Concepts and Transformation
Latest Publications


TOTAL DOCUMENTS

189
(FIVE YEARS 0)

H-INDEX

13
(FIVE YEARS 0)

Published By John Benjamins Publishing Company

1384-6639

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 249-278 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Arnkil

This article is based on the evaluation of the Finnish Workplace Development Programme, TYKE-FWPD, by a team led by the author. The programme ran as a national government programme from 1996 to 2003, and has been continued, with modifications, in 2004 through 2009. Until the early 1990s the main focus of working life development in Finland was technological. During the past decade a shift in the emphasis has occurred toward work organization and human resources development. As part of this process, TYKE-FWDP has played an important role. The programme aims at accelerating working life development be means of improvements in learning networks and methods as well as by encouraging cooperation between researchers and research institutes, workplace parties, social partners and governmental agencies and institutions at national and regional levels. The idea is that as change agencies, firms can influence their own future by engaging in a complex learning process, long-term multi-dimensional interaction and networking. Highly developed learning strategies will give companies a competitive edge, and thus directly or indirectly also secure or enhance positive employment development. The evaluation, carried out in 2002–2003, showed that the Programme has been successful on many counts: sustainable results have been achieved at the company and organisational level, learning networks have been enhanced between different institutions related to innovation and workplace development, and the programme enjoys a very high legitimacy among key stakeholders, including the social partners.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 297-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Werner Sengenberger
Keyword(s):  

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 231-248 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gerhard Bosch

In the view of most authors, the long-established standard employment relationship (SER) has little future in the information society as external structural change comes to replace internal structural change. This article shows that, contrary to these beliefs in most industrialised countries, employment relationships have tended to become more stable in recent years, particularly among skilled workers, for the reason that spatial proximity and close social communication is gaining increasing importance in knowledge-based work. The author identifies the following six different causes underlying improvements or deterioration in the SER: (1) Flexibilisation of product markets, (2) rising female employment rates, (3) combination of education/training and work, (4) rising educational levels among the working population, (5) labour market regulation and deregulation, and (6) the employment situation. Changes in the SER are not being driven solely by the computerisation of production but also by other, very different forces which are at least as significant as technological change. The article concludes with an alternative paradigm taking as its starting point a new balance of internal and external mobility. As an alternative to the "Anglo-Saxon" model of the deregulated labour market, the author proposes a revitalisation of internal and occupational labour markets.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 310-313
Author(s):  
Haridimos Tsoukas

2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 279-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tuomo Alasoini

The paper surveys the background, aims, and content of the Finnish Government’s new working-life development initiative for the period 2004 to 2009. The aim of the new Finnish Workplace Development Program (TYKES-FWDP) is sustainable productivity growth, where increases in productivity are combined with improvements in the quality of working life. In addition to funding development projects in both companies and public-sector organizations, the program will promote method development, learning networks, and continuing education for researchers on working life. As an innovation policy approach, TYKES-FWDP represents a "broad systemic innovation policy" that focuses equally on all sectors of the economy and on the interaction and combination of technological, organizational, and other kinds of social innovations.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 205-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shotter

As living, embodied beings, communication begins in, and continues with, our living, spontaneous, expressive-responsive (gestural), bodily activities that occur in the meetings between ourselves and the others and othenesses around us. It is by our 1st-person expressions that we influence the actions of others — our tellings are much more important than our reportings . Thus, as I see it, abstract and general theories are of little help to us in the unique living of our unique lives together, either as ordinary people, as professional practitioners, or as action researchers. On the other hand, however, the specific words of others, uttered as ‘reminders’ at a timely moments within an ongoing practice, drawing out attention to unnoticed features of the practice, can be a crucial influence in developing and refining it further. In this paper I distinguish between two kinds of speech/writing: ‘withness (dialogic)’ -talk and ‘aboutness (monologic)’ -talk . Crucial in this distinction is our spontaneous, expressive, living, bodily responsiveness. While monological aboutness-talk is unresponsive to the activities of the others around us, dialogical withness-talk is not. In being spontaneously responsive both to the expressions of others, as well as our own, as I show in the paper, it engenders in us both unique anticipations as to what-next might happen along with, so to speak, ‘action-guiding advisories’ as to what-next we might do — a feature that is of central relevance for action research.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-203 ◽  
Author(s):  
Øyvind Pålshaugen

This article argues that the question of what actionable knowledge is, can hardly be answered appropriately either by solely theoretical argumentation or by solely practical demonstration. It is in the very interplay between theory and practice that knowledge can prove to be actionable. Thus it becomes crucial to come to an adequate theoretical understanding of this interplay on the basis of practical experiences. This article, however, does not argue in favour of any particular theoretical model as the only adequate interpretation of this interplay. Rather, the main argument is that experiences from Scandinavian action research programs over the last decades indicates that it is necessary to deconstruct the conventional concepts of general knowledge to be able to construct actionable knowledge. The briefly article presents some of the main steps in this development, and thereby some new perspectives on the main features of actionable knowledge. On this basis, the final part of the article presents some arguments why a linguistic turn in action research and in management and organisation studies may pave the way for a hitherto greatly underexploited resource for creating actionable knowledge: the personal experience of the researchers.


2004 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 147-180 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bjørn Gustavsen

All concepts applied in social research have two sources of meaning: other words and practical experience. Making knowledge (more) actionable implies increasing the emphasis on the practical. This increase, however, is no simple process to be carried through as a turnaround operation. Rather, the shift demands a process consisting of several steps, ranging from establishing dialogic relationships with other people to the development of “regions of meaning” where theory and practice can interact in new ways. The article traces and discusses one such process of development, drawing on experience over two decades from action research in Scandinavian working life.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document