The Governance of Decentralized Cooperation in Collectively Organized Training Systems

In collectively organized training systems, firms, state agencies, and intermediary organizations of both business and labour cooperate in skill formation. Coordination of such systems is decentralised and therefore these different actors are strongly dependent on each other. Such relations demand high levels of trust and mutual investment. If successfully implemented, this type of cooperation can solve collective action problems that typically arise in those other systems in which training is strongly market-driven. However, decentralized cooperation is not self-sustaining and depends on public policies and capable intermediary associations. In this paper we propose an analytical framework that can be applied in empirical explorations of the causes and mechanisms that maintain high levels of cooperation and resolve conflicts of interest – both at the regional and the sectoral levels.