Globalization And Inter-Personal Skills

1.1 INTRODUCTION

Globalization has produced a profound effect on national and international systems of commerce, education, and governance. The competition and rapid technological development demands for the transformation at economic, education, political and organisation level. Due to the complex and interdependent global challenges, such as economic and technological development, today’s business environment is becoming more complex, uncertain and competitive. This has brought to the foreground a wide cluster of skills to cater to the changing demands, whereas for decades, the main focus of the industry was on what is known as hard skills. All types of organizations consider human resources as their key asset, which plays a critical role

This perspective has received increased attention through the release of several documents setting out lists of such skills. These studies and reports cite a need to identify generic skills and abilities necessary to better prepare people for success in a changing and globalized economy. A number of intra- and inter-personal skills (or socio-emotional competences) are required, such as communication, ability to work on multidisciplinary teams, flexibility etc., apart from traditional notions of “basic skills”, (literacy and numeracy), to succeed in the work place. These skills are called “soft skills”, in order to be distinguished from technical, or “hard skills”. Irrespective of the professional qualification and apart from the domain knowledge, today's professionals need to possess a high Soft Skills quotient in order to succeed in this competitive era. Hard skills contribute to only 15% of one’s success while remaining 85% is made by soft skill (Watts M and Watts R. K, 2008). In spite of such great relevance of soft skills in the present corporate world some of the institutions are yet to introduce soft skills in their curriculum. There is a dire need of incorporating soft skills trainings in their curriculum, to ensure commendable

Acknowledgment of the importance of developing generic skills in Australian school curricula goes back at least to the mid 1980s as mentioned in Bryce (1998). In Australian Education Council (1989) report, it was mentioned that the national goals of schooling in Australia supported that students need to develop self-confidence, self-esteem, respect for others and 'positive attitudes for life-long education. Further the generic skills were developed in response to proposals by the Finn Committee (1991) to respond to the needs of young people in an environment of high youth unemployment. Afterwards, the generic skills have been firmly on the Australian education agenda. The employability skills project was another important step in on-going efforts to give effect to generic skills in Australian education and training (Curtis, 2004). It was an initiative of two of Australia’s peak employer organizations, namely the Business Council of Australia (BCA) and the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry