It might be argued that these trends conWrm an upskilling trajectory, albeit by a
diVerent, non-technological route. But an expanded conception of skill is not the
same as a deepening. The palette of skills has been widening, but it has not been
accompanied for most workers by the two other crucial ingredients—task auton-
omy and knowledgeable practice. More and more jobs depend on IT-driven expert
systems and scripted encounters. And whilst the cognitive, emotional, and cultural
demands of the ‘new’ soft skill currencies will diVer across the range of jobs,
competencies such as positive attitudes, ability to work as a team, and communi-
cationaregeneric and therefore hard to connect to any notion of high skills/
knowledge (Brown et al. 2001 : 40 ).
Third, we have to reconsider the locus of the ‘investment’ made through HRM
practices. Increasingly managerial practice is toidentify the social and personal
capitalheld by the actual or potential employee. As a result, employers may be
choosing to invest more in recruitment and selection processes that can identify
workers with the appropriate personal characteristics, than in skill development
and learning (Brown and Hesketh 2004 ; Callaghan and Thompson 2001 ).
Overall, the message of this section has been that whilst investment in human
capital is important, it is not as important as and is more diVerent in character than
one would expect from the core HRM assumptions outlined earlier. No existing
society has attained the modest target of at least 50 percent of occupations
categorized as technical, managerial, and professional. Moreover, an increasingly
attractive alternative to investment in training as a means of raising productivity is
to increase the use of immigrant labor (Brown et al. 2001 : 50 ). The continued
dominance of a ‘low-skills equilibrium’ can partly be explained through a contin-
gency or comparative capitalisms approach. In other words, that either the wrong
strategic choices are being made by employers in low-road Anglo-Saxon econ-
omies—or that large parts of the service sector do not require a human capital/
high-involvement approach in any type of economy. Whilst there is some truth in
both of these observations, an attention to political economy directs us to the
signiWcance of other contextual changes that we discuss in ourWnal section.
8.5 Taking Stock and Moving On
.........................................................................................................................................................................................
When the evidence is examined for the core optimistic claims on control, work
organization, and skills, it is patchy at best and absent at worst. It is commonly held
that, particularly at the populist end, HRM scholars have tended to mix up their
predictions and their prescriptions. Our concern, however, is with another kind of
confusion. Of particular note is that the core claims are largely contingent on
160 paul thompson and bill harley