changing questions of workplace learning researchers

Because workplace learning research may entrench existing power relations rather than empower workers,educators should examine workplace learning within abroad economic and social context and take up their historic responsibilities to advocate socially responsibleadult education.

Changing Questions of WorkplaceLearning Researchers

Bruce Spencer

In September 1999, the Researching Work and Learning: A First InternationalConference was held at Leeds University, England. Much of the Leeds Uni-versity’s activity in its twenty years of studying conditions of work had beenconducted directly with labor unions and union members. Given this con-text, it is somewhat surprising to hear Keith Forrester, a leading workplaceknowledge researcher, admit, “We too have not attached sufficient weightto the inter-relationship between employee learning, new management prac-tices and the wider ‘modernising’ strategies currently being pursued by NewLabour in this country, and to a lesser extent, in a number of other coun-tries” (p. 188).

If the researchers at Leeds, with their focus on workers’ interests,missed it, it is perhaps more understandable to consider how it has beenoverlooked more generally in the workplace learning research, much ofwhich claims either a neutral position or assumes a managerial perspective.My contention in this chapter is that the enthusiasm for lifelong learning,the learning society, and learning organizations has dulled researchers’ crit-ical examination about what exactly is going on in workplace learning. For-rester defines the problem in the following terms:

In the increased competitive pressure on management to improve the qualityand quantity of the labour input, the notion of employee subjectivity (affectiveelements such as initiative, “emotional labour” [customer care], values and atti-tudes, intra-individual management, self actualisation and adaptability) hasemerged as a key area of new management and thinking and that workplace orwork-related learning is often seen as an essential part of “capturing” employee

NEW DIRECTIONS FOR ADULT AND CONTINUING EDUCATION, no. 92, Winter 2001 © John Wiley & Sons, Inc. 31

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32 SOCIOCULTURAL PERSPECTIVES ON LEARNING THROUGH WORK

subjectivity in achieving corporate objectives. The wider socio-economicchanges of recent decades has resulted in many workplaces questioning aspectsof the traditionalist “Taylorist” division between thinking and doing along withthe rigidities characteristic of a Fordist workplace regime. However, instead ofthe brave new world of employee “empowerment”, ‘autonomy”, satisfaction and ful-filment within those “new workplaces” or “workplaces of the future” there is just aslikely, we suggest, to emerge new mechanisms of oppression and managerial con-trol. If this is the case, or at least a possibility, then there is the danger that theequally brave new world of pedagogics in relation to “work and learning” willbecome part of the new forms of oppression and control in the workplace [Forrester,1999, p. 188; emphasis added].

To evaluate this insight, we should review our understanding of work-place learning and its genesis in new human resource management andhuman capital theory. This chapter also discusses the impact of workplacelearning on understandings of society and learning in general, how wemight promote learning, and the role of adult educators and workplacelearning researchers. I argue that if we are to avoid Forrester’s trap, we mustmake explicit the economic and social forces at play and not compromiseour standards as to what constitutes real industrial democracy.

Workplace Learning

Workplace learning is often presented in straightforward terms: it refers tothe learning that takes place at work, learning that workers engage on adaily basis. The notion of a learning organization extends that simple ideato include a concept of collective (organizational) learning that results fromindividual learning (some argue that organizations must foster and supportsuch learning to remain competitive). The idea thus becomes more complexbut is still presented as essentially unproblematic: that individuals candevelop as the organization grows. In this win-win scenario, learning in theworkplace benefits everyone. An organization may decide to encouragegreater decision making at lower levels, workers may choose how to com-plete their tasks, and worker teams are encouraged: the workers are empow-ered within a workplace democracy (Senge, 1990b; Wellins, 1991).

Research suggests that such rhetoric seldom matches workplace real-ity, because few organizations are attempting to make such sweepingchanges to the nature of work (Bratton, 1999). Bratton’s work is importanthere because he went out looking for international examples of good prac-tice, and found few. He approached his study as an academic, not as a con-sultant: consultants have written too many glowing accounts with a vestedinterest in the next contract (Honold, 1991; Senge, 1990b; Wellins, 1991).

Schied, Carter, Preston, and Howell (1997a, 1997b) at Pennsylvania StateUniversity produced an in-depth case study of workplace change that penetratedthe empowerment facade of workplace learning. The research team found many

33CHANGING QUESTIONS OF WORKPLACE LEARNING RESEARCHERS

examples of contradictory outcomes resulting from the application of workplacelearning and management reorganization strategies. They also found confirma-tion of Forrester’s fear of how the “brave new world of pedagogics in relation to‘work and learning’ will become part of the new forms of oppression and control inthe workplace.” For example, after the application of a learning and skills profile,long-time workers found themselves downgraded and left with lower pay.“Empowered” workers who challenged organizational policies were oftenquickly silenced (Howell, Preston, Schied, and Carter, 1996). Earlier work ques-tioned whether workers gained more control over work alongside their increasedresponsibilities (Klein, 1989) and demonstrated that teamwork could lead to jobintensification and speedups (Robertson, Rienhart, and Huxley, 1989).

In those few cases where genuine moves toward a learning organizationthat includes some benefits for workers have taken place, workers are reportedas being better off, enjoying greater job satisfaction, experiencing more flexiblework patterns, and having more control over how work is conducted. Bratton(1992) reports that this is often tied to the technological nature of the work:gains for workers are more likely in high-skilled work with batch productionfavoring a core workforce, but fewer gains accrue to the less skilled workers inmass production factories. He later argued that gains are dependent on jobredesign as an important part of the organizational strategy and that such gainsare more likely if workers are included in that redesign process (Bratton, 1999).

Certainly, some of these changes do not benefit workers, but it is appar-ent that often these gains are relatively small and that there is another side tothe learning organization story. Learning organizations can mask the reasser-tion of employer rights, part of the new forms of oppression and control inthe workplace that should be acknowledged in workplace learning research.Workers have always learned at work. Sometimes what they learn is of imme-diate value to them: how to do the job in a less stressful or exhausting fash-ion, for example. Sometimes what they learn is related to the nature of workin a market economy—what may be referred to as the social relations of work,that is, they learn what it means to be a worker and take orders from super-visors. Sometimes workplace learning benefits the employer: by becomingmore skilled and efficient, workers become more valuable human resources.

But learning can also benefit the workers’ own work group or laborunion (learning, for instance, how to argue for custom and practice, forreprieve from a discipline, or how to resolve a grievance). This version of theworkplace learning story acknowledges that win-win is not the only outcome,that disparities of power are at work, and that workplace democracy, oftenclaimed to be the product of learning organizations, can be partial at best.

Society, Workplace Learning, and Education

Two recent books, one Canadian and the other American, have attemptedto map a way out. Lowe’s Quality of Work: A People-Centered Agenda (2000)and Kincheloe’s How Do We Tell the Workers? The Socioeconomic Foundations


of Work and Vocational Education (1999) are very different approaches toresolving the same problem: how to achieve good work in terms of high-quality jobs and enhanced democracy at work and in society.

Lowe’s study draws on years of surveying the opinions of Canadians onsocial and economic issues. He found a deep dissatisfaction with work—notonly with the insecurity surrounding employment in the 1990s but alsowith the nature of work itself. Employees consistently report that they areoverqualified for, and their skills and knowledge underemployed in, the jobsthey perform. High-technology and knowledge jobs are scarce, while mun-dane, repetitive, low-paid jobs are commonplace. The study is supple-mented by some case study data that illustrate diverse workers’ experienceof the modern workplace. Lowe also argues for a balance between work andnonwork.

Kincheloe approaches the issues as an educator interested in how weshould teach about the world of work (what he calls vocational education).He addresses questions of diversity in U.S. society and the nature of gov-ernment, contesting the free market claims of corporate America and recap-turing what he sees as the humane and democratic tradition of U.S. society.He portrays the democratic future of the United States as depending ondemocratizing the work world.

Both researchers attend closely to contextual issues. They are carefulnot to reify a learning organization model, and they point to examples ofpractice where the rhetoric of learning mismatches workers’ reality. Bothdemonstrate the limitations of corporate self-interest and acknowledge thatan active, interventionist, and regulatory role for government can be a pos-itive force. They demonstrate respect for labor unions and advocate (with-out preaching) a role for unions in the process of workplace learning anddemocratization. Both believe that employers can change and will benefitfrom democratic change, while acknowledging that power inequalities existin work and learning.

However, neither author deals adequately with a central contradictionof modern corporations. Corporate allegiance to the primacy of shareholderinterests (bolstered by the legal framework) and the purpose of increasingprofit margins (rooted in dubious economic theory) relegates the concernsand needs of other stakeholders to minority roles. The central structure ofprivate enterprise remains: large corporations create hierarchies of controland power driven by a profit motive, creating particular social relations ofemployer and employee, boss and worker. Social class divisions are pro-duced by these dominant work relations. In fact, it can be argued that withthe shrinkage of well-paid manual and office jobs, the middle class is inretreat; society is polarizing into a large working class and a relatively smallelite. A veil may be drawn over these contradictions with a rhetoric of work-ers as “associates” or “partners,” but unless ownership and control changesand becomes genuinely more equitably distributed, the workplace remainsfundamentally unchanged.


Lowe and Kincheloe do broaden the narrow focus of workplace learn-ing researchers from studying isolated workplace change to understandingthe large-scale breadth and depth of change needed in social relations. Butcan North America change the way business is done? Unfortunately, thefederal-provincial divide in Canadian politics makes it difficult to establisha common political environment even if there were a desire to contest theneoliberal economic agenda (deregulation, privatization, open global mar-kets, minimal government), and the United States shows no signs of adopt-ing a Kincheloen view of government’s role.

With all the rhetoric surrounding work reorganization in the knowl-edge economy and the claim that work flows in a postindustrial and evenpostcapitalist (Korten, 1999) global market, it is easy to forget that the basicstructure and purpose of large corporations have not changed. Once weacknowledge that organizations are not unitary (with everyone in the orga-nization sharing the same goals) but pluralist (with different interests some-times coinciding, sometimes conflicting) in nature, we can begin to examinedifferent investments and outcomes. We live in societies—some wouldargue essentially one global society—in which the gap between the richestand the poorest is growing (United Nations, 1988).

Many workers have experienced a decline in the value of real wagesand must struggle to stay abreast of inflation even at low inflation rates,while the incomes of the rich continue to climb. Earnings of the poorestfifth of U.S. workers rose just 1 percent from 1988 to 1998 while the rich-est fifth climbed 15 percent (Economic Policy Institute and the Center onBudget and Policy Priorities, 2000).

Chief executive officers of many companies have seen their incomesmore than double in real terms in the past ten years. Much is made of thefluctuations of the stock market, but the long-term trend has been steadilyupward: those who are rich enough to live off such income have not beenaffected by downsizing, layoffs, persistent unemployment, part-time work,and minimum wages. Nor is being a worker in a learning organization aguarantee of job security. A company’s competitive position may depend onmore effective and intelligent use of its human resources, but this does notmean that a corporate decision about location or product development willbenefit a particular work group or that the rewards from the collective effortwill be equitably distributed among the workforce. The decision to close awork site, for example, may have absolutely nothing to do with how thatparticular workforce has performed, including the extent of their commit-ment to ideals of building a learning organization (Spencer, 1998).

Facilitating Learning

What kind of workplace learning should be encouraged given the differentinterests involved? From an employer’s perspective, learning should resultin benefits for the organization. However, some employers may favor narrow,


work-related training, while others acknowledge that a broader educationmay be beneficial. Most organizational education and training budgets arebiased in favor of professional workers; fewer corporate dollars are spent onthose workers with little or no formal education. What is expended at thebottom of the organizational structure is usually concentrated on immediateorientation and job training, compulsory health and safety training (usuallyemphasizing workers’ own responsibility rather than a safe workplace), orbasic literacy for immigrant workers (Duffy, Glenday, and Pupo, 1997; Lowe,2000; Swift, 1995). Many employers are trying to benefit from granting edu-cational opportunities to their employees while at the same time hoping thattheir expenditures do not result in their better educated and expensivelytrained professional workers’ leaving to benefit other organizations. (A con-ference held in Calgary, Canada, in May 1999 had the title “How to KeepYour Intellectual Capital.” The conference question was framed entirely froman employer’s perspective. A corporate spokesman explained the “problem”of expensively trained staff leaving to work elsewhere.)

Few employers have followed Ford’s Employee Development AssistanceProgram (EDAP), which allows workers to choose the kind of educationalexperience they would like to pursue at company expense. (This programwas negotiated with the unions.) Employer reluctance to follow the Fordmodel is puzzling in the light of Beattie’s (1997) research showing the EDAPeffectiveness from both worker and employer perspectives. The programapparently benefited the employer even when workers chose totally work-unrelated education. Beattie also found that employees felt better about theirwork and their employer and returned from their educational activities withgreater loyalty and respect for the organization. With the push from EDAP(42 percent of manual workers took advantage of EDAP), worker involve-ment in adult education leaped to more than three times the national aver-age for this socioeconomic group of adults, a clear benefit for the workerswho participated.

Workers may well wish to benefit from employer-provided educationand training opportunities, especially if they are hoping to move up in theorganization to a better-paid position. Although they may welcome anytraining opportunities, those that provide broader educational opportuni-ties, externally recognized credentials, and credit for prior learning may bemost keenly sought. In addition, unions and workers may also want toensure that there is equity in all training and educational provision, that itis not too employer specific, that workers can be provided some paid edu-cational leave, and that the increased knowledge will benefit workers finan-cially. On this last point, experience from Australia would suggest that whenemployer rhetoric about paying workers for their knowledge was taken seri-ously by the unions and workers’ knowledge was demonstrated through thenational training and education schema, employers backed out of thesecommitments, arguing they could pay workers only for the actual level ofwork performed rather than for their skills and knowledge (Spencer, 1998).


The state may also play a part in promoting workplace learning. Gov-ernments have accepted the view that a better-educated workforce is lesslikely to be unemployed and is more likely to attract employers. They mayalso recognize that if employers are left to provide all education and train-ing, there is no guarantee that it will meet society’s needs. And they mayalso consider that the better employers may be encouraged to spend moreif there are established minimum levels of provision that all employersmust conform to. In other words, left solely to the market, a public goodlike education and training will be underprovided. According to this view,state regulation and tripartite bodies can raise the overall level of provision.All of these considerations are complicated by the globalization of pro-duction and markets and by an ideology favoring the free flow of marketforces, but they are not nullified. Left to their own devices, there is littleevidence to support the view that corporate sector activity will result inbetter-educated workforces. State intervention and regulation are neededto achieve that goal.

Most government interest in promoting training, however, has beenpart of a strategy of downloading the problems of unemployment ontoworkers (Duffy, Glenday, and Pupo, 1997; Swift, 1995). More training hasbeen the only solution offered by governments that have abandoned indus-try policy or any interventionist strategy favoring the creation of good jobsand increased democracy at work. After all, politicians cry, in the contextof a global economy, what else can they do? But not all governments haveabandoned their social and economic responsibilities. Scandinavian coun-tries continue to support the rights of workers and unions to organize andhave a voice in the affairs of the state, to balance corporate with publicinterests, and generally to promote social democratic principles (Institutefor Global Futures Research, 2000). These countries try to create whatLowe (2000) would recognize as quality work and a people-centeredagenda and what Kincheloe (1999) calls a “humane vision of a democraticsociety” (p. 64).

The Role of Adult Educators

Educators, particularly adult educators, have embraced the notion of theworkplace as a site for learning. In many cases, they have offered their ser-vices as consultants, describing themselves as human resource developmentspecialists. They have searched out examples of good practice, describing itas development work (Welton, 1991), empowerment, and a long-overduerecognition of the skills and knowledge that workers possess. In some cases,acting with consultants from other disciplinary backgrounds, they haveextolled the virtues of team concept, kaizen, and the learning organizationin general (for a critical discussion of learning organizations, see Fenwick,1998). They have accepted competency-based or outcome-based training asthe norm and have welcomed employer-determined curriculum into colleges


(Peruniak, 1998). Lifelong learning is largely treated unproblematically, ben-efiting workers and employers as if they had a seamless identity and theirinterests were unified. While perhaps arguing for a more liberal and criticalapproach, many nonetheless abandon any serious critical reflection in ser-vice to their new masters. As Bouchard (1998) has argued, workplace learn-ing literature often displays little understanding of human capital theory orits limitations or of the relationship between workplace learning and otherhuman resource management practices as technologies of control (Spencer,1998). We should recall that Senge (1990a) has argued that the role of the“leader” is to “help people restructure their views of reality” (p. 12), in otherwords, to get workers to adopt the employer’s perspective. As Forrester notedabove, “Then there is the danger that the equally brave new world of pedagog-ics in relation to ‘work and learning’ will become part of the new forms of oppres-sion and control in the workplace.”

Conclusion

Adult educators and workplace learning researchers should acknowledgetheir responsibility to advocate quality of work (Lowe, 2000) and to “tellthe workers” about “good work and a renewed vision of democracy”(Kincheloe, 1999, p. 81). The task is to help build the pressure for changewhile remaining true to the origins of our profession, recognizing that adulteducation at its core is a liberatory practice. Educators and researchersshould not be afraid to argue that workers’ ownership and control of enter-prises is equated to industrial democracy. That is the yardstick with whichto measure other claims for empowerment, even if such cooperatives areunlikely to occur on a wide-scale basis or anytime soon. Nor should we beafraid to promote positive aspects of social democratic governments such asScandinavia’s, even if they appear to be in retreat or remote from NorthAmerican experience.

We should talk about the role played by labor unions in democratizingwork relations by giving voice to the less powerful, within a critical evalu-ation of union activity. We should also applaud those employers that oper-ate socially and environmentally responsible enterprises and encouragebroadly based educational and participatory processes at work. We shoulddefend public sector services precisely because they can move to a serviceorientation and internal democratic processes without having to meet profittargets—and then demand that they do move in such directions.

This list is not complete, but it is long enough to illustrate that thechanging questions for workplace learning researchers are to be found ineducation for workplace democracy. How does educational opportunitybenefit workers? Is the claim that workers are empowered real? To whatextent are so-called empowered workers given meaningful influence in acorporation’s affairs? Are the gains equitably distributed? What public poli-cies can be developed to promote workers’ rights, including broadly based


educational opportunities? In this way, perhaps we can ensure that theresearch into and “pedagogics in relation to ‘work and learning’” will not“become part of the new forms of oppression and control in the workplace”that Forrester (1999, p. 188) fears.

References

Beattie, A. Working People and Lifelong Learning: A Study of the Impact of an EmployeeDevelopment Scheme, Leicester, U.K.: National Institute of Adult and Continuing Edu-cation, 1997.

Bouchard, P. “Training and Work: Myths About Human Capital.” In S. Scott, B. Spencer,and A. Thomas (eds.), Learning for Life: Canadian Readings in Adult Education.Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 1998.

Bratton, J. Japanization at Work. New York: Macmillan, 1992.Bratton, J. “Gaps in the Workplace Learning Paradigm: Labor Flexibility and Job

Design.” In K. Forrester, N. Frost, D. Taylor, and K. Ward (eds.), Proceedings ofResearching Work and Learning. Leeds, U.K.: Leeds University, 1999.

Duffy, A., Glenday, D., and Pupo, N. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: The Transformation ofWork in the Twenty-First Century. Toronto: Harcourt Brace, 1997.

Economic Policy Institute and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. “The Forgot-ten Workforce.” [204.202.137.111/sections/us/DailyNews/incomes000118.html]. 2000.

Fenwick, T. “Questioning the Concept of the Learning Organization.” In S. M. Scott, B.Spencer, and A. M. Thomas (eds.), Learning for Life: Canadian Readings in Adult Edu-cation. Toronto: Thompson Educational Publishing, 1998.

Forrester, K. “Work-Related Learning and the Struggle for Subjectivity.” In K. Forrester,N. Frost, D. Taylor, and K. Ward (eds.), Proceedings of Researching Work and Learn-ing. Leeds, U.K.: University of Leeds, 1999.

Honold, L. “The Power of Learning at Johnsonville Foods.” Training, 1991, 28, 55–58.Howell, S., Preston, J., Schied, F., and Carter, V. “Creating a Learning Organization, Cre-

ating a Controlling Organization: A Case Study of Total Quality Management in anIndustrial Setting.” In Proceedings of the Thirty-Seventh Annual Adult EducationResearch Conference. Tampa: University of South Florida, 1996.

Institute for Global Futures Research. “IMF Recommends Greater Inequality in Sweden.”Global Futures Bulletin, no. 110, 2000.

Kincheloe, J. How Do We Tell the Workers? The Socioeconomic Foundations of Work andVocational Education. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1999.

Klein, J. “The Human Costs of Manufacturing Reform.” Harvard Business Review, 1989,28, 60–66.

Korten, D. C. The Post-Corporate World: Life After Capitalism. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 1999.

Lowe, G. Quality of Work: A People-Centered Agenda. New York: Oxford University Press,2000.

Peruniak, G. “Dimensions of Competence-Based Learning.” In S. Scott, B. Spencer, andA. Thomas (eds.), Learning for Life: Canadian Readings in Adult Education. Toronto:Thompson Educational Publishing, 1998.

Robertson, D., Rienhart, J., and Huxley, C. “Team Concept and Kaizen: Japanese Pro-duction in a Unionised Canadian Auto Plant.” Studies in Political Economy, 1989, 39,77–107.

Schied, F., Carter, V., Preston, J., and Howell, S. “Knowledge as ‘Quality Non-Conformance’:A Critical Case Study of ISO 9000 and Adult Education in the Workplace.” In Proceed-ings of the Thirty-Eighth Annual Adult Education Research Conference. Stillwater: OklahomaState University, 1997a.


Schied, F., Carter, V., Preston, J., and Howell, S. “The HRD Factory: An HistoricalInquiry into the Production of Control in the Workplace.” Paper presented at theCrossing Borders Breaking Boundaries: Research in the Education of Adults: An Inter-national Conference, Birkbeck College, University of London, 1997b.

Senge, P. “The Leader’s New Work: Building Learning Organizations.” Sloan Manage-ment Review, 1990a, 32, 7–23.

Senge, P. The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization. NewYork: Doubleday, 1990b.

Spencer, B. The Purposes of Adult Education: A Guide for Students. Toronto: ThompsonEducational Publishing, 1998.

Swift, J. Wheel of Fortune: Work and Life in the Age of Falling Expectations. Toronto:Between the Lines, 1995.

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Wellins, R. Empowered Teams: Creating Self-Directed Work Groups That Improve Quality,Productivity and Participation. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1991.

Welton, M. Toward Development Work: The Workplace as a Learning Environment. Gee-long: Deakin University Press, 1991.

BRUCE SPENCER is professor in the Centre for Work and Community Studies,Athabasca University, Alberta, Canada.

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