Editorial

Citation

Kekäle, S.C.T. (2014), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 26 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-06-2014-0046

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 26, Issue 5

Dear readers,

Welcome to the most artistic issue yet of the Journal of Workplace Learning. In between the guest-edited double issue of Employee Engagement and the likewise guest-edited double issue from the Researching Work and Learning Conference (Stirling, Scotland, June 2013), we have a normal single issue that this time has a loose theme of artful workplace learning opportunities.

In the first article “Artworks at work: the impacts of workplace art”, Christina Smiraglia explores an interesting set of questions: What impact do organization affiliates (employees and board members) believe the art in their workplace has on their experience at work? What features of the art do affiliates believe are salient in their experience of workplace art? Her most important findings are that the art promotes social interactions, generally enhances the workplace environment, elicits emotional responses, facilitates personal connection-making and – finally, but maybe foremost for our readers – also shows a potential to foster learning. “Wondering” about the art on the walls changed the ideas of the board members and the staff in relation to art, students, colleagues or the organization, their “discussion of general cognitive impacts showing a potentially broad effect of the work on employees and board members on an intellectual level”. We have participated in earlier studies where the interior design of the work environment may foster creativity and learning; this study takes the point a bit further in discussing the effects of pieces of art.

The second article in this collection is “Learning film production” by Leona Bunting, Margaretha Herrman and Marita Johanson. While we know people actually learning film production and have heard of their experiences producing their first feature-length movies, this piece takes a work-based learning approach into learning the film production work, especially the development of the network that may be the most important asset of a film producer, yet nearly impossible to learn at a “school”. After all, feature-length films require big crews of people with different talents. In addition, experience was seen to be of central importance. The “knowledge” more easily available at “schools” included themes such as “budgeting, finance, law and leadership […] […] more artistic knowing was also mentioned”.

Innovation also borders on “artistic activity” in many cases. At the same time, in many cases, innovation is seen to be one of the most rigidly managed processes where there is “10 per cent of inspiration and after that 90 per cent of perspiration” (more on this “exploration” versus “exploitation” nature on innovation activity, see Van Ven et al., 2008). The third article of the collection talks about learning employee-driven innovation (by the Finnish research team of Mervi Hasu, Laura Honkaniemi, Eveliina Saari, Tuuli Mattelmäki and Leena Koponen). This article, that nicely also continues the “Employee Engagement” theme of the latest double issue, applies a six-month development process (called LEDI for “Learning in Engineering-Driven Innovation”) to empower front-line hospital support service workers, for them to learn to innovate and apply new skills to the services they provide. In addition, the study “supports Ellström’s (2010, p. 36) observation that individuals must have the subjective capacity to make use of the autonomy afforded by the task at hand”. On the other hand, we cannot just run workshops for real learning; the participants must also be allowed time for reflection and sense-making in their work processes. Culture change is a tedious, time-consuming activity.

Finally, for this issue, there is an article “Do trainer style and learner orientation predict training outcomes?” by T. Brad Harris, Wonjoon Chung, Holly M. Hutchins and Dan S. Chiaburu. The research question is clear from the title; what the authors found was that there is “a significant interaction between trainer directiveness and trainee learning goal orientation with a stronger relationship for high learning goal orientations trainees”. Trainer actions are important, but their impact is strengthened if the learners are motivated to learn.

We feel this issue again to be an interesting collection of research reports that show the very broad scope of workplace learning research today. The next issue, the double issue from the RWL conference, will paint an even clearer picture. Enjoy reading!

Sara Cervai and Tauno Kekäle

References

Ellström, P.-E. (2010), “Practice-based innovation: a learning perspective”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 22 No. 1, pp. 27-40.

Van de Ven, A., Polley, D., Garud, R. and Venkatraman, S. (2008), The Innovation Journey, Oxford University Press, New York, NY.