Skill and work experience in the European knowledge economy

honesty, punctuality, following instructions. In other cases, it reflects a demand for,
what Nickson et al (1999) have referred to as, the ‘aesthetic-skills’ that are associated
with routine employment in certain sections of the service industry. This might include
the ability of employees either to manage their feelings and appearance in order to
serve the perceived interests of customers (Taylor 1998), or be endowed with certain
types of accent that reflect specific socially and culturally defined conceptions of
performance and acceptability and to exhibit certain styles of appearance, for example,
hair style, clothing and physical size (Nickson et al 1999).

A second use of the concept is to employ it to refer to the qualities which it is assumed
are required in modern workplaces. One of the problems associated with this approach
to generic skill is that different national education and training and social partnership
traditions mean that differences in terminology about generic skills refer to real
differences between underlying approaches to skill development and assessment
(Kamarainen and Streumer 1998). This issue can be illustrated by examining the
different conceptions of generic skill that are associated with education and training
policy in the UK, Germany and the Netherlands.

The term, ‘key skill’, is employed in the UK to describe the generic skills which are
assumed to be relevant to most forms of modern work and which can be developed in
education. One group covers communication, application of number, application of
ICT and another covers such things as improving own learning, problem-solving, etc.)
UK educational policy assumes that ‘key skills’ are important for future learning and
hence for mobility in the labour market (Payne 2000). Furthermore it implies that skill
can be defined in a highly individualistic way that does not take account of the
influence of context on development and performance (Guile and Fonda 1999).

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