As the new technologies and organizational principles spread across firms, industries and countries there is a growing realization that skills and people are becoming central to competitiveness. This heightened role of human resources is being used to explain an important part of the success of firms and countries and has become one of the main criteria for policy recommendations [24]. The new circumstances can be forcefully summarized in the words of Sylvia Hewlett: "In the last decade of the twentieth century, human capital will become the prime source of wealth and power for individuals, corporations and nations [25]."

The irony of this recognition is that hardly more than a decade ago, the main concerns were about the expected negative impacts of the diffusion of information technology on employment and skills. That early simplistic view about massive reduction in manpower needs and widespread deskilling of the workforce was gradually replaced by a deeper understanding of the complex combination of trends and countertrends, job and skill displacement, replacement, extension, redefinition, elimination and creation that accompany the diffusion of an all pervasive wave of technical change[26].

As concerns the impact of new technologies on skills it can be considered that " the debate has largely been settled in favor of upskilling" for most levels of employees and workers, including blue-collar[27]. There are changes in skill profile which vary from industry to industry and from country to country, but the trend with the widest social and economic consequences is the general increase in skill intensity as the new technologies and managerial techniques propagate. This obviously does not mean that every job in the economy of every country will be upskilled. It does mean that most jobs in competitive firms will require higher and growing skills as opposed to the permanent use of unskilled workers by major firms in the mass production system of the past.

Thus an important policy recommendation of the MIT-CIP report is to increase "learning for work and at work" because experience shows that "successful adaptation to the new economic environment involves workers, technicians and managers using technology in ways that require good preparation and continuous learning on the job"[28].
        

Companies engaging in the organizational transformation discussed above have found that competitiveness hinges more and more on the capabilities not only of managers, engineers and supervisors but of every single one of their workers. So much so that the most advanced firms no longer consider expenditure in employee and worker training as a cost but treat it explicitly as an investment[29] .

Estimates of returns on this very intangible form of asset are hard to come by, but MOTOROLA, a firm that has systematically engaged in a wide range of educational and training activities has calculated a 30:1 return on such investment[30] .

One of the main reasons for this growing need for a skilled -or rather multi-skilled- workforce is the trend towards more segmented and rapidly changing markets. To compete in this shifting world environment, firms need to accelerate their response capability, to augment their rate of assimilation of change and to attain maximum flexibility and adaptability. This is partly achieved through the use of multi-purpose programmable equipment. But to arrive at a thoroughly adaptable process -from variable inputs to segmented markets- a truly flexible type of human organization is required.

Under the new competitive conditions, the old single-task, single-post type of job in which a worker operates under constant supervision according to the instruction manual is no longer adequate. Upskilling and multi-skilling cannot produce the necessary initiative and creativity if framed in the rigid organization that characterized mass production. Skill enhancement needs to be complemented by conditions for participation. This is another area where it is critical to abandon the old "common sense" ideas of traditional best practice. But in this case the mental barriers are reinforced by social and ideological ones[31].

The increased role of skills in competitiveness involves then two complementary aspects: on the one hand, the mastery of technology -both specific and generic- and, on the other, the ability and the incentives to make creative use of those skills. Bell and Richards have proposed the expression "change generating human capital [32]" in order to indicate the type of effort required and the criteria that both governments and companies should apply for investing in people.

It is also possible to see in this heightened role of human resources a basis for attaining true workplace democracy and a better quality of life [33]. The MIT Commission sees "an unprecedented opportunity in the new technologies for enabling workers at all levels of the firm to master their own work environment". They contrast this with "the technologies for mass-producing standard goods" which "consigned workers to tasks that made few demands on their mental capacities or skills" They consider that "the effective use of the new technology will require people to develop their capabilities for planning judgment, collaboration and the analysis of complex systems". If the opportunity is seized "individuals may experience a new measure of mastery and independence on the job that could well go beyond maximizing productivity and extend to personal and professional satisfaction and well being[34]". Of course, if no social processes develop to make such a possibility a consciously pursued goal, this opportunity could largely be wasted.
               

The implications of this centrality of human resources for developing country firms and governments are of course many and of great importance. Change generating skills become a key enabling factor both for competitive restructuring and for social equity. This is the central message of the 1990 ECLAC Report, "Changing Production Patterns with Social Equity [35] ". It can also be found in the World Bank Report for 1991 which states that "countries which committed themselves to education and training made great strides in both human development and economic growth [36]".

We would tend to go even further. Education and training have moved from being a complement to the growth processes to becoming the most powerful tool at the core of development strategies. It is increasingly clear that the quality of the potential workforce is becoming the determining factor in the achievement of important development objectives[37]. It affects the ability of local firms to successfully compete internationally and domestically, the possibility of confronting some of the unemployment and marginality problems by developing micro-entrepreneurship on a massive scale to solve part of the unemployment and marginality problems and the capacity to attract a significant amount of foreign investment. "In the dynamic and uncertain environment of technological change, more highly educated workers have a big advantage[38]".

But this understanding has been slow to reach the less advanced countries. It is interesting to note that, according to a worldwide survey conducted by Harvard Business Review, developing country managers put relatively less emphasis on the role of worker skills in determining competitiveness than did their counterparts in the industrialized world. One of the analysts suggests that this might reveal an excessive fixation on technology, which they tended to rate quite high among the success factors[39].

Yet among developing countries, those that have truly made a leap forward, such as South Korea and Taiwan, stand out for having made extraordinary efforts in human resource development with levels of participation in education comparable to those of developed countries. Additionally, firms in those countries provide significant amounts of in-house training, often extended to their suppliers[40].

Education and training therefore demand serious strategic attention including a deep reform in the contents, methods and structure of the whole system[41]. Yet it is essential, as both the World Bank and ECLAC Reports recognize, that governments play the key steering role, even as private sector contribution and active participation increase [42].

The role of government will be especially important in stimulating, enabling and financing a variety of forms of South-South collaboration in education and training. The experience of the European Community in its education and research programmes has demonstrated the enormous value of this kind of "networking" between countries[43]. In section 7 we return to the possible areas for South-South collaboration.