Editorial

Citation

Dymock, D. (2006), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 18 No. 2. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2006.08618baa.001

Editorial

The Journal of Workplace Learning is one of a small number of Emerald journals that are sponsoring the Annual Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards for 2005/6. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, as publisher of the largest collection of international business and management journals, and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), a global membership organisation with more than 500 institutional members from academia, business and public services, seek to celebrate excellence in research by sponsoring these awards.

Award-winning entries will receive a cash prize of £1,500 (or other currency equivalent), a certificate and the prospect of an offer of publication in the sponsoring journal, as a full paper, or as an executive summary/research note, at the discretion of the Editor. The category being sponsored by the Journal of Workplace Learning is Human Resource Development, commonly known as HRD. There are eleven other subject areas, each with its own sponsoring journal. The full details can be found at www.emeraldinsight.com/awards

To be eligible for the award sponsored by JWL, the research must address an issue that is of importance to HRD. The awards are open to those who have completed and satisfied examination requirements for a Doctoral award, or will do so, between 1 June 2004 and 1 June 2006 (the closing date for applications for the 2006 Awards). Awards will be granted for research that demonstrates originality and innovation and makes an outstanding contribution to theory and its application. Applications close 1 June 2006.

Given the subject area for the JWL award, it is very appropriate that this issue carries the first of several articles on a HRD theme, selected by Richard Dealtry, the journal’s Corporate University Editor. In “HRD – the shapes and things to come”, David Simmonds and Cec Pedersen attempt to redefine HRD, arguing that it is “change, and especially the rate at which change occurs, that largely influences the HRD hybrid that any organisation adopts”.

The HRD article is complimented by three equally stimulating papers. David Bamber and Pavel Castka identify four competencies which they suggest explain the relation between personality, organizational orientations and self-reported learning outcome. Alexander Styhre takes a more philosophical approach in his paper, which investigates the temporal aspects of organization and workplace learning by discussing the notion of virtuality as examined by the French philosopher Henri Bergson. We don’t receive a lot of papers with a strong philosophical approach, so it has been good that the author has been able to develop this one for publication. The third paper, by Anna-Maija Lämsä and Teppo Sintonen, with its theme of a narrative approach for organizational learning, is constructed theoretically, but illustrates the narrative approach and its potential use by means of a practical example.

These are all high quality papers and I am grateful to the authors, and of course to the reviewers, for their contribution to maintaining the Journal of Workplace Learning’s high international reputation. Good reading!

Darryl Dymock