Do Spanish firms support initial vocational training? Company behaviour in low-coordinated institutional frameworks

This paper aims to provide an explanation for the limited development of initial vocational education and training (IVET) in Spain, by employing the Varieties of Capitalism (VoC) literature and other bodies of research in political economy. I suggest that in the absence of the institutional conditions that would bind firms to cooperate in IVET, firms’ interest in supporting initial vocational training will be limited, and employers’ participation in the planning, control, development and funding of the system will be residual. Secondly, under these institutional conditions company’s support to the system will be mostly conditioned by firms’ structural characteristics. In order to test these hypotheses I combine quantitative and qualitative research methods, including institutional comparisons between the organisations responsible for managing IVET in Spain and Germany; logistic regressions and Generalised Linear Models (GLM) on company support to initial workplace training; and qualitative, in-depth interviews complementing these quantitative tests. Results indicate an association between limitations in the coordinating capabilities the institutional framework can generate, the lack of employer involvement in the institutions regulating IVET in the Spanish political economy; and a pattern of company cooperation driven by firms’ structural characteristics.