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The goal of this exploratory empirical article is to analyse managers' beliefs about learning and their reports of enabling workplace learning for both individuals and teams. It aims to discuss the managers' rationales for prioritising development, detail the learning methods used and evaluate the types of outcomes which were targeted.

A qualitative, case‐study research design was adopted using two embedded units of analysis (local government administrations) and data were derived from photo‐elicitation interviews.

The diverse learning interventions that were reported are detailed and analysed in terms of learning for individuals and for groups and in terms of replicative and expansive learning outcomes.

The research was limited to manager respondents and to their reported developmental intentions, therefore implications for extending the research are proposed.

The need for enhancing managers' awareness of their beliefs about learning and their capabilities for engendering non‐formal learning through work practices is discussed.

The article demonstrates that a broader range of methodologies were reportedly used by managers in enabling staff learning than has previously been shown. Moreover, that learning interventions were widely reported in a context of cuts and change questions the prevailing orthodoxy that development is sacrificed in times of cutbacks.

Reviews the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoints practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

A manager's lot is a tough one at the best of times. There is constant pressure to meet business and client needs, often against a backdrop of constantly dwindling resources. Economic uncertainty has ensured that this balancing act has become even more precarious in recent years. Delivering more for much less is very much the order of the day. Certain areas are notoriously vulnerable when the budget axe is wielded. Training and development is a perfect example. However, this is clearly something of a false economy as few companies will be best positioned to move forward if talent is not properly nurtured. Such short-term thinking continues to prevail though.

Provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world's leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to digest format.

This is an empirical article which aims to examine the extent and nature of management role modelling and the learning achieved from role modelling. The article argues that the spread of taught management development and formal mentoring programmes has resulted in the neglect of practice‐knowledge and facets of managerial character formation, the learning of which are largely attributable to informal role modelling.

Empirical research was conducted with middle manager respondents who compiled portfolios of images representing the process of their “becoming” managers. Respondents then participated in in‐depth interviews to explore their portfolios.

Respondents typically learned from observing several positive role models and at least one negative role model. Positive role models were selected on the basis of charisma but also competence and contextual compatibility. The key lessons respondents learned from role models involved values, attitudes and ethical stances.

The research study was limited to a particular group of middle managers, MBA student‐managers and recent graduates and ways of extending the research are suggested. Implications for HRD research include the significance of social learning in managers' lives and of social learning theory in explicating the processes of manager development.

Managers require training in recognising the contribution of role models to their practice, in selecting role models and in deriving learning from role models.

Management role modelling has been little researched to date. Through in‐depth qualitative research and analysis, the article addresses this gap.

Looks at the 2000 Employment Research Unit Annual Conference held at the University of Cardiff in Wales on 6/7 September 2000. Spotlights the 76 or so presentations within and shows that these are in many, differing, areas across management research from: retail finance; precarious jobs and decisions; methodological lessons from feminism; call centre experience and disability discrimination. These and all points east and west are covered and laid out in a simple, abstract style, including, where applicable, references, endnotes and bibliography in an easy‐to‐follow manner. Summarizes each paper and also gives conclusions where needed, in a comfortable modern format.

In high-end interactive service work settings, asymmetries between workers and customers are typically reflected in the service interaction. Workers must carefully control their emotional and aesthetic displays towards customers by relying on protocol provided by management. Customers, in turn, need not reciprocate such acts. By contrast, this paper theorizes service interactions that, paradoxically, aim to narrow the social distance between those on either side of the counter. Drawing on ethnographic data from a higher-end Los Angeles restaurant, I introduce the concept of proximal service as performed relationships in which server and served engage in peer-like interactions in a commercial setting. I show how management structures this drama through hiring, training, and shopfloor policies, all of which encourage select workers to approach customers using informal, flexible, and peer-like performances. I close by discussing how a branded experience of service amongst equals relates to symbolic exclusion and social inequality, and suggest that proximal service may be on the rise within upscale, urban service establishments seeking to offer a more “authentic” consumption experience.

The purpose of this paper is to develop understanding of the theory of identity-work and to then deploy this understanding in examining managers’ identity-work. These understandings provide a basis for appreciating managers’ receptivity to learning and, in turn, for considering the likely efficacy of management development.

A qualitative, photo-elicitation interview research study is detailed in which managers’ accounts of being a manager were generated.

The accounts of a sample of managers are analysed through the lens of identity-work using a range of narrative analysis techniques. The findings of the study reveal the use of six distinct types of identity-work that have potential for explicating managers’ receptivity for learning.

The strengths of the qualitative research approach are expounded but certain limitations are acknowledged and therefore opportunities for extending the research trajectory are proposed. Specific implications for training and development practice are developed.

The study contributes to the literature of workplace learning and HRD by showing the potential of understanding identity for appreciating managers’ receptivity to learning and, thereby, the efficacy of management development activity.

This article aims to show how in times of austerity when formal HRD activity is curtailed and yet the need for learning is greatest, non‐formal learning methods such as workplace involvement and participation initiated by line managers can compensate by enabling the required learning and change.

A qualitative cross‐sectional design using a photo‐elicitation interview method was used with middle‐manager respondents within two case‐study organisations. These organisations, UK local authorities, were selected on the basis of the severity of the austerity measures being imposed and the significance of the learning needed/changes required. Middle managers were the focus, being a managerial cadre with dual responsibilities for both implementing and initiating change.

Managers' narratives of their managerial practices are analysed and show strong intentions to facilitate the learning of individuals through, for instance, enabling learning from experience and also to promote social learning within communities of practice. Narratives of community learning suggest that the managers were also supporting the creation of new forms of practice within their teams.

The research involved volunteer respondents who were MBA educated and who may, therefore, have been atypical. Nonetheless, implications for HRD policy and practice are proposed, including the need for more recognition of the role of line managers in enabling both individual and organisational learning and the need for developing managers as workplace educators.

This paper is an in‐depth qualitative study of workplace activities including participation and involvement practices using the lens of situated learning theory to highlight the importance of line managers as facilitators of non‐formal learning in times of austerity. Empirical conclusions are drawn upon in refining situated learning theory.

This study addresses the debate regarding employee discretion and neo-normative forms of control within interactive service work. Discretion is central to core and long-standing debates within the sociology of work and organizations such as skill, control and job quality. Yet, despite this, the concept of discretion remains underdeveloped. We contend that changes in the nature of work, specifically in the context of interactive service work, require us to revisit classical theorizations of discretion. The paper elaborates the concept of value discretion; defined as the scope for employees to interpret the meaning of the espoused values of their organization. We illustrate how value discretion provides a foundational basis for further forms of task discretion within a customized service call-centre. The study explores the link between neo-normative forms of control and the labour process by elaborating the concept of value discretion to provide new insights into the relationship between managerial control and employee agency within contemporary service labour processes.

This article aims to review the changing demographics of employment and it proceeds to critically examine the existing literature on later-career workers’ experiences of training and development. Population ageing in developed economies has significant implications for workplace learning, given suggestions that most occupational learning for later-career workers occurs on-the-job within the workplace. The literature suggests that later-career workers receive very little formal occupational training. However, significant gaps are revealed in the existing research knowledge of the extent and nature of older workers learning particularly with regard to incidental learning in the workplace.

A qualitative empirical investigation has been conducted among later-career managerial workers and the visual elicitation methodology adopted is detailed.

The results of the investigation show how the later-career managers in question were learning extensively, albeit incidentally, from workplace challenges specifically those associated with their responsibilities and from interacting with their managers, teams and external stakeholders.

The article draws conclusions for policymakers and those tasked with ensuring the continued learning and development of an ageing workforce.

As a site of contestation among job seekers, workers, and managers, the bureaucratic workplace both reproduces and erodes occupational race segregation and racial status hierarchies. Much sociological research has examined the reproduction of racial inequality at work; however, little research has examined how desegregationist forces, including civil rights movement values, enter and permeate bureaucratic workplaces into the broader polity. Our purpose in this chapter is to introduce and typologize what we refer to as “occupational activism,” defined as socially transformative individual and collective action that is conducted and realized through an occupational role or occupational community. We empirically induce and present a typology from our study of the half-century-long, post-mobilization occupational careers of over 60 veterans of the nonviolent Nashville civil rights movement of the early 1960s. The fourfold typology of occupational activism is framed in the “new” sociology of work, which emphasizes the role of worker agency and activism in determining worker life chances, and in the “varieties of activism” perspective, which treats the typology as a coherent regime of activist roles in the dialogical diffusion of civil rights movement values into, within, and out of workplaces. We conclude with a research agenda on how bureaucratic workplaces nurture and stymie occupational activism as a racially desegregationist force at work and in the broader polity.