Editorial

Citation

Gimson, A. (2014), "Editorial", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 28 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/DLO-04-2014-0025

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Development and Learning in Organizations: An International Journal, Volume 28, Issue 3

Is the field of learning and development (L&D) a profession and, if so, what does it mean to be a “professional”? Our viewpoint from Ian Cunningham addresses this important question for the L&D practitioner. Imagine yourself as the internal or external coach. During your coaching process, your coachee decides to leave the organization. Before you read the article, ask yourself whether their departure is acceptable or is it against the interests of the business, and the coaching should therefore be deemed to have failed?

Staying with coaching, Alan Coetzer, Janice Redmond and Vern Bastian call for small businesses to focus part of their development efforts on strengths-based coaching. As a potential antidote to the scarcity of resources in small businesses (few people, thin budgets and tight time constraints), a strong case is made for this mode of positive and cost-effective learning.

Another method flagged as low cost and efficient for large numbers of employees is e-learning. However, as Regina Yanson points out, it is not the panoptic solution it is often hyped-up to be, i.e. in the main, people prefer to learn with others, and programs that lack connection with others create barriers to learning. Take a look at her three succinct recommendations as to how to incorporate meaningful peer interactions into the online environment.

Fearing technology is also cited as a barrier to effective e-learning. That fear often lies with older, more experienced and senior employees – people who are often time-poor. In an innovative case study, Jane Burdett describes how one organization used “reverse mentoring”, where “technologically savvy” younger employees became mentors to their more senior colleagues. The reciprocal learning was far richer than originally anticipated.

But, can you facilitate learning across different organizations? Simon Reece shares a case study of how one manufacturer created a system of learning by managing the interactions between the groups involved in a wholesale supply chain. During promotion for their products, they invested in identifying the benefits at each level in the chain, building relationships and sharing information across boundaries and between companies. The results are impressive.

The case study also informs the issues raised in our first review article “Getting to grips with global supply chain management”, which highlights the ability to “communicate effectively with people at different levels and in different organizations” as one of three critical skills for supply chain managers.

In “The importance of engaging in workplace learning”, the results of a study of informal learning by middle managers in an organization are set out. The seven themes discovered could usefully inform your work-based learning strategy and the three psychological conditions required for engagement in real learning – meaningfulness, safety and availability – are, in my experience, critical.

If you are considering setting up an internship program or wish to review your current system, “How to cultivate a successful internship program” provides a synthesis of much of the currently available literature on the benefits, costs and success factors for all parties involved.

Finally, we return to coaching, but this time in the education sector. In “Promoting professional development in new school principals”, we hear from the coaches themselves – what they set out to achieve and what, in their opinions, did and did not work.

Anne Gimson
Based at Strategic Developments International, Valencia, Spain. E-mail: mailto:anne@stratdevint.com