Informal Learning in the Workplace: Unmasking Human Resource Development

✍ Scribed by John Garrick

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 1998
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 225
• Edition: 1
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

Informal learning has become an extremely important issue as post-industrial workplaces seek to harness its productive potential. Managers and HRD practitioners have attempted to deploy informal learning in the design of corporate cultures, however, most discussions of the subject have tended to be uncritical expositions which do not challenge the underlying economic, philosophical and organisational rationale. Uniquely, this book goes against this tendency. It critically examines definitions of informal learning, and focuses on its application in a variety of workplace contexts. It features:

* theories of informal learning * the unmasking of contemporary corporate rhetoric * the implications for accounts of workplace learning of poststructuralist and post-modern perspectives.

Incorporating case studies based on interviews with practising managers and HRM practitioners, and a detailed glossary of key concepts and issues, this book will be a valuable reference for students of workplace learning.

✦ Table of Contents

Book Cover......Page 1
Title......Page 4
Contents......Page 5
Preface......Page 8
Acknowledgements......Page 9
Introduction......Page 10
What is informal learning in the workplace?......Page 14
Theorising informal learning......Page 28
Work as a learning environment: unmasking the language of HRD......Page 51
The hidden curriculum of learning at work......Page 73
Professional identity and self-regulation at work......Page 94
The performativity principle in informal learning......Page 114
Retheorising informal workplace learning......Page 137
Doubts about postmodern doubt: postscript......Page 164
Appendix: the research methods......Page 174
Glossary......Page 182
Bibliography......Page 195
Index......Page 212