Call for paper

Sociologia del lavoro-Special Issue 1/2015.

Employability, Knowledge, Skills and Abilities for the “Glocal” World.

Eds.: Barbara Bertagni, Fernando Salvetti

Deadline for abstract submission: 15/10/2014 (only in english)

Employability refers to a person's capability for gaining and maintaining employment. So, it refers to a set of achievements – skills, know-how and personal attributes – that make people more likely to gain (or change) employment and to be successful in their chosen occupations, which benefits themselves, the workforce, the community and the economy. For individuals, employability depends on the knowledge, skills and abilities they possess. And it means the capacity and capability of gaining and maintaining productive work over the period of one's working life.

How about employability in the today’s networked and glocal world? Information is becoming totally digitalized, and therefore interactive, transportable, accessible in many ways. The social and working life are becoming more and more liquid. We are experiencing increasingly global interconnections, associated with some increasingly local and localized differentiations, as well as we are living a continuing transformation organized around information technologies - that is changing the way we produce, consume, behave, manage, inform and think.

The more the process of economic globalization deepens, the more the interpenetration of networks of production and management expands across borders, and the closer the links become between the conditions of the labor force in different countries - placed at different levels of wages and social protection (when existing) - but decreasingly distinct in terms of skills and know-how needed to preserve the employability. In brief, glocalization is the new world’s disorder we’ve to deal with.

The technological and managerial transformation of labour, and of production relationships, is among the main levers by which the glocal, liquid and networked world is affecting society at large and workers at pretty every level. In such a scenario, some competencies and capacities are very relevant in order to have the employability aligned and fine-tuned with the labour’s world.

Even if there is not a unified global labor market, highly skilled labour is taking the form of a glocal and interdependent market, though large masses of unskilled emigrants are showing the other side of the moon – quite dark.

What are the key-competencies and capacities to be honed in order to foster our employability? Language literacy (at least bilingual), interpersonal communication skills, computer and math literacy. And much more besides: Systemic thinking, ability to deal with uncertainty and multiple information sources, proactivity, multitasking orientation, emotional and social intelligence. Last but not least, the ability to deal with diversity, cross-cultural sensitivity and openness - or some tolerance with the several forms of diversity we’re challenged to deal with in our glocal, liquid and networked world.

How to empower people and their key-competencies and capacities? How to improve the employment prospects of people? Economic stagnation in many countries, as well as the high youth unemployment worldwide, have contributed to a growing sense that traditional education and training models no longer create a pathway for the majority to reach their hopes and aspirations. Quality is often poor, the outcomes are uncertain and scarcely measurable, and education and training offer is often disconnected from the needs of the “real world”.

Meanwhile innovations like immersive learning environments, augmented reality tools, advances in tablet technology and mobile applications, multimedia libraries, creative models for linking education and training delivery to labour and job-positions, and new ways to assess and measure the value-added for learners all hold the promise of driving scale and fostering the results (at reasonable costs) - upgrading workforce skills and fostering employability.

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Terms of participation. In order to take part in the project, you must send an email with the title of your contribution and short abstract COMPLETELY IN ENGLISH (1,000 characters, spaces included)by 15 October 2014. After sending your request for participation email will be sent to confirm acceptance of your abstract by 30 October 2014. Complete versions of papers, with a maximum length of 40,000 characters (including spaces),written exclusively in Englishin accordance with the editorial guidelines provided by the journal “Sociologia del lavoro” listed online at: should be sent by 15 December 2014.

The editorial staff of the journal does not allow editors to admit articles which have not been formatted pursuant to the editorial standards. Essays longer than 900 words may be accepted only they present relevant research or raise theoretical questions of particular importance.

Editorial project. The text selection process entails a double-blind referee and is carried out anonymously. After the review procedures have been performed on the papers, modifications or integration with accepted articles may be requested, both with regard to formatting and content. Once the contributions have been gathered, the collection of works will be presented to the editor of the journal “Sociologia del lavoro” for publication.

Organisational references.To submit articles and/or for more information, please feel free to contact the editors:

Fernando Salvetti ()

Barbara Bertagni ( )

Michele La Rosa ()