Enterprise partner selection for
vocational education: analytical
network process approach
Sheu Hua Chen
Hsiupin Institute of Technology, Taiwan, Republic of China
Hung Tso Lin and Hong Tau Lee
National Chin-Yi Institute of Technology, Taiwan, Republic of China
Keywords Education, Distribution management, Taiwan, Vocational training
Abstract One of the major purposes of implementing vocational education is to offer trained
manpower to enterprises that meet the immense challenges of the global economic competition and
unprecedented technological changes. Selecting an adequate enterprise, from the school’s
viewpoint, is a critical factor for implementing the vocational education system. This paper
suggests applying the ANP approach in order to deal with the interdependence among criteria of
different layers of the analysis process to select the suitable partner enterprise where students can
gain experience. The paper describes the cooperation patterns between schools and enterprises as
well as the criteria which should be considered and the corresponding attributes used to evaluate
the potential enterprises.
1. Introduction
In an era of information explosion, the success of education and development of the
economy are two sides of the same coin. The vocational and university streams are
usually considered as two types of high-level education systems. While university
education is not geared to any specific occupation, but rather concentrates on an
academic discipline, vocational education usually focuses on occupational training.
Heijke and Koeslag (1999) compare the position of graduates from these two types of
higher education systems in the labor market based on three theories: the
human-capital theory (Schultz, 1961; Becker, 1962), the job-competition model
(Thurow, 1975, 1979), and the job-matching theory (Hartog, 1992; Sattinger, 1993), in
the Netherlands. Their empirical study indicates that it is important to establish a
separate occupational domain for these two types of education, each of which has
comparative advantages. Despite the fact that qualifications acquired in university
education are transferable to a broad range of occupations, vocational education
mainly targets the small- and medium-sized enterprise sector, which traditionally has a
poor record of investment in education and training (Matlay and Hyland, 1999).
The success of the vocational education system depends on the partners addressing
the three key components (Harmon, 2000): school-based learning, which focuses on
career exploration and counseling student major career selection, and curricula
integrating academic and vocational learning; work-based learning which includes job
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This research is supported by the National Science Council of the Republic of China under
contract No. NSC 92-2416-H-164-001.
Analytical
network process
approach
643
Received March 2001
Revised August 2002
Accepted April 2004
International Journal of Manpower
Vol. 25 No. 7, 2004
pp. 643-655
q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
0143-7720
DOI 10.1108/01437720410563980