Skills and workforce development are at the heart of much research on work, employment, and management. Policy makers and managers often consider the better development of skills to be the answer to a range of practical and policy challenges. This Handbook sheds new light on all the major issues concerning skills and training today

INTRODUCTION; SECTION I: CONCEPTS, DEFINITIONS AND MEASUREMENTS OF SKILL; SECTION II: EDUCATION, TRAINING AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF WORKFORCE SKILLS; SECTION III: SKILLS DEMAND AND DEPLOYMENT; SECTION IV: SKILL OUTCOMES; SECTION V: DIFFERING SKILL SYSTEMS: THE LEVELS OF DETERMINATION; SECTION VI: DIFFERING SKILL SYSTEMS: THE DYNAMICS OF DEVELOPMENT IN A GLOBAL ECONOMY; SECTION VII: CURRENT CHALLENGES

Contributions from leading scholars in the field Relevant for academics, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners Multidisciplinary in appeal, covering sociology, economics, labour/industrial relations, human resource management, education and geography

Chris Warhurst PhD is Professor and Director of the Institute for Employment Research at the University of Warwick in the UK, a Trustee of the Tavistock Institute in London and a Research Associate of the Centre on Skills, Knowledge and Organisational Performance (SKOPE) at Oxford University. He has published a number of books and articles on skills, including, with colleagues, The Skills that Matter (Palgrave, 2004) and Are Bad Jobs Inevitable? (Palgrave, 2012). He has been expert advisor on skills policy to the UK, Scottish and Australian Governments and an International Expert Adviser to the OECD's LEED programme. Ken Mayhew is Emeritus Professor of Education and Economic Performance, at Oxford University, Emeritus Fellow in Economics at Pembroke College Oxford, Extraordinary Professor at Maastricht University and a member of the Armed Forces Pay Review Body. He was founding director of SKOPE, an ESRC research centre on skills, knowledge and organizational performance. He has published widely in labour economics and policy analysis, and advised many private and public sector organisations at home and abroad. David Finegold is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and is the founding Chief Academic Officer for American Honors. He is a leading international expert on skill development systems and their relationship to the changing world of work and economic performance. John Buchanan is Professor in the Research Development Unit at the University of Sydney Business School. Until recently his major research interest has been the demise of the classical wage-earner model of employment and the role of the state in nurturing new forms of multi-employer coordination in the labour market. Building on this he is devoting special attention to the evolution of the labour contract, the dynamics of workforce development and the relationship between work and health. He is especially interested in building cross disciplinary research teams to examine these issues. His most recent co-edited book is Inclusive Growth in Australia: Social Policy as Economic Investment (2013).

Contributions from leading scholars in the field Relevant for academics, researchers, policy makers, and practitioners Multidisciplinary in appeal, covering sociology, economics, labour/industrial relations, human resource management, education and geography