WORK BASED LEARNING

Work based learning

Work based learning

Background

There is a growing acceptance that learning in the workplace can have validity as academic learning and that the workplace is a rich source of knowledge. “Work-based learning”, as explained by Costley (2001, 225), is part of a cluster of concepts, including “lifelong learning”, “employability” and “flexibility”. Unwin and Fuller (2003, p. 32 cited in Evans and Kersh, 2006, p. 4), elaborate these distinctions by concentrating on workplace as opposed to work-based learning:

The term “workplace learning” is used to embrace all types of learning which are generated or stimulated by the needs of the workplace including formal on-the-job training, informal learning and work-related off-the-job education and training. Boud and Symes (2000, p. 14, cited in Evans and Kersh, 2006, p. 4) take this further by making a distinction between these two terms:

Work-based learning needs to be distinguished from workplace learning, that form of learning that occurs on a day-to-day basis at work as employees acquire new skills to develop new approaches to solving problems. No formal education recognition normally accrues to such learning, whether or not it is organised systematically.

By contrast our understanding of organisational learning is based on three tenets (March, 1999, 78):

Behaviour in organisation is based on routines (Cyert and March, 1963, 47).

Organisational actions are history dependent (Lindblom, 1959, 79).

Organisations are targeting oriented (Simon, 1984, 99).

In any organisation, there is a combination of individual learning and organisational learning. Learning processes in an organisation involve a two-way diffusion of knowledge between the organisation and the individuals. Our interest focuses on management interventions that stimulate this diffusion. However, the academic processes that foster individual learning in the workplace often seem alien to managers in the workplace.

There is a sense of conflict between business management processes and the process of individual learning. Some would go as far to suggest that organisational processes suppress individual learning and creativity (Argyris and Schon, 1978, Hatch, 1997, 58). Yet, inter-organisational competitively should encourage intra-organisational learning. Are managers so obsessed with short-term performance that they ignore organisational learning, or is the issue more that individual learning processes undermine organisational learning objectives? By studying the interventions, managers use to foster organisational learning, this paper hopes to shed light on the way universities can position work-based learning as more relevant to organisational learning.

It uses observations by a manager of the real-life processes within an organisation to provide an insiders perspective on the study question.

Aims and objectives of the paper

While academic, work-based learning programmes are talking about individual learning, the senior management of large organisations are talking about organisational capability. This difference in strategic object can limit the relevance of work-based learning in the eyes of business leaders and hence undermine attempts to sell-in work-based learning.

This paper studies the training and other learning related interventions that senior managers typically use to influence organisational capability and relates it to the programmes that a university might ...