Workplace Learning: A Critical Introduction

This innovative text is part of a growing body of work that takes a critical approach to workplace learning, recognizing that power relations, politics and conflicts of interest shape learning. Workplace learning is not value-free or politically neutral, and cannot be studied independently of the political economy of work. Workplace Learning offers an alternative to mainstream approaches, emphasizes the experiences of working people, and avoids prescriptive accounts and uncritical Human Resource Development views. The authors are concerned with the power relations, complexities and contradictions in the paid workplace. Each chapter uncovers the underlying assumptions and paradoxes that make up the field of workplace learning. The chapters contribute to a developing, critical perspective on learning at paid work in advanced capitalist economies, stimulating interest in further research in this emergent field of adult education and management. Chapter Two examines the connection between management strategies and workplace learning. Chapter Three looks at developments in organizational design, with particular reference to work groups/teams, and the concomitant application of learning theories are explored. Chapter Four critically examines the learning organization and organizational learning paradigms. Chapter Five introduces the debates on the role of the union movement in workplace learning. Chapter Six examines the liberatory tradition of adult education and its application in both paid work and the community. The final chapter brings together key themes and issues and discusses five conceptual themes or 'tools' designed to help students evaluate critical workplace learning literature across muitiple traditions and perspectives.

Table of Contents:
Foreword by D'Arcy Martin; Introduction; Management Strategies and Workplace Learning; Groups, Teams and Learning; Learning Organizations and Organizational Learning; Union-based Workplace Learning; Adult Education, Learning and Work; Conclusion; Glossary; Bibliography; Index

About the Author :
John Bratton is Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Work and Community Studies at Athabasca University, Canada, and a Visiting Professor at Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, Scotland. He has taught a variety of sociology courses, including classical social theory, over a career of 30 years. He is the author of Japanization at Work and co-author of Workplace Learning: A Critical Introduction with Jean C. Helms Mills, Timothy Pyrch, and Peter Sawchuk; Work and Organizational Behaviour with Militza Callinan, Martin Corbett, Carolyn Forshaw, and Peter Sawchuk; and Human Resource Management: Theory and Practice, now in its fifth edition, with Jeff Gold. Jean C. Helms Mills is Associate Professor of Management at the Sobey School of Business, Saint Mary's University. She has researched and written extensively on gender and the culture of organizations and is the author and editor of five books.

Review :
This innovative book is concerned with the power relations, complexities, and contradictions in the paid workplace.