Multinational companies and local knowledge base

An evolutionary perspective: Regional variants of initial vocational education and training activities in Germany

Subsidiaries of foreign companies provide a significant number of jobs in Germany. However, so far there is hardly any information on how and why foreign companies are involved in training their employees in Germany.

The research project therefore investigates how these subsidiaries generate practice-relevant competencies on site. The focus is on initial training activities as a key link between the local labour market and the skill requirements of the companies. It also examines which evolutionary formations of actor arrangements can be found and how these activities can be explained.

The core question from the business education perspective is, whether and why the existing training system in Germany is accepted and used by foreign companies and if it is adapted to the “training culture” of the host country.

The project explores these questions by focusing on "greenfield investments" from the USA, the UK, France, Japan, and China. The analysis specifically targets the regions of Hamburg, Frankfurt, Düsseldorf, Cologne, Stuttgart, and Munich. It looks at large, medium-sized as well as small multinational companies and branches from various industries. In addition, various regional actors in the context of provision and support of initial vocational and/or academic training are included in the analysis in order to ascertain the distinctive factors of establishing training structures in the foreign branches.