Soft, hard, or moral skills: an exploratory study on the workers’ skills that organizations in Portugal appreciate most

Abstract

In this article, we address in general terms the issue of workers’ competences and skills: a confusing and controversial theme with various empirical results and many inconsistencies, but that keeps providing research opportunities. Through the binomial soft skill and hard skill, we aim to identify the role played by moral skills. In the empirical study carried out with a convenience sample of student workers, we sought to answer to the following question: “Out of the three types of skills (soft, hard, or moral), which is more appreciated in organizations in Portugal, according to the perception of workers instead of that of managers?” Thus, and based on literature review, first we characterized the dominant traits of the Portuguese culture. To categorize respondents’ answers to an open question, we resorted to content analysis/phenomenological reduction. The results obtained, besides their exploratory purpose, clearly indicate the preference for soft skills and a secondary and marginal interest in moral skills. This conclusion, however, requires stronger confirmation by further studies.