Year: 2009
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Work in organisations is a shared and joint endeavour often accomplished by \ngroups, teams or other collectives. Yet groups at work do not always learn at \nwork, limiting an organisation’s capability to thrive in knowledge economies. \nResearch investigating collective learning at work continues to place the analytic \nfocus on entities or abstractions representing the collective. For example, culture, \npower, group membership, group structure, group communications, motivations \nand skills are often examined to explain why groups learn or not in organisations. \nIn contrast, this thesis investigates what it means to learn together when people \nact, talk and judge at work through their relational and responsive interactions. \nThis relational orientation conceptualises learning as emerging from patterns of \ninteractions that are responsive to local contexts and shaped by practical \nsensemaking that occurs in the everyday practice of work life. \nSpecifically in the case study interpretive tradition, I investigate the relational \npractices of dyads and small groups in three disparate organisational contexts and \nprofessions. The organisational, group and individual characteristics differ widely \nfor musicians in an orchestra, apprentice chefs in a commercial kitchen and \nrehabilitation staff in a corrections centre. Yet these three groups shared relational \nsimilarities in learning how to weave ways of acting, talking and judging together \nto make their work ‘work’. Such weaving together is enabled by shifting \nconceptually from notions of context as descriptive setting or situatedness to the \nnotion of groups contextualising together. \nThis thesis contributes to collective learning research by highlighting the \nsignificance of patterns of interactions and the dynamics of practice. The findings \nenhance existing collective learning theory by including spatio-temporal concepts \nfrom theories of organisational change and complexity. The findings have \nimplications for guiding the learning of commencing practitioners into professions \nas well as for generating modes of transdisciplinary learning across professions. \nRe-viewing collective learning in relational ways recognises that learning is an \nemergent phenomenon, each time practised anew from interactions between \npeople and the possibilities that lie within. \nThe Latin prefix con means with. It seems appropriate that concerts performed by \nmusicians, condiments added to dishes by chefs and the consequences of \nbehaviours by corrections staff across diverse contexts of work can provide \npractical insights for better understanding how groups learn collectively at work.
Author: Mary C. Johnsson
Language: English
Subfield: Education
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Quality education
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2483914888