Editorial

Citation

Cervai, S. and Kekale, T. (2011), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 23 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/jwl.2011.08623caa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 23, Issue 3

This issue looks at implementing contingency theory to organizational learning. We strongly believe that the culture of an organization – whether a country, a team, a group, a school, a company – is affected mainly by attempts to reject or adjust to any new imports in to the organization. In our research, both of us have focused mainly on organizational cultures and their effects in different situations. By definition, a culture is (in its most basic sense) based on the deepest, most rooted and time-tested beliefs of an organization. Thus, these cultural beliefs are also the most difficult to change.

Our idea of the theme of the issue, as always, is adjusted according to the manuscripts we receive from the review process in time. Thus, we have articles highlighting defensive patterns in learning (often rooted in organizational culture), organizational learning culture itself, and the effects of feelings in learning situations. The first of these loosely-thematic articles, “Influence of organisational defensive patterns on learning ICT”, is by Hon Yau and Alison Lai Fong Cheng. After this theme opener, a manuscript by Teresa Rebelo and Adelino Gomes, “Conditioning factors of an organizational learning culture”, and finally a third article by Clara Mutti and Sônia Maria Gondim, “Affections in learning situations: a study of an entrepreneurship skills development course” round our approach to this theme up.

The review deadlines seldom allow for completely “clean” themes. This issue is not a deviation from this. We have completed the issue with an article by Nathalie Duval-Couetil and Larry Mikulecky that indeed connects to the culture theme by discussing foreigners’ learning of English. However, this article is not concerned as much with the culture’s effects in the learning situation, but the need for learning a cultural artifact (language) in an article called “Immigrants, English, and the workplace: evaluating employer demand for language education in manufacturing companies”.

There are many interesting articles to come in the next few issues and a couple of guest-edited issues, but this should not hinder you from offering your research for publication in JWL. We have some very simple rules on defining what will be reviewed and what will be rejected: we want to see articles where learning takes place in a workplace, i.e. not in a classroom; we absolutely want the study to have a workplace empirical research approach (both real-life workplaces and lab tests accepted) and we would like to see a connection between the article and workplace learning theory but also to earlier research published in JWL. Keep the inputs coming through our electronic submission system http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jwl – and be inspired by this issue!

Sara Cervai, Tauno Kekäle