Resumen de Detecting, defining and developing soft skills in business and ict contexts
The motivation to this research project emerged from both personal and professional sources. In the field of business, as well as many other fields, the definition of professional competence has undergone a major evolution over the past 20 years. As working environments become increasingly digital, but also based on teams and networks, the role of individual skills grow. Employers in business and ICT organizations seek for technical 'hard skills', yet they increasingly look for graduates able to manage themselves, work in teams and networks and solve problems. The need for these 'Soft Skills' has been expressed from the part of Organizations and employers, and their role is believed to grow additionally in the future.
However, there are many reasons why educational institutions have found it difficult to capture this challenge. As a result, the labour market is reported to suffer from 'skills gaps', which cause problems for the employers as well as the graduates, and indirectly also to the educators. A main reason for this is that educators lack the awareness of the skills needed in Organizations. In addition, they feel unsure about whether Soft Skills can be promoted, and how this should be conducted.
In this research, I elucidate the 'skills gap' and possible solutions to reduce it. I start by defining the character and role of Soft Skills. Subsequently, I inspect the skills acquisition process from the aspect of the mentioned parts, called 'stakeholders'. My objective is to create a method that can consider Soft Skills in a systematic way, in respect to their role for the different stakeholders. To achieve this, a framework of the essential Soft Skills, viable for HEIs and Organizations is composed. Next, a three-dimensional model of the Soft Skills acquisition process is presented. The Method Soft Skills Status indicator (3Si) is then suggested, by operationalizing the elements of the model into three statistical dimensions, 'Significance', 'Learnability' and 'Level'. The proposed Method is subsequently experimented, by launching a survey to 381 business and ICT professionals in four European countries.
In the Results section, the outcomes of the survey are presented and discussed. Next, the results are applied to test the Method, which allows a classification in eight classes of Soft Skills. These classes provide specific descriptions for each of the Soft Skills, applicable for educators and trainers working on Soft Skills. The results affirm the hypothesis set to the research.
