Unternehmensübergreifende Lernallianzen: Neue Pfade in der dualen Berufsausbildung

Modern forms of work organization like autonomous teamwork, an intensified international and intercultural collaboration and the necessity for cooperation beyond the barriers of companies have consequences for the adaption of new work requirements into modernized curricula within Vocational Educational Training (VET). The paper deals with results of a recently finished research project on „Inter-company Learning Alliances in the German Metal and Electrical Industries”, which form a new path in Human Resource Management including an intensification of vocational training to secure the supply with a highly qualified work force. A rather new phenomenon in Germany is that this training sometimes assumes the form of a collaborative vocational training. According to our case studies in the metal and electrical industries we observe an increase in the number of cross-company training alliances. This is due to a correspondence of new work requirements in a modern industrial world of work with the specific training concepts and apprenticeship characteristics within these collaborative training alliances. All in all, the central advantage of training alliances regarding the changes in the German production and innovation model is that it promotes qualifications and competences that are necessary to meet future requirements in working and production processes.