Conflict and support during apprenticeship training in Germany: consequences for apprenticeship success and further employment in the company

Abstract Dual vocational training, i.e., the combination of on-the-job training in a company and school-based teaching, is of major importance to a smooth transition into the labor market and for the recruitment of skilled labor in Germany. However, around 30 percent of all training contracts are not successfully completed and not all successful apprentices remain in their training company afterwards. Previous studies have shown that apprentices who terminated their training prematurely often report conflicts and insufficient support within the company as reasons. However, these studies do not include the group of successful apprentices for whom these two aspects might also have been an issue. Moreover, to our knowledge, no study has yet appropriately investigated how conflicts and a lack of support are related to the likelihood of staying in the training company as an employee after training graduation. Using panel data from the Starting Cohort 4 of the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS SC4), we address these research gaps. Our results indicate that apprentices are less likely to finish their training successfully when they report conflicts in the company and more likely when they report support. Support does not buffer the negative effects of conflicts. Successful trainees are only less likely to subsequently remain in the training company when they report high levels of conflicts combined with low levels of support. Our detailed analyses suggest that this is rather due to missing employment offers from companies than due to graduates refusing these offers.