Lukas Graf

This paper explores the extension of collective governance to sectors without collective governance tradition. We introduce the concept of state-led bricolage to analyze the expansion of the Swiss apprenticeship training system – in which employer associations fulfill core collective governance tasks – to economic sectors in which training had previously followed a school-based and state-oriented logic. In deindustrializing societies, these sectors are key for the survival of collectively governed training systems. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we examine the reform process that led to the creation of new intermediary organizations that enable collective governance in these sectors. In addition, we compare the organizational features of these organizations with the respective organizations in the traditional crafts and industry sectors. We find that the new organizations result from state-led bricolage. They are hybrid organizations that reflect some of the bricoleur's core policy goals and critically build on the combination of associational and state-oriented institutional logics.

Liberalization pressures challenge countries to adapt their training systems. This is particularly relevant for coordinated market economies with firm-driven but collectively governed apprenticeship systems. Recent literature has identified different liberalization trajectories for these countries. For instance, segmental-ism describes the increasing influence of large employers in Germany. In Denmark, state agencies manage increased flexibility in training through embedded flexibilization. In this paper, we identify a new form of embedded flexibilization, characterized by polite employer domination. We find this trajectory of liberali-zation in Switzerland, which represents another training system heavily based on firm involvement. We illustrate our argument at the example of short-track apprenticeship training, which has been expanded in all three mentioned countries in response to ongoing liberalization and deindustrialization pressures. In Swit-zerland, the relevant reform was initiated by the state while business adopted a rather passive role initially. Yet, state actors eventually stepped back and dele-gated key competences to employers, which implies that the employers’ camp asserted their interests in the end while tolerating some concessions for the bene-fit of disadvantaged groups. Our process tracing reveals that policy makers used layering to implement short-tracks that enhance social inclusion, while simultaneously increasing the scope of employer cooperation.

The corporatist-governed dual-training system has been a key example of collective governance in the German capitalist model. However, high-end dual-training is increasingly being offered within post-secondary higher education. Here, firms and universities, not chambers of commerce or trade unions, are the actors negotiating the curricula of and access to a range of ‘dual-study programmes’. This article traces the emergence and expansion of this more firm-specific skills provision system, which diminishes the beneficial constraints for strategic cooperation and, in turn, the provision of collective training standards and transferable skills. The case study builds on the ‘gradual institutional change’ taxonomy, while pointing to the potential benefits of using different modes of change in combination. Through analysing firms’ strategies to initiate change in an institutional grey area between established socio-economic spheres, the article shows how layering, conversion and drift can become interlinked and how each individual process can trigger and feed the next.

In both Germany and the United States, employers search for new strategies to recruit and train people in times of a dynamically evolving economy and rising educational expectations on the part of individuals. In this context, we observe the proliferation of work-based higher education programmes in both countries. This development challenges the common classification found in the political economy and educational policy literature that distinguishes between collectively governed dual apprenticeships in Germany and market-driven on-the-job training in the US. The paper proposes an alternative conceptualization that identifies significant similarities in the governance mode of work-based higher education across the two countries. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, the institutional analysis focuses on complex multi-actor governance constellations at the nexus of vocational training and higher education and explores consequences for contemporary policy-making in advanced skill formation.

Dual study programs are hybrid forms of work-based higher education that have expanded very rapidly in Germany—a country traditionally considered a key model in both higher education (HE) and vocational education and training (VET). The continued expansion of these hybrid programs increasingly raises questions if, how, and why they may be internationalized. Although comparative research suggests that this could be challenging due to the uniqueness of the German education and training system, strong forces support internationalization. This study examines the current state and the future prospects of internationalization of such innovative dual study programs by focusing on student mobility, a key dimension of internationalization. We find growing interest in but still relatively little mobility related to dual study programs, whether among German (outgoing) or international (incoming) students. Based on expert interviews and document analysis, we extend existing typologies of student mobility regarding specific features of work-based HE programs. Furthermore, we discuss opportunities—at home and abroad—for increasing student mobility in this rapidly expanding sector.

Austria, Germany and Switzerland are renowned for their extensive systems of collective vocational skill formation, which, however, have developed largely in separation from higher education. This divide has become increasingly contested as a result of a variety of socioeconomic factors that have led to an increasing demand for higher level skills. Do the three countries deal with these challenges in similar ways? The comparative analysis is based on process tracing from the 1960s to 2013 and builds on historical institutionalism as well as several dozen expert interviews with key stakeholders. A key finding is that all three countries have developed hybrid forms of work-based academic education that combine elements of vocational training and higher education. However, in Austria and Switzerland, these hybrids have been integrated into the traditional model of collective governance, whereas the German case signifies a departure from this model.