Reskilling Capability: An Exploration of Skills Renewal in the Swedish Automotive Industry 

This paper explores the antecedents and conditions of a reskilling capability in organisations. Technological shifts, especially during discontinuous technological change (DTC), require new skills. Yet, firms may simultaneously experience skills shortages and worker displacement, while skills shortages can inhibit innovation. Reskilling employees has been suggested as a measure to combat skill shortages and worker displacement; however, few examples of reskilling in firms exist in the literature. We explore a rapid reskilling program in a manufacturing firm experiencing IT skill shortages and interview informants exploratively on reskilling as a method and model, participant recruitment, challenges, comparisons to ‘normal’ recruitment and lessons learned. Based on a dynamic capability framework, we propose that a reskilling capability is a type of renewing dynamic capability and contribute by suggesting that a reskilling capability can help firms mitigate the skills renewal challenge during DTC. We propose that the outcome of a reskilling capability is the redeployment of internal human resources, in particular because of a reskilling capability’s ability to enact direct change on a human resource base, thereby enabling firms to renew and redeploy human resources towards ventures where new skills are needed. We illustrate several factors within the organisation that can facilitate this change.