The Global Challenge of Soft Skills Training in Business Education
Joyce B. Boone
Kaplan University, USA
Volume 9: 2014, pp. 201-210; ABSTRACT
The modern workforce has changed rapidly and markedly as technological advances drive the way workers function and perform their routine duties. However, even with broad technological advances in communications and computers, an effective worker must also possess strong interpersonal skills and other soft skills. These skills rely on knowledge and understanding of human behavior, communication, and self-knowledge, among many other factors. In today’s competitive global economy, research in the domain of soft skills training in business and education is needed to enable focused, empirically-based training of workers. Focused, scenario-based training will help to address the needs of managers in industry, as well as to inform the revision of business education programs to align with industry needs. To add to the understanding of the transfer of soft skills training from business education programs to the world of work, this paper presents a review of literature related to soft skills in the workplace and the transfer of training, a description of a scenario-based soft skills course of study as an intervention, and a recommended methodology to examine the impact of the intervention on soft skills transfer from the business program to the workplace.
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