Our Capabilities Approach
Form follows function capabilities
We mean something specific when we say ‘capabilities’. Our framework for evaluating Steadyhand projects is adapted from the Capability Approach, first developed by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Amartya Sen, and which has since grown into an influential framework for those concerned with multidimensional community development. Steadyhand brings digital and handskill futures to foster a number of key capabilities and functionings.
That's why our work centres a capability gap at the centre of each of our six major project streams.
Recent empirical work done on SMART work design by world-renowned researchers in Western Australia at the Center for Transformative Work Design have helped to refine what some of those key capabilities and functionings are likely to be for particular workers, organisations and small businesses. And Steadyhand's highly collaborative, in-situ style supports the way people co-design and interpret the capabilities they wish to foster themselves.
The capabilities we develop go across multiple stakeholder groups:
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Policymakers (LGA, State, Federal and Regional/International)
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Researchers, Engineers & Designers
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Investors
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Trade businesses, their apprentices, employees and subcontractors
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Digital workers
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Young people in regional and rural areas (18-25)
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Hidden workers in regional and rural areas who face underemployment due to job market obstacles
Most importantly, we work on capabilities within what the Regional Australia Institute (RAI) refers to as Great Small Cities, those 31 cities in Australia over 50,000 in population excluding metropolitan capitals. South West WA and its rural networks are marked by unique transitions from old to new economic drivers and demographic change. Trade and digital capabilities tell local stories of that change, and Steadyhand honours their difference and detail.
