Professor Bente Elkjaer

Danish University of Education, Denmark

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Bente Elkjaer is a professor and head of the Doctoral School of Organisational Learning (DOCSOL) at The Danish University of Education. Her research field is organisational and workplace learning as well as management education and organisational development. She has over the years worked on developing a theoretical perspective on organisational learning inspired by American pragmatism. Bente Elkjaer is a member of the Academy of Management, affiliated with the Management Learning and Education (MED) division as well as a member of the John Dewey Society. Bente Elkjaer is also the chief-editor (together with professor Russ Vince) of the journal Management Learning.

"Stupid organisation - how will you ever learn?" A presentation of three variations of organisational learning

The question derives from a project exploring whether organisational development can lead to organisational learning. In the paper three variations of organisational learning are introduced. The first is focused upon organisational learning as individual skills and knowledge acquisition in organisations as systems; the second on organisational learning as participation in communities of practice, and the third is made up by a pragmatic theory of learning with a point of departure in inquiry or reflective thinking and the development of experiences combined with an understanding of the organisational dynamics as unfolding around commitments to activities.

Professor Phil Hodkinson

University of Leeds, UK

Phil Hodkinson is Professor of Lifelong Learning in the University of Leeds, UK.  He has researched widely on vocational education, transitions to work, and workplace learning.  He was co-author (with Colley and Malcolm) of a recent report challenging the commonly assumed distinctions between formal and informal learning.  He is currently researching learning within Further Education College settings in the UK.  Much of his research focuses on relating individual biography and learning to wider social and participatory learning perspectives.  Phil is a qualitative researcher, with an interest in the relationships between empirical data and the theoretical orientations and constructions of researchers.

Rethinking the relationship between on and off the job learning

The significance of learning off the job has received relatively little attention in recent workplace learning literature.  Yet many workers are routinely trained off the job, in a variety of ways and locations and at differing times in their working lives.  The place of off the job learning needs to be reassessed.  To do this requires a theoretical reorientation, to reconfigure the way we understand the relationship between on and off the job learning, to ask more productive questions about the roles that off the job learning can fulfil, and clarify what it would mean to integrate it more closely with working practices.

Assoc Professor Barbara Pocock

Adelaide University, Australia

Associate Professor Barbara Pocock is a Research Fellow in Labour Studies in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Adelaide.

She has been researching work, employment and industrial relations for over 20 years.  She has worked in many jobs - advising politicians, on farms, in unions, for governments and as a mother.

Barbara has studied work, gender, vocational education, trade unions, pay equity and employment. She was initially trained as an economist.  Her most recent book "The Work/Life Collision" was published by Federation Press in mid-2003.  Her next book, to be published in 2005, is about young people, their views about parental work, and the links between jobs, consumption and household relations.  Barbara's previous books include "Strife: sex and politics in labour unions" and "Demanding Skill: women and technical education in Australia".

The Challenge of the Work/Life Collision for Skill Development

Changes in working life and household are reshaping the capacity of Australians to undertake a wide range of activities including in relation to education and training. In this contribution, Associate Professor Barbara Pocock will reflect on the nature of these changes and implications, placing them in international context.

Professor Tom Juravich

University of Massachusetts, USA

Tom Juravich is  Professor of Labor Studies and Director of the Labor Relations and Research Center.  He is the author of Chaos on the Shop Floor: A Workers’ View of Quality, Productivity, and Management, Commonwealth of Toil: Chapters in the History of Massachusetts’ Workers and Their Unions, and Ravenswood: The Steelworkers’ Victory and the Revival of American Labor.  He writes regularly about work and the labor process, union organizing, and strategic corporate research and campaigns.  He is currently completing a book based on four workplace ethnographies.

Globalization, the Changing Nature of Work and Its Impact on Workplace and Labor Education

Post World War II, the largest and most profitable firms in the US provided large numbers of jobs that carried above average-benefits, compensation and opportunities for training and education.  However, this linkage has been broken as the nature of capital has changed and labor markets have become globalized.  Consequently, the nature of work at these firms is changing with intensification of the pace and hours of work, inflexible schedules, deskilling, and threats of outsourcing and offshoring.  These changes are creating an environment less conducive to workplace-based education and training.  It has, however, spawned a variety of new labor education initiatives as unions and their members have struggled to both understand and respond to these new realities.