Towards a Framework for Lifelong E-Learning and Employability

The Human Capital Theory

ICT innovations and higher rates of productivity, profitability and business competitiveness lead to development and global economic progress (Castells, 1996). In this context, the fourth industrial revolution is beginning to develop in all its magnitude (Schwab, 2016), and the labor market is polarized and suffering the effects of robotization (Acemoglu & Restrepo, 2017; Barley, Bechky, & Milliken, 2017). In particular, workers suffer the consequences of a gig economy based on work oriented towards short-term tasks, and with employers working with insecurity and volatile conditions (Bithymitris, 2017). These factors are linked to other factors related to self-identity on the Internet, loss of skills, and other approaches such as of the filter, tail or herd theories (Arrow, 1971; Piore & Doeringer, 1970; Van Belle, Caers, De Couck, Di Stasio, & Baert, 2017).

That is why the theory of human capital developed during the sixties by Theodore W. Schultz (1961) and Gary S. Becker (1993) is one of the best tools for workers to improve their value in companies. A useful tool but also with certain shortcomings, vindicated by: i) their individualism, a fact that causes a large part of the responsibility related to employment to fall on the workers; ii) its validity as a seed for self-employment, uberization (collaborative and direct economy between clients and suppliers), job insecurity, and financial debts (Fleming, 2017); and iii) its utilitarian vision of education (Gilead, 2012), with aspects linked to ephemeral learning (Barnes, Brown, & Warhurst, 2016; Jarvis, 2009; Lazzareschi & Gomes Filho, 2006), to content that depends on the business needs (Bauman, 1999), to the skill-biased technological change (SBTC) (Sanders, 2013), to the overqualification (Davidson & Sly, 2014; Leuven & Oosterbeek, 2011), and to gender inequalities in training with effects on quality at work (Cloutier-Villeneuve, 2012; Mühlau, 2011).