The Success of Apprenticeships

28All Apprentices: A Necessity

28.1. Introduction

The principle of work-linked training is brilliant, in the sense that it is exactly adjusted to the need for what is nowadays called “agility”. Here’s why.

As its name suggests, the principle of work-linked training consists of a regular round trip between theory, or learning on the school bench, and practice, or in concreto tests in a workshop, office, factory, etc. However, it is crucial for organizations to acquire the means to take a long-term perspective, that is, to take the necessary distance to consider strategic issues in a global context. No one can now navigate with a minimum of chances of working towards the sustainability of an organization without integrating the long term into managerial and operational arrangements. This in turn allows the integration of uncertainty, contradictions, possible emerging markets, competitors, customers, suppliers and new interlocutors – in short, the complexity of the current economic, social and political reality. And it is in such a context, that the same organizations are systematically taken up with the short term, or the need to deliver or perform in the immediate future, to such an extent that the spontaneous dynamics of organizations are even, however they exist and whatever discourse one may hold on the need for a long-term or exclusively short-term stance. That is, a results-oriented one, or one based on short-term production and meeting the requirements of all stakeholders. ...