Global Strategies and Local Forms of Vocational Education and Training in German Multinational Companies
A Comparison across Emerging Economies
As production processes become increasingly complex, multinational companies in the manufacturing
sector are in increasing need of skilled workers at their production sites. Especially in emerging economies,
German direct investors face challenges in finding appropriately skilled workers with the right technical
knowledge, experience-based capabilities and problem-solving skills. Therefore, both German global
players and ‘smaller’ transnational companies carry out vocational education and training activities at their
locations around the world. How they develop these activities depends both on the strategies adopted by
headquarters in Germany and on the significant influence exerted by local conditions.
In order to explain the various forms of local vocational education and training activities of German multina-
tional companies in three different local contexts, this research project focuses on German companies in the
industrial belt from Guadalajara to Puebla in Mexico, in the metropolitan areas of Shanghai in China, and in
Bangalore in India. In addition, the perspectives of headquarters in Germany are taken into account in or-
der to gain a full picture. In particular, the project considers the extent to which headquarters implements
centralised training strategies or whether subsidiaries implement local forms of vocational education and
training activities. We ask whether uniform solutions, diverse variants or hybrid solutions can be identified.
In addition, we focus on the way in which multinational companies develop local arrangements for training
activities in their subsidiaries and try to understand whether, and how, these companies transfer parts of
the German dual system – with which they are familiar – to their different subsidiaries.
To address these issues, the research project systematically combines perspectives from the discipline of
economic geography with those from economics and business education. The selected regions are analysed
comparatively applying a qualitative methodology.
Project Description: Details
Multinational companies in three different skill formation systems
