Learning in the Workplace (Routledge Revivals)

Victoria Marsick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781317505969
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Education
• Subtopic: Professional Development

The nature of the workplace and the workforce has changed rapidly in post-industrial society. Most workers are now facing the need for high levels of preparatory education, retraining for new jobs and the ability to continue learning at work in order to keep up with new developments.

The book, first published in 1987, argues that training in the workplace often fails because it is based on conditions that no longer prevail in modern organisations. The mechanistic approach of the behaviourist paradigm, it is argued, views the organisation as a machine and training as the preparation of workers for machine-like work according to their levels in the hierarchy, much as on an assembly line. The humanists' advocation of collaborative learning has changed but not fundamentally altered this conception.

This book will be of interest to students of education and business management.

Part One
An Emerging Paradigm

An Emerging Paradigm

Part One develops the conceptual framework forthis book. In Chapter One, Victoria Marsick selectively reviews literature on changing organizations and on learning theory to describe characteristics of an emerging paradigm for understanding and facilitating learning in the workplace in the post-industrial era. Instead of looking at organizations (and people learning within them) as well-functioning machines, this emerging paradigm is characterized by the metaphor of a hologram, the laser-created photograph in which the whole is completely present in any part. People and the organizations they create do not learn in an assembly-line manner, emphasizing compartmentalization of tasks, jobs, and relationships. Learning calls for a flexible capacity for continual reflection on one’s actions, and at times for critical reflection, that is for digging beneath the surface to examine taken-for-granted assumptions, norms and values. Much of this learning takes place informally—through daily professional interactions and self-directed learning. A new paradigm for learning in the workplace goes beyond current behavioristic emphasis on cause-effect actions that can be quantified, criterion-referenced and measurable, and on separation of personal and work-related development.

In Chapter Two, Gloria Pierce describes a Management Workshop designed to facilitate learning under a new paradigm: democratization of the workplace, growth and empowerment of the individual, and a holistic, participatory approach to problem-solving. She presents findings from her research on twenty-eight workshop participants, all of whom rated themselves as high learners and whose lives and management practices changed dramatically in part because of this workshop. Three major themes emerged from interviews with these people: self-discovery, a move away from external control, and holistic approaches to work. The author looks at the way in which the design of the workshop facilitated or impeded learning, and draws parallels to the workplace that affect transfer of learning. She concludes by examining the linkages between individual and organizational change, and between self-development in managers and their encouragement of growth in colleagues and subordinates.

What emerges in Part One in both theory and practice is a picture of rapid, complex change in organizations, people and their work. Trainers, many of whom come to the field with little professional preparation, can play a significant role in facilitating change rather than following it. But doing so requires a shift in vision about training as more than programs and trainers as more than a service arm of the organization separated from a culture and practice of ongoing learning, whether through organized group efforts or one-on-one as employees grope with daily challenges. Learning must be perceived as proactive rather than reactive, and as holographic rather than mechanical. Learning design must address complex needs in which performance can be closely linked with political abilities, accurate perception and testing of norms, dialogue about creation of ends and means, and understanding of oneself vis-a-vis specific tasks and one’s general ability to learn how to learn. Finally, trainers must be empowered to see themselves as partners with management in envisioning and creating change rather than being backed all too often into a corner by agreeing to achieve through a series of programs what can only be achieved through a daily commitment to learning.

Chapter One
New Paradigms for Learning in the Workplace

Victoria J. Marsick

Changes in Organizations

A group of popular writers have examined trends and pockets of innovation in successful businesses: entrepreneurship and intrapreneurship, decentralization, networking, participatory management, flattening of middle management, and a culture of empowerment.¹ While each holds a somewhat differenta focus, these authors collectively call for new forms of organization if business is to survive and flourish in this post-industrial technological era. At the heart of their arguments is an emphasis on intangible factors of success that often take second place in bottom-line thinking: a concern for underlying human values, new forms of social interaction, commitment, a service orientation, risk-taking, independent thinking, and creativity.

Perelman analyzes the crisis of human capital brought about by the mismatch between rapid economic change and insufficient attention to human development. While some 20% of the workforce are functionally illiterate and require remedial education, approximately four million skilled, white-collar and professional workers face job losses due to an inadequate fit with the technological requirements of a shifting economy. Workers must be prepared to adapt flexibly to new careers and jobs. All this results in high levels of worker frustration, a polarized work force, and a threatened professional class.²

Perelman suggests a paradigm shift, a change in the way organizations view work and workers, to meet these needs. Lincoln places this within the context of a larger paradigm revolution in almost all fields of human endeavor. Lincoln draws on the analysis of Schwartz and Ogilvy of many formal disciplines to highlight the following characteristics of such a shift:

1. Complexity rather than simplicity;
2. Heterarchy rather than hierarchy;
3. Holographic rather than mechanistic;
4. Indeterminate rather than determinate;
5. Mutual rather than direct, linear causality;
6. Morphogenesis—that is mutual interaction toward creation of new but unplanned forms—rather than planned assembly of complex systems from simpler units; and
7. Replacement of notions of pure “objectivity”—not by subjectivity—but by an awareness of multiple perspectives, that is a variety of ways of looking at reality.

Most of these characteristics need no explanation. Emphasis is on the holographic metaphor which is drawn from the laser-created photograph in which the whole is completely present in any part. Social units under the new paradigm are not simply sub-units in a machine, but may at times take on roles formerly reserved to others. Morphogenesis also stands in contrast to the mechanical, planned assembly-line model of organization. Lincoln illustrates this notion with the evolution of planetary systems through mutual, symbiotic interaction toward ends that emerge in the process.³

Clark reviews organizational theorists in terms of these characteristics, pointing out that organizations have aspired to the Weberian ideals of rationality and bureaucracy. Even those who critique Weber, for the most part, explain their variations as necessary departures from the ideal due to the complex nature of human interaction or movement toward the opposite pole of the same continuum. Clark notes that a new paradigm, by contrast, denies several basic assumptions underlying the old paradigm: that organizations are directed primarily by their goals, that work takes place through linear cause-effect linkages, and that action is governed primarily by objective notions of reliability and predictability.⁴

Peters and Waterman also challenge the Weberian notion of organizational excellence, although their model in practice is not always consistent with its theory. They point out that the traditional “rational” model of management leads to conservatism, unwillingness to take risks, and a culture in which creativity, innovation and the acknowledgment of values are stifled. Excellent companies emphasize experimentation through action, autonomy, entrepreneurship, and simultaneous loose-tight properties of organizations.⁵

Morgan and Ramirez also argue that complex organizations must move away from mechanistic, hierarchical models in order to maximize their ability to act adaptively as does the human brain. Drawing also on the metaphor of a hologram, they argue for the creation of “systems that are able to learn from their own experience, and to modify their structure and design to reflect what they have learned.”⁶ They identify several conditions necessary for this to occur. First, rather than eliminating redundancy, systems should build as much variety into every aspect of the organization as possible. Second, the system must be able to monitor and question the context under which it operates and the rules of this game. And finally, the designers of a system should specify as little as possible the means by which the system will operate in order to maintain flexibility and allow decentralized development of means and ends. Participants in such a system must thus constantly reflect on and question what they and others are doing to appropriately identify and solve problems, and to keep the organization flexible.⁷

Morgan and Ramirez envision an adaptive system that allows and encourages flexible response to rapid change in this technological era. Without a planned intervention or crisis, however, most organizations continue in the Weberian military-like model. It is perhaps no coincidence that many models of training have emerged from the defense industry and are based on behavioristic notions of controlling the actions of individuals to push, prod, reward and mold them into units that obey their next highest in command, often for life-or-death reasons. To better understand where these Weberian models of organization fit with learning in the workplace, the next section looks at adult learning theory in these terms.

Learning Theory and the Workplace

Carr and Kemmis analyze the paradigm shifts taking place in the field of teaching and learning. They identify a dominant technical paradigm that is comfortably related to the Weberian ideal. Based on logical positivism, practitioners under this paradigm are urged to master and apply an objective body of knowledge, developed over time through controlled experiments and theory building. Education under this paradigm emphasizes transmission of predefined knowledge and skills. The role of the educator is to select the best technology to meet these ends.

The interpretative paradigm is derived from phenomenology. Learning is seen as a process of interaction in which educators help learners understand the way in which events take on meaning in their lives. Education is not simply the selection of the best technology, but a practical art in which the educator makes judgments based on his/her experience about how best to facilitate learning in personalized situations.

The strategic paradigm, influenced by the critical social science of Jürgen Habermas, acknowledges the need for mutual interpretation of experience, but goes one step further. Educators under this paradigm emphasize critical reflection on the way in which social, cultural, historic and economic forces have shaped that meaning, and how learners can examine and act to change these forces. The focus is on conditions under which full and free dialogue can take place to verify and create consensual meaning and agreement on norms.⁸

An example might illustrate the difference in learning approaches among these three paradigms. Suppose that an organization was not able to promote many women to its managerial ranks. The problem under the technical paradigm would perhaps be defined as women’s need to acquire certain technical skills such as assertiveness, delegation, and goal-setting. A behavioral modeling training program might be put into place to develop these skills in women. Under the interpretative paradigm, women might be brought together to analyze the problem from different perspectives. Training might emphasize taking on different roles, perhaps through a mentoring and coaching relationship with successful managers who would join them periodically in workshops to try out and critique new approaches to their work.

The strategic paradigm would also emphasize mutual dialogue but would call for analysis of assumptions in employees and the organization that distort understanding. Men would be encouraged, as much as women, to look at the underlying reasons why successful managers in that company follow a dominant model, and would be helped to overcome their difficulties in working with women at the managerial level, as much as would the women. Organizational norms and policies would also be examined to determine whether or not factors in the organization need to be re-shaped to support a new perception of women as managers.

Table 1-1 summarizes the focus of education under each paradigm, identifies the type of learning problem for which each is valuable, and provides an additional example concerning performance-related discussions between supervisors and their staff. Training has been dominated to date by the technical paradigm for good reasons. There are many times when employees are ready to learn new skills, there are clearly defined procedures to be learned and skills to be developed, and the organization rewards and supports the new behaviors. But the trends discussed above suggest a reinterpretation of how and when this kind of learning should be emphasized. For example, women might learn how to become managers via a behavioral training emphasis on assertiveness, delegation, and goal-setting. However, if they do, it is probably because the training also stimulated learning about themselves as managers and organizational norms. Often, this latter learning is left to the individual as a by-product rather than made a focus of learning.

Knowles’s theory of andragogy is helpful in this reinterpretation even though his ideas are not universally accepted. Knowles distinguishes between the way children and adults learn, basing his viewpoint on a set of assumptions about adults: that adults move toward self-directedness, that their

Table 1.1 Three Educational Paradigms

Focus of Education under each Paradigm	Learning Problems	Example of Learning in a Performance Related Discussion
Technical Paradigm: Task-oriented “objective” knowledge and skills to be prescriptively mastered, modified or applied.	Cause-effect relationships in observable, clearly-defined problems.	Supervisor tells employee what he or she is doing wrong, if able to confront problem directly. The emphasis is on “mistake...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• CONTENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• PART ONE: AN EMERGING PARADIGM
• PART TWO: ORGANIZATIONS AS LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS
• PART THREE: INFORMAL LEARNING IN THE WORKPLACE
• PART FOUR: IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH AND PRACTICE
• About the Authors
• Index