The ETHOS proposal is aimed to promote and improve new approaches and tools to manage and exploit – as resources for change - interpersonal, social and organisational conflicts in business environment in order to support quality and innovation in vocational education by fostering the integration of learning with working life, promoting more conducive learning environments at the workplace and work-placed training as a basis for development of vocational skills relevant to the labour market needs. At the present moment, in fact, enterprises – and in particular SMEs - are experiencing a hard time because of the economic situation: the acquisition of skills for dealing with organisational conflicts by entrepreneurs and managers could be a means of repositioning and/or getting through the crisis for enterprises, as suggested by various European documents. For this reason, it is necessary to set up analytical and training tools, methodologies, approaches which promote and encourage the introduction of specific soft skills within corporate training plans. This will create in enterprises an environment and a climate favorable to development and innovation. The idea of the ETHOS project was born from a LLP Grundtvig project called CONTEST - COmmunity experimeNts Through the Exploitation of Social Conflicts which, involving most ETHOS partners, was aimed to promote and improve new approaches and tools to manage and exploit – as resources for change - interpersonal, social and cultural conflicts in order to enhance social cohesion in Europe and to strenghten European identity. For the abovementioned reasons the ETHOS project intends to: - elaborate approches, methodologies and tools for improving in quality and innovation in vocational education; - elaborate approches, methodologies and tools forfostering the integration of learning with working life, promoting more learning conducive environments at the workplace, work-placed training as a basis for the development of vocational skills relevant to the labour market needs; - develop soft skills realted to conflicts exploitationamong entrepreneurs and managers to improve new innovation-driven role models and management approaches; - create within enterprises an environment and a climate which lead to social cohesion, development and innovation; - contribute to facilitate processes of repositioning and/or overcoming the crisis for enterprises; - promote networking between enterprises and VET provider; - elaborate a specific mapping system for the identification of the contextual factors which lead the conflicts in workplace, in order to provide qualitative and quantitative data for setting educational and development policies/strategies for SMEs and continuous education; - elaborate an innovative curriculum addressed to entrepreneurs and managers and aimed at identifying, developing and enhancing workers' competences and skills for dealing with conflicts in workplace and change them in a resource for improvement and growth with reference to business enviroment; - realise six experimental training courses, one for each reference country of the project, to train entrepreneurs and managers; involvement of 60 participants in all; - realise business labs in order to let acquire workers specific competences and skills to argue well in workplace, exploiting social, cultural and organisational conflicts through the Socratic approach; - allow the acquisition by SMEs workers of skills and competences to facilitate the expression, the management and the exploitation of conflicts in workplace, through the Socratic approach; - set up a European network between enterprises, and between them, VET providers and organisations which work for the exploitation of conflicts, to promote and develop new approaches and tools to manage and exploit interpersonal, social and organisational conflicts in workplace; - implement awareness raising actions to encourage the introduction of soft skills related to conflicts exploitation in corporate training plans through a process of consultation among enterprises, professional associations, policy makers, VET providers; - disseminate the project approaches and results including the main project stakeholders aiming at making the project outcomes known all over Europe; - exploit the project outcomes, in order to guarantee the sustainability and the transferability of the project results after the project end. The partnership of the project is composed of different representatives of key actors in the fields of social cohesion and vocational education: organisations which deal with vocational learning, adult learning and advisory activities for enterprises; public institutions which play an active role in the definition of policies and keeps strong relations with institutional bodies and social partner organisations; organisations which work for the development of soft skills aimed at enhancing social cohesion.