Determinants of 21st-century digital skills: A large-scale survey among working professionals

an article by Ester van Laar, Alexander J. A. M. van Deursen and Jan A. G. M. van Dijk (University of Twente, the Netherlands) and Jos de Haan (The Netherlands Institute for Social Research SCP, The Hague, the Netherlands) published in Computers in Human Behavior Volume 100 (November 2019)

Highlights

• Conducted a survey to examine determinants of 21st-century digital skills.
• The sample included 1,222 professionals working within the creative industries.
• The results show that the skill levels vary substantially.
• Each skill is explained by a different set of determinants.
• The development of each skill asks for a unique policy-targeting approach.

Abstract

The current workplace increasingly asks for workers with highly digitally skilled knowledge who produce and distribute ideas and information. As such, understanding the factors behind differences in the level of various 21st-century digital skills is of decisive importance.

This study aims to examine

1. the level of 21st-century digital skills among knowledge workers, and
2. the determinants contributing to the level of these skills.

The following digital skills are investigated: information, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, creativity, and problem solving.

Potential determinants that can be influenced by stakeholders are also included, such as social support and training. A large-scale online survey was conducted among professionals (N = 1,222) who work within knowledge-intensive creative industries.

The results show that the level of 21st-century digital skills varies considerably. Furthermore, each 21st-century digital skill is explained by a different set of determinants, thereby requiring unique approaches for the development of each skill.

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Socializing Rejection and Failure in Artistic Occupational Communities

an article by Rachel Skaggs (Vanderbilt University, Nashville, TN, USA) published in Work and Occupations Volume 46 Issue 2 (May 2019)

Abstract

Failure is a normal aspect of work in creative industries; even highly successful artists are subject to rejection by critics, fans, and peers. It is known that organizations such as schools and workplaces are the primary space for job-related socialization, but artistic careers are characterized by nonstandard employment relations and do not generally require formal schooling. Without the bureaucratic structures typically used to socialize novice group members, how do artistic occupational communities socialize aspirants to manage rejection and labor market failure?

This article draws from 6 months of participant observation from “Song Club”, a periodic professional workshop for aspiring songwriters where aspirants present a song to publishers in the hopes of having it recorded and released to commercial audiences.

During the period of study, 403 songs were presented to publishers, and 327 were rejected. During the workshops, Song Club members are socialized toward normalizing rejection, appropriately interacting with gatekeepers, and developing collaborative relationships with peers. Adopting these norms reduces the likelihood of failure and contextualizes the meaning of rejection in this occupational community.

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Becoming ‘culturpreneur’: How the ‘neoliberal regime of truth’ affects and redefines artistic subject positions

an article by Bernadette Loacker (Lund University, Sweden) published in Culture and Organization Volume 19 Issue 2 (March 2013)

Abstract

In relating to the politico-economic concept of ‘creative industries’, the paper explores in what way the art field and its actors are discursively repositioned within ‘flexible cultural capitalism’.

Through empirical material from the independent Austrian theatre scene, the paper, moreover, illustrates how the ‘culturpreneurial’ transformation of the field affects the specific artistic practices, forms of organising and conduct.

In this regard, it will be shown that the artists’ modes of conduct are, at least to some extent, precarious: due to their ascetic and disciplined self-concept, artists seem to contribute, in parts, to their own marginalisation as well as to the strengthening of certain ‘neoliberal orders’ and ‘culturpreneurial subject ideals’ of flexible capitalism – even though they are actually keen to resist current governmental technologies like the promotion of competition and market-determined assessment.

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Gender disruptions in the digital industries?

an article by Sarah B. Proctor-Thomson ( Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) published in Culture and Organization Volume 19 Issue 2 (March 2013)

Abstract

The digital industries in the United Kingdom are said to have specific ‘image problems’.

Public sector policy-makers and commentators have argued that few women choose to enter this sector because there is a misfit between its dominant image as ‘geeky’, technical and masculine, and women workers’ self-perceptions.

Drawing on Judith Butler’s theory of gender performativity, this article juxtaposes these public policy claims with recruitment literature which seeks to disrupt or shift away from traditional stereotypes of the digital industries worker. This article considers the unintended consequences of these discursive objects and argues that they contribute to the re-inscription of gender norms rather than their disruption.

The analysis identifies repetitions of particular discursive practices which fix gender offering only narrowly legible worker subject roles with which women workers are expected to find their fit. This article argues that attention to discursive performativity in official public texts and visual and textual organisational artefacts offers a means for enhanced understanding of the transformations and continuities of inequalities within contemporary work domains.

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‘Sticky Subjects’ or ‘Cosmopolitan Creatives’? Social Class, Place and Urban Young People’s Aspirations for Work in the Knowledge Economy

an article by Kim Allen (Manchester Metropolitan University, UK) and Sumi Hollingworth (London Metropolitan University, UK) published in Urban Studies Volume 50 Number 3 (February 2013)

Abstract

Aspirations have been a key target of education policy, situated as central to meeting the needs of the ‘knowledge economy’.

In the UK, there have been calls to raise young people’s aspirations for careers in the creative industries – identified as emblematic of the new economic order and a key growth sector.

Yet, the sector is socially and spatially restricted, characterised by unclear entry routes, exclusionary working practices and uneven geographical concentration.

This paper draws on research with young people (aged 14–16 years) living in three urban areas of deindustrialisation in England to examine the geography of young people’s aspirations for careers in the creative industries.

The concept of place-specific habitus is used to problematise asocial and aspatial discourses of aspiration and to illuminate how social class and place powerfully and complexly interrelate to shape young people’s opportunities for social and geographical mobility through and for work in the knowledge economy.

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