Citation
Cervai, S. (2013), "Summer! Conference time!", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 25 No. 7. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-06-2013-0040
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Summer! Conference time!
Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 25, Issue 7
At the deadline time in June we were visiting conferences. For the last several years we have cooperated with the biannual Researching Work and Learning conference, this year held at Stirling Management Center, University of Stirling, UK, on June 19 to 21. We have preliminarily reserved an issue or even a double issue, depending on the amount of good research papers – as judged by the organizing committee – of JWL for the RWL papers, and will also be promoting the best paper award in cooperation with the organizers. The theme “The visible and invisible in work and learning promises for interesting articles.
Unfortunately for us, but good for the journal, is that this year at the same time ISPIM (The International Society for Professional Innovation Management) is arranging their conference in Helsinki. There, some of the themes also promise to be interesting for workplace learning; such themes are, for example, Living Labs, transferring of knowledge for innovation, crowdsourcing and user involvement, knowledge reciprocity, ideas and ideation, knowledge sharing in collaboration, and others. To select which conference to attend would be a tough call, if we were only one Editor; with co-editorship we can attend both.
The conference attendance has two main goals: to make the researchers with new results and ideas aware of the publishing opportunity via JWL and other Emerald titles, and also to renew our own knowledge about what are the current research topics and rising fields. By visiting conferences we, simply, try to improve the journal, and to stay on the cutting edge the wider workplace learning research spectrum. While it is not possible for us to visit very many conferences each year, we are always grateful for tips from the readership, and also promise to publish the most relevant calls-for-papers in the field. Let us know about what is coming up.
In this issue, there are again four research articles. Ida Torunn Bjørk finds that several factors mediate the opportunities for informal learning, such as the size and physical structures of the ward, role modeling by the nurse leader, systems and artifacts that triggered and scaffolded learning, and interaction and collaboration among all professionals on the ward. In another article, Kathrine Nygård follows a group of four nurses who collaborate to adapt the web-based learning tool for a learning course for scope-watch in a hospitals cardiac unit.
In a third article, drawing from a sample of 500, Marco Mariani et al. suggest that the technical and organizational elements of training opportunities may improve the quality of the individual work experience in two ways. First, there are direct and relevant effects of training on worker satisfaction, evidenced by the general impact and meaning of IT technologies to the day-to-day work experience, and, second, technology contributes to reduce work overload and other stressful factors which may be detrimental to the workers general satisfaction.
Finally, Alma Whiteley, Christine Price and Rod Palmer find that employees cultural interpretations and assessments may be hidden from managers, thereby preventing workplace learning opportunities utilizing employees “knowledgeability. A negotiated practice situated within an “adaptive structurated learning environment might be one option for making employee interpretations visible and meaningful to managers, they suggest. Having conducted quite a lot research and development work with organizational cultures ourselves, and from that experience tending to see culture not only as a benefit but also, more often that not, an important factor slowing down attempted change, we find this result very interesting.
We hope you too enjoy this issue!
Sara Cervai and Tauno Kekäle
Editors