Universitetet i Agder: UiA Journal System
Not a member yet
368 research outputs found
Sort by
A New Measure of Workplace Innovation
No full textDespite the popularity of Workplace Innovation (WI) and its demonstrable utility for supporting both organizational productivity and employee well-being, there is at present no reliable and valid measure of WI practices for use in research and workplace settings. The aim of this paper is to present the development of a measure of WI climate.The study involved 855 individuals across all levels of three organizations, and a survey of WI practices that was based on four underlying elements: jobs and teams; organizational structures, management and procedures; employee-driven improvement and innovation; and co-created leadership and employee voice.The original list of items was developed in consultation with employers and practitioners. WI was assessed as climate perceptions. A series of analyses were undertaken on the measure, demonstrating good psychometric properties, including consistency of the factor structure, internal reliability, construct validity, and criterion validity. Support for reliability and validity of the new 19-item measure with four elements is presented. Employees who experienced the four elements of WI climate more positively also enjoyed greater work engagement and job satisfaction, outlining criterion validity of the new measure. The availability of a rigorous and reliable measure of WI climate offers a tool for practitioners and researchers tasked with communicating and promoting WI in diverse workplace settings and with diverse groups of stakeholders. We hope that this new measure of WI will stimulate further research on the role of WI in promoting healthy and productive workplaces.Keywords: workplace innovation; measurement validation; work engagement; job satisfactio
Identifying vocational student teachers’ competence using an ePortfolio
No full textThe claim of advancing the use of Personal Learning Environments arose from the ideas of an ongoing learning process which lasts throughout a lifetime and informal learning being a meaningful part of the development of an individual’s expertise. In order to develop expertise, the following steps are necessary: first, one must explore the competences related to the profession; second, one must discover what these competencies and skills involve; and third, one must reflect on how to master the techniques involved. In addition to this kind of individual process, it is also important nowadays to acknowledge that demonstrating that one has achieved the necessary competences is important information for many audiences, such as workplaces, networks and employers. Nowadays, the most effective way to show one’s competence to a wider audience, as well as to review one’s skills oneself, is to create a digital record or portfolio (an ePortfolio). However, making an individual’s competence transparent in a digital format has proven complicated. This study focuses on exploring vocational student teachers’ competence through their ePortfolios, mainly using a theoretical framework of the pedagogical infrastructure design. The study reveals that there is a lot of variation in the quality of ePortfolios and therefore more scaffolding is needed to support student teachers in making their teacher competence visible through ePortfolios. The study advocates both creating a workspace ePortfolio as well as making competence transparent through a showcase ePortfolio
Decision-Making Processes for Effective Problem Solving to Potentiate Organisations Sustainability
No full textThe purposes of this article are to analyse the decision-making processes for practical problem solving, and to understand the ways employees make decisions, based on the knowledge they have from previous problems solutions. To achieve these objectives, the following research questions were used to frame this study: Do employees have access to knowledge and tools to help them in their decision process on how to solve a particular problem? What kind of decision-making strategies for problem-solving situations can be implemented to make the organisation sustainable? One large-sized multinational organisation in Portugal was selected for this case study research. Fifteen employees were interviewed to provide insight into the research questions. The research findings support the conclusion that depending on the complexity of the problem, the employee needs to decide if he has the knowledge and the tools to achieve a solution to solve the problem. The use and share of employees' knowledge to make the decisions is a significant factor to solve problems and strengthen performance
Using STSD for understanding the implementation of automation in organisations
No full textWorkplace automation is a highly studied process. In contrast, the implementation phase – critical for innovation success – where conflicts and misalignments between new technology and various organisational levels and phenomena arise, is less described. In this study, we have followed the introduction of automated guided vehicles in a warehouse/distribution centre aimed at increasing efficiency of operations and thus productivity. Building on socio-technical systems design and the job-demands-resources-model, and theories on technology implementation related to the organisations' ability to handle interferences explained in the language of misalignments and alignments, the study describes using qualitative methodology how system-internal variation becomes “enemy” of the AGV introduction; the automation itself cannot succeed without rebalancing the control capacity of the tasks it is augmenting or replacing. The paper also proposes that existing theories used to explain the success or failure of technology implementation are inadequate as they don't take in the complexity of the complete context but address single level phenomena independently of other relevant levels and phenomena
"From terrible teen to terrific trainee": Norwegian cases of innovative workplace-school collaboration to educate young people to become skilled workers in modern manufacturing industry
No full textContemporary debates over "the factory of the future" show that industries will need vocational workers that are empowered and skilled to act as decision-makers and controllers, holding technical and social skills of a high standard. Further, industrial development demands enough supply of skilled vocational workers. In Norway, a parallel concern is drop-out rates from upper secondary education. Consequently, it is of joint concern for the manufacturing industries, the secondary education system and the welfare state alike to ensure that young people choose vocational education and that they finish their education with skills and motivation needed to contribute in the "future manufacturing factory". The research question is the following: How can lower secondary schools or vocational colleges collaborate with industrial companies as to motivate young people to become vocational workers who are educated in the technical and generic skills needed for future manufacturing industries? With an action research approach, we explore on experiments of such innovative collaboration. We find that workplace-learning motivates young people to learn both trade specific and generic competencies. Thus, we argue that the lower secondary school-system must be included in what traditionally has been vocational education-workplace collaboration. Further, we find that the learning of future skill requirements presupposes collective learning processes and authentic problem solving. Finally, we argue that competencies fit well as an inclusion in both the social- and technological dimensions of socio-technical systems design, but more research is needed on the mechanisms by which competencies become "inputs" and "outputs" of future work designs
Fransk, spansk og tysk i ungdomsskolen etter Kunnskapsløftet: styrket eller ikke?
No full textSammendrag Et mål med innføringen av Kunnskapsløftet i 2006 var å styrke fremmedspråkenes forholdsvis svake stilling i ungdomsskolen. For å nå dette målet ble reglene for elevenes fagvalg skjerpet inn. Dessuten ble faget praktisk prosjektarbeid, som utgjorde et populært alternativ til fransk og tysk i årene før Kunnskapsløftet, avskaffet. Andelen elever med fremmedspråk økte sett under ett som resultat av dette, og spansk ble på kort tid største fremmedspråk på landsbasis. I årene etter overgangen til den nye læreplanen stabiliserte elevtallene for spansk seg, samtidig som tysk for første gang siden 1990-tallet opplevde en økning. Utviklingen for fransk i årene etter innføringen av Kunnskapsløftet har derimot vært negativ. Regjeringen har også introdusert et nytt, praktisk alternativ til fremmedspråk: arbeidslivsfag. I dette bidraget undersøkes hvordan fremmedspråkene fransk, spansk og tysk har utviklet seg i årene etter Kunnskapsløftet, sett i lys av innføringen av det nye faget arbeidslivsfag, og sett i lys av endringer i skolenes fremmedspråktilbud lokalt. Bidraget konkluderer med at innføringen av arbeidslivsfag ikke har skjedd på bekostning av fransk, spansk og tysk, og at økningen i elevtallene for fremmedspråkene samlet sett kan forklares med en ytterligere innskjerping i reglene for elevenes fagvalg. Tyskfagets økning forklares med økt interesse for Tyskland i Norge. Nedgangen for fransk forklares med et dårligere fagtilbud på skolene i kombinasjon med minsket interesse blant elevene. Kunnskapsløftets mål om å styrke fremmedspråkenes stilling er dermed bare delvis oppnådd
Towards a Multidisciplinary Research Framework for studying the Digital Transformation of Industry
No full textThe manufacturing industry is increasingly regarded as an essential ingredient of an ecosystem of production of goods and services. Key enabling technologies are considered to be the motors behind the ongoing digital transformation of industry. Given that there are still a number of open questions that need to be addressed in order to develop successful strategies for further implementation of these technologies, and to understand how workplace innovation plays a role in the digital transformation of industry, this paper seeks to design a comprehensive research approach and explains how this approach is applied in the PARADIGMS 4.0 research project on the digital transformation of industry in the region of Flanders, Belgium. Based on the identification of current knowledge gaps, research questions are defined on the topics of technology and work organisation, skills and participation, organisational and regional strategies, and labour market impact. A multi-level, multi-disciplinary, multi-method and multi-stakeholder research design was developed in order to study these topics in an integrated way. While this innovative comprehensiveness is seen as a major strength, it is acknowledged that the research design comes with certain risks that need to be tackled
A Socio-Technical Perspective on the Digital Era: The Lowlands view
No full textGiven growing global competition, organisations face the dual challenge of creating workplaces that are, on the one hand, more productive, agile, and innovative, and on the other hand, healthy places to work.At the same time, we are facing a digital revolution with profound consequences in work and daily life. Digital technologies have potential opportunities, but also constraints. To make the transformation successful joint optimise of social and technical systems is necessary. The sociotechnical systems design theory (STS-D) and practice have focused the last 70 years on this challenge. Over the years, different STS lenses have developed like participative design (North America and Australia), democratic dialogue (Scandinavia) and organisation design (the Netherlands and Belgium, the Lowlands). All have in common the aim of designing modern organisations that are humane, productive, agile and innovative. Also, digital technology has developed over the years: from digitisation to digitalisation, and lately into digital transformation affecting societies, organisations and humans. With this article we take the Lowlands STS-D theory as perspective and we discover how this theory, especially the design sequence, should be adjusted to apply successful digital technology. First, we zoom in on digital technologies and its opportunities. Second, we zoom in on the STS-D Lowlands design theory its principles and organisational design sequence. The original design sequence requires adjustment from a digital technology perspective. We propose a combined approach from a digital-technical and social perspective. We end with new routines for designing modern 21stcentury organisations that facilitate organisational and digital experts to jointly optimise both perspectives in practice.
