The Work of Work-Related Learning: An Institutional Ethnography

Date
2012-09
Authors
Zurawski, Cheryl Diane
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Publisher
Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research, University of Regina
Abstract

This is a study of how texts shape and determine what employees think and do as they work to meet employer expectations about the way in which and the extent to which they are to participate in continuous or lifelong work-related learning as a requirement of their jobs. The study’s problematic arose out of the everyday experiences of employees as they do the “work of work-related learning” associated with the texts that are integral to the administration of employee development planning as a work process embedded in a widely used type of performance management system known as the balanced scorecard. Institutional ethnography is the method of inquiry used to explicate how employees’ knowledge of the work they do as participants in the work process is socially organized through their participation in text-mediated relations of ruling in which and through which they come to know how their employer expects them to understand and conduct themselves as work-related learners. Revealed by the analysis of interview transcripts and company texts are the ways in which the work process organizes and mobilizes employees to align their consciousnesses and actions with company expectations. Employees who align their consciousnesses and actions with company expectations implicate themselves in a project by which their employer advances its interest to cope with and capitalize on the conditions of contemporary commerce by managing their employees’ work-related learning as an inescapable form of labour at the heart of on-the-job activity (Zuboff, 1988). The study traces how the alignment of employees’consciousnesses and actions happens; what the alignment accomplishes; and what are the implications of the alignment for employees, their employer, and the theory and practice of human resource development (HRD).

Description
A Thesis Submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Education University of Regina, x, 239 l.
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