IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/ilrrev/v75y2022i1p28-55.html

State Actor Orchestration for Achieving Workforce Development at Scale: Evidence from Four US States

Author

Listed:
  • Jenna E. Myers
  • Katherine C. Kellogg

Abstract

Using a 20-month qualitative study of four US states that implemented career pathways spanning from high schools to colleges to employers, the authors illustrate the potential for state government actors to facilitate coordination of workforce development systems across geographies and industries. As a complement to explanations situated in workforce intermediary practices or formal state policies, the authors show that state actors can address barriers to coordination by using state actor orchestration—structuring provisional goal setting and revision, encouraging experimentation, and framing coordination to inspire collective action. This approach involves three types of practices: structural (building statewide governance structures and modifying governance processes), political (providing initial direction and piloting and broadening the set of stakeholders), and cultural (identifying key problems and collective action solutions and building social accountability for new roles). These practices vary according to states’ institutional environments: Where governance is more centralized, state actors gain latitude to guide regional workforce development.

Suggested Citation

  • Jenna E. Myers & Katherine C. Kellogg, 2022. "State Actor Orchestration for Achieving Workforce Development at Scale: Evidence from Four US States," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 75(1), pages 28-55, January.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:75:y:2022:i:1:p:28-55
    DOI: 10.1177/0019793920942767
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0019793920942767
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0019793920942767?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Paul Osterman & Rosemary Batt, 1993. "Employer-centered training for international competitiveness: Lessons from state programs," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 12(3), pages 456-477.
    2. Charles F. Sabel & David G. Victor, 2017. "Governing global problems under uncertainty: making bottom-up climate policy work," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 15-27, September.
    3. Chris Benner, 2003. "Labour Flexibility and Regional Development: The Role of Labour Market Intermediaries," Regional Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 37(6-7), pages 621-633.
    4. W. E. Douglas Creed & Maureen A. Scully & John R. Austin, 2002. "Clothes Make the Person? The Tailoring of Legitimating Accounts and the Social Construction of Identity," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 13(5), pages 475-496, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Cathy Yang Liu & Marc Doussard & Nichola Lowe, 2023. "Fixing Work, and Moving Beyond It," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(1), pages 64-72, February.
    2. Richard McGahey, 2023. "Policy, Empirical Analysis, and Equity: Challenges for Research," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 37(1), pages 77-84, February.
    3. Jenna E. Myers, 2025. "What Motivates Employer Engagement? Promoting Youth Career Embeddedness in Two Tennessee Regions," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 39(1), pages 24-36, February.
    4. Kshitiz Khanal & Nikhil Kaza & Nichola Lowe, 2025. "Occupational Transitions into Clean Energy: A Workforce Development Approach Using Occupational Similarity and Unsupervised Clustering," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 39(4), pages 232-249, November.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nichola J. Lowe, 2007. "Job Creation and the Knowledge Economy: Lessons From North Carolina's Life Science Manufacturing Initiative," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 21(4), pages 339-353, November.
    2. Nichola Lowe & Harvey Goldstein & Mary Donegan, 2011. "Patchwork Intermediation: Challenges and Opportunities for Regionally Coordinated Workforce Development," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 25(2), pages 158-171, May.
    3. Elisabeth Yang & Julia DiBenigno, 2025. "Opportunistic Change During a Punctuation: How and When the Front Lines Can Drive Bursts of Incremental Change," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 36(1), pages 40-64, January.
    4. Srivardhini K. Jha & E. Richard Gold & Laurette Dubé, 2021. "Modular Interorganizational Network Governance: A Conceptual Framework for Addressing Complex Social Problems," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(18), pages 1-21, September.
    5. Blackburn, Nivea & Brown, Judy & Dillard, Jesse & Hooper, Val, 2014. "A dialogical framing of AIS–SEA design," International Journal of Accounting Information Systems, Elsevier, vol. 15(2), pages 83-101.
    6. Marco Grasso & J. David Tàbara, 2019. "Towards a Moral Compass to Guide Sustainability Transformations in a High-End Climate Change World," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(10), pages 1-16, May.
    7. Tammar B. Zilber, 2011. "Institutional Multiplicity in Practice: A Tale of Two High-Tech Conferences in Israel," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(6), pages 1539-1559, December.
    8. Virginie Xhauflair & Benjamin Huybrechts & François Pichault, 2018. "How Can New Players Establish Themselves in Highly Institutionalized Labour Markets? A Belgian Case Study in the Area of Project†Based Work," British Journal of Industrial Relations, London School of Economics, vol. 56(2), pages 370-394, June.
    9. Timothy J. Bartik, 2009. "The Revitalization of Older Industrial Cities: A Review Essay of Retooling for Growth," Growth and Change, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 1-29, March.
    10. Jaskiewicz, Peter & Combs, James G. & Rau, Sabine B., 2015. "Entrepreneurial legacy: Toward a theory of how some family firms nurture transgenerational entrepreneurship," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 30(1), pages 29-49.
    11. T. William Lester & Nichola J. Lowe & Allan Freyer, 2014. "Mediating Incentive Use," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 28(2), pages 132-146, May.
    12. Robert J. David & Wesley D. Sine & Heather A. Haveman, 2013. "Seizing Opportunity in Emerging Fields: How Institutional Entrepreneurs Legitimated the Professional Form of Management Consulting," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 24(2), pages 356-377, April.
    13. Niamh Brennan & Doris Merkl-Davies & Annika Beelitz, 2013. "Dialogism in Corporate Social Responsibility Communications: Conceptualising Verbal Interaction Between Organisations and Their Audiences," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 115(4), pages 665-679, July.
    14. Norma M Rantisi & Deborah Leslie, 2021. "In and against the neoliberal state? The precarious siting of work integration social enterprises (WISEs) as counter-movement in Montreal, Quebec," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 53(2), pages 349-370, March.
    15. Spencer H. Harrison & Kevin G. Corley, 2011. "Clean Climbing, Carabiners, and Cultural Cultivation: Developing an Open-Systems Perspective of Culture," Organization Science, INFORMS, vol. 22(2), pages 391-412, April.
    16. Agarwal, Nivedita & Chakrabarti, Ronika & Brem, Alexander & Bocken, Nancy, 2018. "Market driving at Bottom of the Pyramid (BoP): An analysis of social enterprises from the healthcare sector," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 86(C), pages 234-244.
    17. Schiller-Merkens, Simone, 2013. "Framing moral markets: The cultural legacy of social movements in an emerging market category," MPIfG Discussion Paper 13/8, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.
    18. Richard B. Stewart & Michael Oppenheimer & Bryce Rudyk, 2017. "Building blocks: a strategy for near-term action within the new global climate framework," Climatic Change, Springer, vol. 144(1), pages 1-13, September.
    19. Manuel Hensmans & Koen Van Bommel, 2017. "Social Movements," Working Papers TIMES² 2017-024, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    20. Greg Schrock & Marc Doussard & Laura Wolf-Powers & Stephen Marotta & Max Eisenburger, 2019. "Appetite for Growth: Challenges to Scale for Food and Beverage Makers in Three U.S. Cities," Economic Development Quarterly, , vol. 33(1), pages 39-50, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:ilrrev:v:75:y:2022:i:1:p:28-55. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.ilr.cornell.edu .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.