Decentralised cooperation between industries and local governments in a statist skill-formation system: an analysis of industrial schools in Sweden

Abstract

The scholarly debate about cooperation between different stakeholders in Vocational Education and Training has primarily focussed on the national level, and much less on local and regional levels. This article aims to contribute to our understanding of the conditions and mechanisms of decentralised cooperation in VET systems, through a comparative case study of two partnerships between local government and industry at two industrial schools in Sweden. We want to understand how and why companies and municipalities engage in this kind of co-operation, in a national structural context which provides few incentives for doing so. Our analysis is guided by two research questions. Firstly, what have these collaborations meant in terms of the involvement of firms and commitment from local government? Secondly, what factors can explain the similarities and differences between the establishment and upholding of these two collaborative arrangements? Our study shows that the partnerships can be characterised by different dynamics in relation to the scope of participation and depth of commitment of the partners. We also show that two conditions are especially important for understanding variations between the cases: the structure of local industry, and the characteristics of the relationship between local government and the industrial companies.