Search results
11 – 20 of 114The paper seeks to show that narrative close call reporting is one strand of an ongoing collaborative inquiry project with 300 staff aiming to improve teamwork in operating…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to show that narrative close call reporting is one strand of an ongoing collaborative inquiry project with 300 staff aiming to improve teamwork in operating theatres in a large UK hospital. How teams deal with close calls (“accidents waiting to happen”) reveals resourcefulness but exposes flaws, including resistance to basic safety practices such as briefing and debriefing.
Design/methodology/approach
In this paper over 400 issues from close call reports over two years have been thematically analysed to map a variety of (mis)communications. This paper goes beyond this descriptive level of data analysis to a deeper level, where close calls are read textually. The most common rhetorical strategies are reported, shown in around a quarter of all reports.
Findings
The paper finds that accounts are neither transparent nor objective, but offer a medium for the exercise of rhetorical strategy, a main function of which is construction and management of identity. Practitioners maintain traditional boundaries between professions by stereotyping the “other” professional in the team, serving to stabilise identity. Work is typically presented as on the edge, close to collapse, serving to shape an identity of “heroic survivors” for team members.
Practical implications
In the paper habitual practices that impede teamwork are challenged, such as stereotyping. Reporting can encourage “fearless speech” – regardless of position on the traditional hierarchy – that is an empowering form of “plain speaking” underpinned by moral courage.
Originality/value
The paper shows that close calls are typically treated instrumentally. A deeper, aesthetic and ethical reading is offered. Education in “fearless speech” in close call reports may offer a reflexive stance and new context for identity construction.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to examine employees' conceptions of the meaning of experience in job‐competence and its development in workplace context. The aim is to bring out the variety of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine employees' conceptions of the meaning of experience in job‐competence and its development in workplace context. The aim is to bring out the variety of conceptions related to experience, competence and workplace learning.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is based on interview data from six Finnish small and medium sized enterprises. The data were collected as a part of a larger European Union research project, Working Life Changes and Training of Older Workers (WORKTOW) during spring 1999. The approach chosen for the analysis presented in this paper was phenomenography.
Findings
The findings in the paper show the importance accorded to experience in competence and in workplace learning. The employees valued work experience as the main source of their competence. They also developed their competence mainly through learning at work. The role of social participation in work communities and learning through experiences was emphasized.
Practical implications
The paper shows that differentiating employees' conceptions paves a way to more specific perspectives on the development and utilisation of experience‐based competence in work communities and organisations.
Originality/value
In this paper the findings are discussed in the light of construction and development of older workers' job‐competence in working life. It is argued that experience serves several kinds of purposes in workplace learning also among experienced workers.
Details
Keywords
Johannes Bauer and Regina H. Mulder
The paper seeks to show that self‐determination is a widely regarded motivational variable in educational research that relates to intrinsically motivated, self‐directed learning…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to show that self‐determination is a widely regarded motivational variable in educational research that relates to intrinsically motivated, self‐directed learning at work. This study aimed to find out whether the possibility to provide upward feedback to supervisors contributes to employees' feelings of self‐determination. This should only be the case if the subordinates perceive the possibility to provide feedback as a serious possibility of influence and improvement.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper finds that in a cross‐sectional case study, 76 employees from a high‐tech industry enterprise were surveyed for their perception of upward feedback and their feeling of self‐determination by questionnaire. Self‐determination was measured by the support of the intrinsic needs of autonomy, competence and social relatedness at the workplace.
Findings
The paper finds that, as expected, the perceived quality of the upward feedback is related positively to self‐determination. Employees who perceive the upward feedback as a chance for improving their working conditions also perceive more support of autonomy, competence and social relatedness at their workplace.
Research limitations/implications
In the paper the correlative design allows no conclusions about the direction of causality between the perceived quality of the upward feedback and self‐determination. Further, due to the design the results are limited to the specific field.
Originality/value
The paper delivers a new aspect of the role of feedback for learning in organisations by casting light on beneficial effects for the provider of the feedback, not the receiver. It emphasises the role of empowerment and participation for establishing an organisational climate that fosters motivation and learning, and shows the possible contribution of upward feedback in this process.
Details
Keywords
The paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper seeks to investigate design engineers' and product developers' learning through their work. The aim was to approach designers' work practice and their learning in the course of it as perceived by the designers themselves. The aim is also to examine their learning through the various individual and social processes, which take place in the workplace.
Design/methodology/approach
The ethnographic approach in this paper, with its use of combined and qualitative data gathering and analytical methods, was selected to approach the aim described above. Observations in two Finnish high‐tech companies and interviews with 18 designers were conducted. The observations and interviews were analysed with help of combined methods of analysis, such as phenomenographic, narrative and ethnographic analysis.
Findings
The findings in this paper suggest that in redefining designers' work and learning, four central themes are important: design practice is learning in itself; there is a close relationship between formal and practical knowledge in designers' learning at work; previous work experience plays an essential role in learning; and design practices and learning should be seen as shared, situated and contextualized.
Practical implications
In the paper general suggestions concerning the guidance of workplace learning are given, and the challenges of guiding and assessing workplace learning in the vocational education context are examined. There is a clear need for more effective integration between education and working life.
Originality/value
The paper illustrates that individual and social practice and learning in the workplace should be analysed as interdependent and intertwined.
Details
Keywords
Satu Kalliola, Risto Nakari and Ilkka Pesonen
The theoretical aim of the research in this paper is to conceptualize learning in the context of communicative action research, specifically in the context of democratic dialogue…
Abstract
Purpose
The theoretical aim of the research in this paper is to conceptualize learning in the context of communicative action research, specifically in the context of democratic dialogue. The empirical aim is to show how and in which conditions action research projects, based on democratic dialogue, work.
Design/methodology/approach
In the paper, first, a conceptual synthesis is made by combining organizational and learning approaches to action research interventions based on the principles of democratic dialogue. Second, the new frame of reference is used to make a content analysis of two public sector cases from Finland, which will be presented as chance narratives.
Findings
The paper finds that the conceptualization of action research interventions first, as development organizations, and second, as learning spaces, sharpens the empirical analysis of the impact of the interventions. The article will point out how the action research interventions enhance collaborative learning among the participants. In cases where democratic dialogue is adopted as a regulative rule, desired organizational changes are likely to happen. In these cases, democratic dialogue diffuses from development organizations to the production and bargaining organizations.
Practical implications
The paper shows that the level of the conceptualization of the research makes it relevant also in other western countries that are experiencing a transformation of the public sector towards managerialism.
Originality/value
The paper combines theories of learning and organizations in the framework of communicative action research in a way that makes explicit the role of workplace democracy. The paper gives a strong theoretical and empirical evidence of the potential of the dialogue methods in the intentional changes of working life.
Details
Keywords
The aim of this paper is to show what the leaders themselves regard as the working ingredients in their mutual work situation that help to facilitate personal development.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to show what the leaders themselves regard as the working ingredients in their mutual work situation that help to facilitate personal development.
Design/methodology/approach
In the paper data were collected through semi‐structured interviews with 14 leaders at low and middle management levels in different lines of business within the private and public sector. The analysis of the learning processes draws on the theory of transformative learning.
Findings
The paper revealed that joint leadership, according to the leaders, could provide the leaders themselves with a basis of personal development and learning. This depends on common core values, a supportive relationship and common work processes as well as complementarity, joint sense making and critical reflection.
Research limitations/implications
The implies that joint leadership provides possibilities of transformative learning through examination of different points of view, through explicitly talking about habits of mind, and through stepwise changes of existing frames of reference. The results indicate that joint leadership offers the possibility of a deepened learning process in daily work in a communicative relationship where profound values and ways of acting are openly shared and critically‐reflected upon. Joint leadership should however not be forced on to managers.
Originality/value
The paper provides insights into learning processes for leaders, based on the possibilities, which can be created through joint leadership.
Details
Keywords
Responding to the recent split in the US labor movement, this paper aims to argue that learning must become an integral part of a progressive union devoted to organizing.
Abstract
Purpose
Responding to the recent split in the US labor movement, this paper aims to argue that learning must become an integral part of a progressive union devoted to organizing.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper traces the evolution of vocational education in US industrial unions and critiques it in light of the challenges facing labor today.
Findings
The paper finds that vocational education in US industrial unions is a negotiated benefit aimed at meeting the instrumental needs of individual union members. The evolution of this model was inevitable given the US labor relations context within which it emerged. However, significant changes in US political economy call for a new model of vocational education in unions. Rather than learning as a service, Learning to Organize challenges unions to put learning in service of the broader, collective aim of renewed labor power.
Practical implications
The paper shows that union leaders need to reframe their views of vocational learning and its role in unions. Union vocational and labor educators can help leaders to both broaden the vocational learning agenda and link worker engagement in vocational learning to strategic planning, policy development, and everyday operations inside unions.
Originality/value
The paper offers ideas on how to mobilize unions' extensive vocational education resources in support of broader worker engagement and a new strategic agenda inside of US unions.
Details
Keywords
Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Abstract
Purpose
Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting‐edge research and case studies.
Design/methodology/approach
The top 400 management publications in the world are scanned to identify the most topical issues and latest concepts. These are presented in an easy‐to‐digest briefing of no more than 1,500 words.
Findings
There are many barriers to workplace learning, and in some organizations it never really takes place at all. Against this background, lifelong learning remains something of an ideal. That does not have to be the case, however, because a broader view of what constitutes learning can significantly increase the possibility of its realization.
Practical implications
Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.
Originality/value
The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy‐to digest format.
Details
Keywords