chapter 12: researching workplace learning: an overview ...home.oise.utoronto.ca/~psawchuk/ch...

- Do Not Quote without Permission from Author -

From M. Malloch, L. Cairns, K. Evans and B. O’Connor (Eds) The

International Handbook of Workplace Learning. London: Sage.

Chapter 12: Researching Workplace Learning: An Overview and Critique

Peter H. Sawchuk

University of Toronto

Introduction

The aim of this chapter is to build further awareness of the key conceptual themes of workplace

learning research across the international scene. This aim brings with it many challenges. The

challenges are rooted in the inter-disciplinary nature of the field, the ubiquity and multi-

dimensionality of human learning that demands a plurality of approaches, and a range of subtle

and not-so-subtle conceptual, epistemological and even ontological differences and

preoccupations.

The chapter begins with a brief introductory „assay‟ of the current research literature

focusing on major perspectives in the field. It seeks to provide additional information to extend

the introductory comments for the Handbook as a whole. For the remaining bulk of the chapter, I

seek to profile the most robust „lines of research inquiry‟ and key scholars associated with them.

Six such lines of inquiry are discussed: i) cognition, expertise and the individual; ii) micro-

interaction, cognition and communication; iii) mediated practice and participation; iv) meaning,

identity and organizational life; v) authority, control and conflict; and finally, vi) competitiveness

and knowledge management. Critical engagement with these ideas focuses on how they fill

important gaps and deepen the intellectual value of workplace learning research as a whole. I

conclude with comments urging (renewed) efforts at dialogue given the complexity, the multiple

and sometimes conflicting vantage points, and importance of workplace learning to individuals,

groups, organizations, governments and society as a whole.

Assaying Recent Workplace Learning Research: A Starting Point

The field of workplace learning research from the final quarter of the 20th

and into the 21st

century has demonstrated an accelerated expansion of conceptualizations, dissection and even

vivisection (by action and interventionist researchers). The multi-disciplinarity of the literature

has seen a proliferation of identified skill types: from common notions of „soft‟ and „hard‟ skills,

general education and vocationally-specific skills, literacy, communication, comprehension,

multi-tasking skills, procedural and declarative knowledge, through to somewhat more

theoretically robust formulations of such things as work-related emotional skill, articulation skill,

relational skills and aesthetic skill. And, the proliferation (helpful, rhetorical or otherwise) does

not end there. Conceptualization of work-related learning processes has expanded as well. It is

now common currency among researchers to recognize not simply individual, taught, self-

directed learning, but that learning also includes formal, non-formal, informal and tacit aspects,

experiential and incidental learning, reflective learning, legitimate peripheral participation, and

learning „activity‟ to name only a sampling. In turn, debate has moved in ever-widening circles

from individual cognition to include emotion, biography, identity and meaning, power and

resistance, social legitimacy and illegitimacy, and the social constructivist roles of communities

of practice, meditational processes and participatory structures at the firm, sector, national and

international levels. To make sense of the state of the field today, I begin with a brief

introduction to what are often referred to in the literature as „managerialist‟ and „critical‟




perspectives as a necessary but likely insufficient means of orienting to the research (Bratton,

Helms-Mills, Pyrch and Sawchuk 2004).

Many managerialist perspectives on workplace learning emphasize the development of

human assets, organizational commitment, flexibility, and sustainable competitive advantage. In

many instances these are matters of immediate economic survival for a firm, and in turn the

workers, families and communities which have come to depend on them. But even from a

managerial perspective, it is important to recognize that many workplace learning researchers

recognize that workplace learning is mediated by power relations (e.g. positional differences

such as manager, supervisor, employee, as well as broader social differences across gender, race

and disability, and beyond). A good deal of this research has recognized the contradictory

challenges of capitalist employment relations specifically, the way organizations both control

and activate human capacities, freedoms and agency (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Coopey, 1996;

Thompson and McHugh, 2002). Identified some time ago, a prominent goal in these terms is to

have workers want to become flexible and agile human resources through processes such as

reflective learning to generate the capacity to learn „faster‟ than those in other organizations (e.g.

Dixon, 1992). Likewise, Kochan and Dyer advise those firms adopting a „mutual commitment‟

strategy to gain competitive advantage to make the necessary investment in their workforce and

adopt concerns for lifelong learning (1995; Bratton and Gold 2003).

Other workplace learning researchers raise more fundamental concerns over

arrangements of the contemporary workplace and seek to illuminate and analyze power relations,

politics and conflicts of interest shape skill, knowledge and learning in a more radical way.

Taking what is often called a „critical approach‟, such researchers have developed sophisticated

analyses of „cultural control‟ through workplace learning (e.g. Legge 1995; Solomon 2001) and

investigate how the training of „competencies‟ can render work more „visible‟ in order to be

more controllable (e.g. Townley 1994; Illeris 2009). From this perspective, it is often argued that

underpinning notions of „high quality‟, „flexible specialization‟, „functional flexibility‟,

„information‟ or „knowledge‟ work are presumptions that the present workforce lacks the

relevant capacities to compete effectively (e.g. Livingstone 2004). Critical studies reveal,

however, that only a slim proportion of these worker learning capacities are effectively utilized

in the labour process itself. And moreover, training and learning opportunities are unevenly

distributed across social groups. That is, for example, „peripheral‟ workers (as well as women,

visible minorities, and young workers) tend to receive the lowest level of training (Ashton and

Felstead, 2001; Livingstone and Sawchuk 2004).

Working across the distinctions between managerial and critical perspectives, some

researchers have carried out careful reviews of thematic trends. A key example in this regard is

found in the work of Fenwick (e.g. 2006, 2008).1 Her review of research on the themes of work

and learning reveals some important trends. For example, she shows persistent ambiguities in

terms of „learning as outcome‟, „learning as process‟, and „learning as experience‟ concluding in

part that “...without better conceptual clarity, different researchers claiming to examine learning

1 See different types of recent thematic reviews of the field of workplace learning research in Illeris (2003; Illeris

and Associated 2004) and Tynjälä (2008) for example – both of which provide some orientations to research

reported in (European) languages other than English.




and its relationships with various contexts of work may be studying phenomena wholly different

in kind, and generating more mutual confusion than enrichment” (2006, p.266). Elsewhere

Fenwick reveals that the individual as the point of analytic departure retains an important,

foundational presence in the field (even when notions of communities and groups are

considered), irrespective of the perceived onslaught of organizational, cultural or participatory

approaches. A rough tabulation based on Fenwick‟s work suggests that approximately two-thirds

of the research journal articles of the field take up such approaches. She goes on to show that

there remains a disconnection between learning and power relations within many research

approaches, a tendency for instrumental orientations in network analysis, and a tendency for

those interested in analyzing levels (individual, team, project, organization) do so in static rather

than dynamic ways. Most broadly, Fenwick suggests the tendency of self-referentialism with

frequent calls for research in areas that are well-undertaken in other disciplines while at the same

time “theorizing subtle dynamics of learning processes, and drawing upon wide-ranging

theoretical bases to do so” (Fenwick 2008, p.239-240).

Here I recommend that this basic recognition of managerial and critical perspectives on

the one hand, paired with the type of thematic analysis on the other can be further complemented

however. I suggest that this can be done by seeking to identify the most robust workplace

learning research programs.

Contemporary Lines of Research Inquiry:

A Comparison of Themes and Representative Models

Based on a review of journals as well as edited collections and monographs that explicitly fixate

on forms and processes of work-related learning and knowledge development below I identify

several robust centres of research interest. I identify these based on several general principles.

That is, they display the capacity to articulate more whole rather than less whole models of both

work and learning; they orient to broader theoretical positions on the nature of the individual,

the social and the institution of work and economy. Moreover, robust research is embedded in

well constructed empirical programs which virtually always offer a challenge to mechanistic

view of reality. That is, phenomenon such as cooperation and conflict, human agency and

freedoms as well as determinations and structure are each fundamental to reality yet only in

robust lines of inquiry are they both articulated. Most importantly, robust research tends to

explicitly recognize the inherent value-laden or political nature of workplace learning. Such

principles are of course relatively independent of topic and method choice, and thus my basic

point here is simply this: under conditions of multi-focal and multi-disciplinary research there is

much to be gained by moving beyond matters of topic and method. With these selection

principles in mind, the following six themes offer what I believe to be the most robust,

contemporary research programs with something to teach us all.

Cognition, Expertise and the Individual

The themes of cognition, expertise and the individual remain key entry points for a great deal of

workplace learning research as I have suggested. In this regard it is relevant to begin by noting

the work of Michael Eraut which is among the most widely cited workplace learning research

today. Eraut outlines his work in another chapter of this Handbook thus I need only to

summarize its key aspects beginning with the fact that his work remains particularly central to




analysis of professional development. He has offered an approach that incorporates many

elements that make up the phenomenon of workplace learning based on extensive empirical

exploration, testing and application to policy and practice. Conceptually, the strengths of Eraut‟s

core set of models (e.g. 2000, 2004, 2008) is that they builds on a number of inter-linked

conceptual frameworks to produce an interactive typology of modes of learning, temporal

trajectories anchored by an explicit epistemology of practice. His approach emphasizes levels of

information processing from unconscious and implicit processing to conscious, goal-directed

problem-solving, and demonstrates the many dimensions of workplace learning involving

different functions of memory, reflection, discussion and planning. Among other things, the

work provides a key means of assessing the formal/informal continuum of workplace learning

inclusive of its implicit and tacit aspects: i.e., “the acquisition of knowledge independently of

conscious attempts to learn and the absence of explicit knowledge about what was learned”

(Eraut 2000, p.12).

It is worthwhile pointing out that as a key example of professional work and learning

specifically, the topic itself demands the fore-fronting of matters of autonomy and creativity that

are shaped by the normative character of these types of labour. Thus, in place of a framing of

learning amidst conditions of structural conflict, alienation or resistance for example, we tend to

see such issues cast as barriers to professional development – a subtle but important distinction.

It is in the professionalized work context that the distinctions between informal and formal

knowledge and, specifically, the questioning of traditional modes of transmission of stable

knowledge forms becomes a distinctively loaded concern. But what may be of particular interest

in these terms is the prominence of various types of planning functions in Eraut‟s work.

Instances of deliberative learning are largely rooted in self-selected learning projects; self-

selected in relations specific to the culture of work life of professionalized workers (Eraut 2007;

Eraut and Hirsh 2007) distinguishing it from those workers with less control over their own

work. Even still, Eraut‟s approach recognizes that the goal of „learning‟ in the workplace is

regularly subsumed by other matters and with this I suggest, we discover wider applicability and

a means of cracking the code of the mutually constituting work and learning relations across

implicit, explicit, reactive or deliberative moments more generally.

The work of many other leading researchers complements and extends Eraut‟s work. In

the area of professional development the work of Ellström (2001), Järvinen and Poikela (2001),

Ericsson, Charness, Feltovich and Hoffman (2006) as well as contributors within Boshuizen,

Bromme and Gruber (2004), for example, provide additional detail to the role of other cognitive

dimensions of workplace learning including memory. Bauer and Gruber (2007) specifically draw

on this research to explain, advocate for and extend what they refer to as a micro perspective on

expert domains of work knowledge with special attention to script theory. The work of Beckett

and Hager (2000, 2002) offer yet another complement (and counter-point) to the basic themes of

Eraut‟s work. They provide an alternative epistemology of practice, adding detail on the nature

and role of judgement across conditions of contingency, practicality and the particularities of

context and the embodied and holist nature of professional working knowledge.

Other, more general starting points for research within this theme involve a concern for

learning transfer. In fact, stemming from a concern to re-establish a research focus on the

individual learner against the perceived „panacea‟ of contextual, social constructivist and




participatory systems analysis, Cheng and Hampson (2008) provide a excellent updating of the

case for sustaining research interest in learning transfer. Drawing on a theory of planned

behaviour (which focuses on intentions and antecedents), these authors conclude with that skill

use and transfer should remain the keystone measure of training vis-à-vis the individual.2

These and related approaches are, I suggest, a logical expression of both the cognitivist as well as

the predominantly individualist approach that characterizes this first theme. They are hardly

exhaustive of the interests relatable to the topic area of cognition, expertise and the individual.

As the brief review of Fenwick‟s (2008) discussion of approaches to the individual and collective

dimensions of workplace learning showed earlier, individual approaches retain a powerful place

in the field, and I argue here that research into workplace learning would almost certainly be

undermined were such concerns marginalized. There are however decidedly less individualized

ways of approaching cognition and expertise. Among these is a tradition of workplace studies

that focuses on micro-interaction.

Micro-Interaction, Cognition and Communication

Quoting Harold Garfinkel, the originator of the field of „ethnomethodology‟, Engeström and

Middleton (1998, p.2) tell us that “there exists a locally produced order of work‟s things; that

they make up a massive domain of organization phenomena; that classic studies of work, without

remedy or alternative, depend upon the existence of these phenomena, make use of the domain,

and ignore it”. Rawls (2008) draws a tight linkage between Garfinkel‟s work and workplace

studies as the science of exploring the “taken-for-granted methods of producing order that

constitute sense – accompanied by displays of attention, competence and trust” (p.701). While

ethnomethodology is far from the only approach to interaction, cognition and communication, it

does make for a fitting introduction to this brief section. Clearly, these are matters of potential

interest to those researching workplace learning.

Within the fields of pragmatics, communications, ethnomethodology, conversation

analysis, actor network theory, symbolic interactionism and an extended family of other

approaches there is a range of researchers who have for several decades sought to pay careful

attention to micro-interactional achievements that underwrite both work and learning processes.

Importantly, they do not rely on survey, interview or other self-report methods. As is noted in

Luff, Hindmarch and Heath. (2000), this tradition focuses on strips of naturally occurring

interaction and talk (e.g. Drew and Heritage 1992). Roughly speaking this field of studies has

both a language arm emerging with a focus on talk and roots in discourse analysis, socio-

linguistics, speech act theory, semiotics and conversation analysis3; as well as an arm exploring

material practices and interaction4, the latter with roots in studies of science and

ethnomethodology but covering many forms of work.

Of these, the lineage that began with investigation of scientific workplaces specifically

(e.g. Latour and Woolgar 1979; Knorr-Cetina and Mulkay 1983; Latour 1992; Pickering 1992)

2 For a contemporary review of work skills/competencies see Illeris (2009).

3 For a remarkable introduction to these approaches see Stubbe, Lane, Hilder, Vine, Marra, Homes and Weatherall

(2003). 4 For a good, recent discussion of bodily interaction in relation to discourse in Hindmarch and Heath (2000).




appears to have remained strong. But Suchman‟s ground-breaking study of human-machine

interaction (1987) is just as seminal. And since then, robust approaches to work analysis of this

type have included detailed studies of virtually any activity where quality recorded data of actual

participatory events can be gathered or accessed. Much recent research has dealt with the role of

work and technological design (e.g. Luff et al. 2000) including but not limited to research

originating from Human-Computer Interaction and Computer Supported Cooperative Work.

Such research asks how everyday environments shape communication and cognition; how, for

example, the use, misuse and alternative uses of computer artefacts leads to reproduction as well

as change in workplace cultures; how, for example, interaction at work is either organized or

disorganized by changing goals and objects of work.

Analyses emerging from these types of methods have been able to detail the local

invention and reproduction of „mindful practice‟ (see Engeström and Middleton 1998) at the

individual and collective level, as well as the process through which expert practice comes about

on an everyday basis. The collection edited by Pickering (1992) summarizes this general

perspective with its focus on how „practice‟ is actually carried out in ways not generally

recognized by actors themselves addressing its implications for work organizations. A problem

from the perspective of workplace learning research, however, is that such researchers tend to

carry out analysis without reference to „learning‟ per se. The suggestion here is that this should

not be viewed as a serious limit to workplace learning researchers however. After all it answers

many questions. How exactly do we know „workplace learning‟ when we see it? And perhaps in

particular, what exactly is the nature of on-the-job and informal learning that seems to make up

so much of the skill and knowledge development and acquisition process?

In relation to the goals of this chapter the distinctive origins and contributions of this

cluster of approaches retains relevance. It links us to an alternative perspective on matters of

cognition and mindful practice in the course of moment-by-moment micro-interaction, as an

unfolding accomplishment. At the same time, however, not unlike the research discussed in the

previous section, it tends to marginalize a number of important questions such as the broader

organizational context as well as the broader structures of participation and the many factors that

shape or mediate the types of interaction that ultimately produce learning at work.

Mediated Practice and Participation

There are a variety of researchers that can be drawn on in order to illustrate this theme as well.

However, if we wish to begin with a focus on particular researchers, two contributions stand out.

The first is found in the work of Yrjö Engeström. Like Eraut, Engeström offers a profile of his

work in this Handbook, so only a brief introduction is offered here. The key orienting theoretical

school for Engeström (e.g. 1987, 1990, 2001, 2008) is what is known as Cultural Historical

Activity Theory (CHAT). It is a tradition that builds originally on the Marxist-inspired research

of the Russian psychologists L.S. Vygotsky and A.N. Leontiev and others to make the claim that

learning must be considered in terms of how external social-material relations of mediation and

participation are inseparable from, but also functionally prior to, individual skill and knowledge

capacity: a claim that provides a valuable complement (or counter-point) to the largely

cognitivist and/or individualised approaches seen earlier. That is, what most people think of as

skill and knowledgeability, in the conventional sense, may be seen as a by-product and currency

of practice rather than a function of individualized cognitive processes per se.




Engeström‟s (1987) seminal work frames learning as a participatory structure defined in

the CHAT tradition as activity. Activity composes a specific set of „object-related‟ practices:

broadly speaking, practices organized by broader collective purposes that define the individual,

self-conscious tasks, roles, operations and artefacts use of which it is composed. Thus activity is

defined as the system through which individuals and groups engage in social action mediated by

material things or tools, symbols/discourses, rules and divisions of labour which is said to be the

minimal, meaningful unit of analysis of human development at the workplace or elsewhere.

Building on the founders‟ earlier work, Engeström‟s approach maintains that systems of activity

include the broader social-structural motives/objects (e.g. the broader relations and forces of

production), self-conscious goals and action (e.g. work tasks), as well as tacit operations (e.g.

the local social and material conditions within which task are accomplished). Importantly, this

transcends the boundaries of many approaches to the learning process which fixate on formal,

informal, experiential, self-directed, reflective and tacit. Such a position loosely parallels aspects

of a similar point offered by Billett (2002) that the distinction between formal and informal

learning may in fact be unhelpful to researchers, if not altogether spurious.

Approaches to workplace learning that forefront participation are not limited to CHAT.

The second major tradition within this theme is, of course, the pervasive theories of situated

learning, legitimate peripheral participation and communities of practice. Situated learning

approaches are typically associated with the work of Lave and Wenger (1991). In their seminal

text, they draw on ethnographic materials inclusive of several workplace examples to provide a

program of inquiry into learning as a dimension of social practice generally.

Social practice is the primary, generative phenomenon, and learning is one of its

characteristics.... [It] is an integral part of a generative social practice in the lived-in

world... Legitimate peripherality is a complex notion, implicated in social structures

involving relations of power... [It] can be a position at the articulation of related

communities. In this sense, it can itself be a source of power or powerlessness, in

affording or preventing articulation and interchange among communities of practice.

(1991:34-36)

A host of researchers have drawn on situated learning and community of practice

concepts, but among the most effective, recent examples are those emerging from a community

of British researchers (see Fuller and Unwin 2003; Evans, Hodkinson and Unwin 2003; Fuller,

Hodkinson, Hodkinson and Unwin 2005; Felstead, Fuller, Unwin, Ashton, Butler and Lee 2005;

Evans, Hodkinson, Rainbird and Unwin 2006; Felstead, Fuller, Jewson, Kakavelakis and Unwin

2007; Fuller, Unwin, Felstead, Jewson and Kakavelakis 2007; Kakavelakis, Felstead, Fuller,

Jewson and Unwin 2008) who have offered both conceptual expansion and effective application.

While situated learning is not the only conceptual preoccupation of these researchers, they have

effectively explored gaps in the tradition. Specifically, they pay close attention to the specific

effects of economic context, mediations and relations specific to employment which are shown

to be under-articulated in Lave and Wenger‟s original work. Notably, they build a deeper

understanding of barriers and the definitions of communities from employee perspectives. In

fact, this cluster of research offers a key example of the types of bridges that can be built across

those researchers beginning from an interest in participatory structures on the one hand, and




those interested in matters of conflict and control, and those interested in identity and meaning

on the other.

As a whole researchers associated with this theme seek integrated analysis. Whether it is

artefacts or relational mediations by elements of a community of practice, we see exemplars of

how individuals, groups as well as the many things that enable and shape their participation and

learning are inseparable from one another (see Niewolny and Wilson 2009). Though at the same

time, in some criticisms of the approach we see claims that the individual herself, her identity

and attempts to generate meaning are at times sacrificed. Whether this claim can be sustained or

not, the fact remains that there are other researchers who take up these very issues as their core

point of departure.

Meaning, Identity and Organization Life

The themes of meaning, identity and organizational life have developed into a central set of

concerns in the field of workplace learning research over the past two decades. Of the

contemporary scholars who have developed robust lines of research inquiry in this area the work

of Sylvia Gherardi stands out. In one sense, her work has taken a series of learning topics as

grounded examples with which to flesh out dynamics associated with broader concerns over the

nature of organizational life. Perhaps what is most impressive is the diversity of topics through

which we see active concern for matters of subjective and objective reality, agency and structure,

and organizational change processes.

Among her goals is the broadening of the dimensions of organizational knowledge, its

production / reproduction, and its relationship to identity and meaning. Gherardi and colleagues

seek to challenge the uni-dimensional and hierarchically ordered dimensions of organizational

knowledge in these terms. In this sense, there is an implicit orientation to analysis of power

relations in learning and work. For example, together with Nicolinia and Strati, Gherardi

demonstrates a keen interest in balancing economic with subjective human needs in their

research on “passion... expressive relations and attachment” (2007, p.315). Analysis in Bruni,

Gherardi and Poggio (2004) further strengthens the case for multi-dimensionality of

organizational knowledge in relation to gendered/hetero-normative construction of

entrepreneurial activity. Here the authors draw on Feminist theory of identity among other

traditions to study gendered identities at the level of interactions and discursive practices.

Gherardi‟s research highlights the „how‟ of the workplace learning process drawing on the

subject‟s use of language to produce fine-grained accounts on the presentation of self and

„footing‟ in interviews, of a gendered „dual presence‟, matters of legitimacy, and more generally

the importance that detailed empirical work provides of the divisional structures (male/female;

homo-/hetero-sexual) and the spaces of organizational life “breached... negated”, “blurred,

crossed and denied” (2004, pp.423, 418-419). Gherardi‟s recent publication (Gherardi 2007)

offers an accumulation of earlier insights. Her preliminary discussion of the texture of workplace

organizations, learning and „knowing-in-practice‟ (2004; Gherardi and Nicolini 2000) is

expanded nicely. The empirical focus is on workplace safety as a learning process. In it safety is

understood as a property emerging from the ordering of identities, technologies and knowledge

in an organizational network; a specific form of knowing and organizational expertise. Again

identity has a key role.




An important question that emerges in Gherardi‟s work concerns the degree to which it

goes beyond an account of adaptation to organizational norms vis-à-vis work and learning

processes. We find rich analyses of transgression (e.g. in her analysis of gender and sexuality at

work) though in her latest work on safety, a concern for breakdowns, repairs, mending, darning,

quilting practices appears to inherently orient toward a return to organizational normalcy of one

type or another. In this sense, what becomes less clear is how these processes relate to forms of

both organizational and broader social and economic change dynamics (cf. Gherardi 2006 and

Gherardi and Nicolini 2000; Gherardi 2004; Gherardi, Nicolinia and Strati 2007).

In many ways, Gherardi‟s research speaks to the current status of organizational learning

approaches generally. Organisational learning is, from this perspective, a process of 'knowing-in-

practice' incorporating formalized, informal and tacit dimensions. Derived from this,

organizational knowledge is seen as having the following characteristics: it is situational,

relational, continually translated into practice, dynamic and provisional (Gherardi 2004, p.62).

Notably, these characteristics of organizational knowledge include attention to the role of

memory. In these terms, there are a number of potential points of contact between Gherardi‟s

work and that of Eraut or several of the micro-interactionists discussed earlier.

Gherardi‟s work is obviously not alone in its concerns for these areas. Building on earlier

work (e.g. Usher and Solomon 1999) and incorporating scholars associated with the discursive

and cultural turn in the analysis of workplaces in the 1990s (e.g. Anthony 1994; Du Gay 1996;

Gee, Hull and Lankshear 1996), Solomon (2001) offers another key example of additional

workplace learning research in this area. She has shown that matters of meaning and the shaping

of identities by organizational environments and managerial technique represent a crucial

dimension of workplace learning:

[C]ulture today has a privileged position due to its endeavour to structure the way people

think, feel, and act in organizations. Although it may be tempting to accept and

understand culture as a cliché or a fad, by doing so we would be overlooking its power as

one of the key technologies for managing work and managing people. (p.41)

This link between identity, culture and control in workplace learning is further developed in the

collection edited by the Billet, Fenwick and Sommerville (2006; see also discussions in Fenwick

2001, 2008). Among the most important advances here is not simply the recognition of the role

of identity in process of control, but, going a step further, its role in creative, subversive and

resistant responses in the workplace including the learning associated with self-invention. Thus,

while work such as Gherardi and associates offers a leading, contemporary example of the

development of meaning, identity and organization, we see in this theme area a concern for

matters of power, conflict and control: a theme that is addressed in a somewhat different way in

our next section.

Authority, Conflict and Control

To this point, we have seen that while questions of conflict and control have been entertained

within several other theme areas, they are not typically the core focus and nor are they typically




understood as inherent elements of workplace learning (or society) itself. In a series of articles

beginning in the late 1990s driven by the need to understand the nature of the informal learning

in relation to other forms of learning and an interest in generating aggregate estimates of levels

of activity, D.W. Livingstone established national networks of informal learning research

focused on work in all its forms. Livingstone‟s conceptual framework specifically emphasizes

the mutual roles of agency, structure, power and control.

His model explicitly forefronts issues of human agency/freedom, and we see that from his

perspective different forms of learning represent distinctive loci of agency. In this approach,

learning forms can express the standpoint of dominant institutional structures (e.g., through

curriculum, organizational policy, teacher authority) while others can express the standpoints of

the learner and their community (e.g., cultural forms, content, habitus, language codes). The

model thus forefronts issues of authority, conflict and control in understanding learning and work

which he has claimed is the „missing link‟ in much workplace learning research (Livingstone

2001). While authority, conflict and control are more easily recognized in organized forms of

vocational education and training for example, Livingstone has also shown their role in shaping

informal learning and informal education as well. These are defined as either „situational‟ or

„pre-established‟. He includes in each both taught and untaught learning carried out in self or

collectively-directed ways, or with the guidance of an expert other (e.g., mentor, teacher, coach).

The social and economic context through which power is exercised is addressed in Livingstone‟s

research as deeply shaped by the nature of capitalist society. Across Livingstone (2001, 2006;

see also Livingstone and Stowe 2007) we see significant differences between time spent on

formal, non-formal and informal learning in relation to work, and indeed only in terms time

spent on informal workplace learning do we see a form of social parity across differences. This

raises important questions about the nature of control and opportunity within these different

forms of learning. The approach is further extended in terms of relations of formal education,

labour markets and workplace learning in Livingstone (2004) which stands along with the work

of Coffield (e.g. 1999, 2000) as one of the leading, contemporary criticisms of human capital

theory.

These themes of authority, conflict and control are seen as politicized and inherent to

work in capitalist society, and in several ways Livingstone‟s work has some important linkages

with the research on workplace learning emerging from labour education, an important sub-field

of workplace learning research. In most advanced market economies labour education research

and practice has generated findings related to matters of how workers struggle to learn, represent

themselves adequately in economic life, and/or seek to build a more democratic environment in

workplaces through various forms of learning/education. From a labour perspective, adult

education and training have long been viewed as a means of improving the quality of paid

workplace experience and job security by developing job-related skills, formal, informal and

tacit. The work of Cooper (e.g. 2006) has been among the most conceptually developed in terms

of theorizing workplace learning and union development. Researchers in this area argue that the

quality of work and employability objective of adult education and training is made a reality by

turning the workplace learning rhetoric back on management (e.g. Spencer, 1998). In this regard,

Forrester (1999) argues that neglecting wider socio-economic conflict, control and the political

nature of workplace learning might unwittingly make the “brave new world of pedagogics in

relation to work and learning” (p.188) a managerial tool for work intensification and control in




the workplace. As Spencer (2001) warns, the rhetoric and enthusiasm for workplace learning,

both from adult educators and some corporate leaders, can form part of a social technology that

masks “new forms of oppression and control in the workplace that should be acknowledged in

workplace learning research” (p.33; see also McIlroy 2008); a point raised in a different way by

researchers of culture and identity such as Solomon discussed above.

Other researchers have explored related threads to these types of arguments. Tannock

(2001) has looked at such matters for youth employment from a labour perspective. A variety of

researchers have explored lifelong learning policy (e.g. Payne 2001; Forrester 2001; Coffield

2000). Still others have looked at ongoing work practices (e.g. Nissen 1994; Foley 1999;

Worthen 2008; Sawchuk 2001, 2003). Looking specifically at the United States, the work of

Harris (2000) and Altman (2008) provides extended looks at workplace learning through the 20th

century with impressive integration of factors. Above all, issues of conflict and control in

employer-employee relations remain central according to these analyses while it is demonstrated

that some of the most progressive gains in work and workplace learning practice have emerged

historically out of collective bargaining processes including quality of work-life/learning, paid

education leave and the systematic linkages between continuing education and the workplace.

As useful as this research is however, a significant gap remains regarding serious

attention to the competitive pressures imposed by what many argue to be the reality of the

emerging, globalized knowledge economy. Discussion related to these pressures in the first three

themes I covered has been either presumptive or vague in this regard, while the research in this

current section has tended to offer criticism of it primarily. Thus, in the material reviewed thus

far there is virtually no discussion of the role of corporate leadership and the organizational

strategies that in their own terms seek to effectively manage learning and knowledge production.

This is a matter that leads me to my final theme of competitiveness and knowledge management.

Competitiveness and Knowledge Management

As Cheng and Hampson (2008) have recently remarked: “[a]s the idea that work has become

increasingly knowledge based has taken hold, investing in intangible assets – especially human

capital – has been regarded as a core strategy for competitive advantage” (p.327). In many ways

key contributions to understanding these concerns is found in the work of Ikujiro Nonaka. As

distinct from traditional strategic management (e.g. Mintzberg, Quinn and Ghoshal 1998),

Nonaka and colleagues emphasize the pragmatic, practical (and even existential) dimensions of

creating a truly knowledge-based firm. While hardly alone, Nonaka‟s work provides a key

example in economic and managerial thought important for its comprehensive appreciation of

epistemology, ontology, a concern to resolve the false dichotomy of objective and subject

dimensions of reality, as well as its recognition of the importance of place. Nonaka and

colleagues‟ work forefront active/tacit dimensions of learning and knowledge in the firm; it

addresses interactive institutional places (or „ba‟) whether these are found in departments, firms,

sectors, or related institutions such as the university. Here it is claimed that knowledge-

generation emerges out of dialectical contradictions. In this sense his work provides a series of

potential points of contact with several other themes discussed above.

The work most central to Nonaka‟s reputation is likely The Knowledge-Creating

Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation (Nonaka and Takeuchi




1995). It represents a seminal publication from which much of his later work is drawn. In it he

offers comparisons between American and Japanese management highlighting their distinct

orientations to knowledge and learning. Findings here suggest that North American management

and the structure of American capitalism predominantly orients to formalized and explicit

knowledge expressed in tendencies toward benchmarking and incrementalism. It is argued that

this lies in contrast to Japanese management‟s concern for tacit, embodied, intuitive and

constructivist notions of learning and knowledge as well as the larger role for state (as well as

types of cultural) regulation in Japanese capitalism/society. Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) suggest

that the latter produces greater potential for creativity and responsiveness to changing conditions

emphasizing the value of the connection between production and top management vis-à-vis

middle-managers and front-line supervisors who serve as the human mediators (making personal

knowledge of employees available to the firm), the keystones of the transfer (both upward and

downward) of innovation.

Later work expanded further on knowledge management and conceptual development of

the concept of ba (e.g. Nonaka and Konno 1998), and contradictions (e.g. Nonaka and Toyama

2002); each useful for expanding thinking on the nature of the competitiveness of a firm beyond

conventional management strategy. Noting its placement within concerns for the nature of

management, strategy, as well as economic climates, Nonaka‟s work exemplifies a concern for

learning processes which allows us to imagine certain bridges to themes discussed earlier. It

seeks to represent the dynamic interaction of explicit and tacit workplace learning across

specific, multiple places. It highlights what is referred to as the dialectic of internalization and

externalization.

It is from such analysis that Nonaka‟s approach to Knowledge Management (KM)

emerges with its focus on the tacit-to-explicit learning transaction: the concern for transformation

of previously invisible human capacities into manageable resources of the firm. In relation to

KM specifically, Nonaka and colleagues have generally sought to theorize “the cost of

knowledge as inputs and the knowledge conversion rate” where firms are understood as “a

collection of knowledge assets” (Nonaka and Toyama 2002, p.996). His work goes on to

problematize the difficulty of converting tacit knowledge to resources for the firm noting that, as

yet, there are few effective way to for “evaluating and managing knowledge assets” (p.997).

Nonaka and Peltokorpi (2006) review of the KM field demonstrates that “[c]uriously, only a few

scholars have discussed the nature of the knowers, humans” (p.76), that if mentioned at all KM

research has tended to produce highly “deterministic or voluntaristic” (p.77) portrayals of the

learning process. The articulation of knowledge-creation at the level of the actor including

discussion in Nonaka, von Krogh and Voelpel (2007) and Nonaka and Toyama (2007) where the

focus is on knowledge creation process and practical wisdom (i.e. phroenesis) remains concerned

with establishing conceptual reference points in these terms.

While the research of Nonaka and colleagues, as well as others in the KM tradition

provides effective outlines of how firms face competitive pressures through attention to learning,

in fact there exist other traditions within this theme area that are well suited to speak to these

same matters as well. A prime candidate for this is to be found in the field of Organizational

Development (OD). A key example from this field is the work of Raelin (e.g. 2000, 2007).




Raelin provides an applied model of new organizational forms and levels of cooperation required

by a competitive, ever-shifting business environment. He draws on different theoretical

perspectives than Nonaka and colleagues, though his work is equally broad. In terms of analysis

of learning itself Raelin‟s work provides much of what Nonaka and colleagues may be missing.

Raelin specifically identifies the need to increase forms of individual and collective reflection,

and in this sense evokes the broad tradition of both reflective learning (e.g. Argyris and Schön

1978) and self-directed learning (e.g. Knowles 1975). Drawing on the work of Polanyi, in

Raelin (1998) we see additional discussion of an epistemology of practice organized around

recognizing tacit knowledge and then fostering the integration of tacit and explicit knowledge

that parallels the interests of Nonaka. Here we also see some tenuous (and perhaps some

contentious) points of contact with the work of Eraut on the one hand, and Beckett and Hager

(2000, 2002) on the other, both discussed earlier in the chapter.

Conclusions for Moving Forward

If one has come to be interested in the field of workplace learning enough to be reading this

handbook then it is likely in one form or another she will recognize the reality that was given

voice by Barnett when he wrote a decade ago “work has to become learning and learning has to

become work” (1998, p.42). This statement has both a common sense as well as a startlingly

challenging quality to it. It suggests that there are powerful forces at play when we consider

workplace learning. This is so whether one views such forces as naturally given by intensifying

global competition to which the primary response is the knowledge-intensive organizations (e.g.

Nonaka). This is so if one views such forces as matters of social struggle over the

democratization of work and learning (e.g. Livingstone). This is so whether we understand the

workplace as a site of identity construction and meaning-making (e.g. Gherardi). And, it is also

so where we orient to workplace learning as a complex of formal, informal, tacit, planned and

unplanned (e.g. Eraut), situational and highly mediated participatory learning process (e.g.

Engeström; Lave). In all cases, the stakes for developing a better understanding of workplace

learning are high for individuals, their careers, families and communities, for firms, national or

global economies, for specific social groups or specific economic classes. All the more so when

we remember that learning effectively defines the process of human change. Indeed, if we accept

the notion that learning equates to the process of change we are left with an interesting

transposition within Barnett‟s claim: work has to become [a change process] and [the change

process] has to become work. This puts front and centre more than a few value-laden questions

beginning with what kind of change and change in whose interests? In short, we likely have the

stage set for a future of even more intensely political questions in the field of workplace learning;

played out across myriad conceptual and methodological choices, topical preoccupations and

explicit or implicit political beliefs and commitments.

Given that the aim of this chapter was to offer an opportunity for both a constructive and

critical engagement with workplace learning research across the international scene, the initial

assay of the field introduced the multi-disciplinarity and diversity of conceptual and topical

preoccupations. The bulk of the chapter turned toward offering a profile of six key themes and a

selection of key authors which exemplify them, outlining accomplishments, gaps and above all

opportunities for dialogue.




What should be clear, however, is that a guiding thread of the discussion has been that

balkanization of research communities into self-referential camps remains an important

challenge. It is a challenge that must be balanced against the creative potential that emerges out

of sustained discussion that focused communities of scholars often produce. The simple message

of this review is that no single thematic area of research can lay claim to any sort of definitive

account of the multi-dimensional phenomena of workplace learning research as a whole. In this

sense, some form of cross-fertilization across the types of robust lines of research inquiry that

were explored will continue to prove useful.

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