and the implications of this for initial and advanced training in commercial occupations. The core focuses of the research are on the issue of the extent to which existing occupations can be combined and under which conditions this could take place as well as on how transitions can be facilitated both between the individual occupations and between initial and advanced training.
The main research questions are as follows.
. Where are the core competences, areas of communality and differences to be found within the commercial occupations, and which skills requirements are we able to derive from these?
. Which models and theories can be used to map the new and changed work processes within the trade and commerce sector, and how can the areas of differentiation between the commercial occupations be explained?
. What will the future requirements made of workers with regard to the increasingly autonomous nature of decisions made in commercial occupations?
The publication (ISBN 978-3-7639-1133-2) may be ordered from W. Bertelsmann Verlag, Bielefeld, at service@wbv.de or www.wbv.de/.
More (German language) information on the BIBB research project is available at www.bibb.de/projekt/4.02.202
Points of contact: Rainer Brötz (broetz@bibb.de) and Dr. Franz Schapfel-Kaiser (schapfel-kaiser@bibb.de)
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