Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. (2010), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 22 No. 5. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2010.08622eaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 22, Issue 5

In recent weeks in the office we’ve been talking about cultural differences and how these can bring about new relationships between co-workers. It seems that the workplace in some cultures has relied for quite a long time on trust in each other’s skills and knowledge – competence – while in some other cultures people do not really feel a sense of belonging and trust until after a long time when the affective ties between co-workers have formed. Hofstede’s culture dimensions did not include a cognitive/affective orientation dimension, but following a brief visit into another culture we wonder if today’s workplace cultures might benefit by looking at this management concept again. Trust, as well as issues such as climate and values, should be important factors when learning from each other. In this issue we have included an article by Karolina Parding and Lena Abrahamsson on how some working conditions affect a learning organization, but we also would be interested to see more studies connecting values, trust, cultures and climates – maybe even international, comparative studies – on workplace learning.

We have also played around with a couple of other research areas that we think would be interesting to see some more research in. Increasingly we hear that the Western welfare state, or even the capitalistic system, is undergoing a large number of changes that all may affect workers in the workplace. It would seem that the emphasis on structured ”training” is about to diminish, and different forms of informal and unstructured learning might have to take its place to an increasing degree. Thus, we would be interested to read about what you know (for us, empirical studies) of the effects of these changes, caused by especially the need of learning from rapidly-disappearing older generations, and informal forms of learning that surround us on all sides. (Please see this issue for a Call for Papers for a special issue in ”self-directed learning”, to be edited by Professor Roland Foucher. Also, we have included an article by Chung-Kai Li exploring how information literacy levels may alter preconditions for learning.)

The two other articles in this issue concern more traditional, if that word is appropriate here, training of workers. The article that opens the issue, by Erica Smith and colleagues, presents some ideas on how ageing workers can best be trained to learn the new skills required in the workplace, while the last article in this issue, by Herman Steensma and Karin Groeneveld, suggests a new view on the evaluation of training. While we are interested in the new challenges for workplace learning that surface in the 2000s, we will not forget mainstream workplace learning; new developments take place there every day.

We hope you enjoy this issue!

Sara Cervai, Tauno Kekäle