1,721,059 research outputs found
"I am quite a genuine person": sales training and the limits of moulding instrumentality
No full textSales work is a key feature of the contemporary service economy which has prompted considerable academic debate. This has centred on the processes of standardization exemplified by sales routines and scripts. It is frequently suggested that these management devices are unproblematically embraced by workers who share a mutual interest with management in controlling customer behaviour and masking the contradictions of simultaneously displaying empathy while ‘closing the deal’. In these accounts, sales workers are denied agency. This paper questions this assumption by presenting empirical evidence from a casestudy of sales advisors in a large chain of private fitness clubs whose job is to sell annual memberships. The research involved eight interviews with trainers and managers at head office. We were also able to tape record and participate in a five day training course that all newly appointed sales advisors have to attend. We carried out interviews with all eight trainees a couple of months after the end of the course. This allowed us to follow the path of newly appointed sales advisors by hearing, seeing and experiencing the training they receive, and thengathering data on the extent to which the training is followed on the ground. The data show that although the training course placed strong emphasis on routines designed to control customers and maximize the commission received by sales advisors, once back on ‘home’ territory advisors often chose to approach customers with less instrumentality. This contrast is explained by reference to the advisors’ past dispositions and experiences, and to the specific local conditions in which sales take place
Improving working as learning
No full textInterest in learning at work has captured the attention of many people around the world, often taking centre stage in policy debates about improving economic performance, prosperity and well-being. This book is about the learning that goes on in workplaces – ranging from offices, factories and shops to gyms, health centres and universities – and how it can be improved. Such learning includes everyday work activity, on-the-job instruction and off-the-job training events.Improving Working as Learning is the first book to analyze systematically learning at work in different settings by developing and applying a new analytical framework. The Working as Learning Framework connects the particularities of work tasks with the way jobs are organized and the wider pressures and constraints organizations face for survival, growth and development. The authors convincingly demonstrate that the framework offers a sophisticated understanding of how improving the work environment – both within the workplace and beyond – can enhance and sustain improvements in learning at work.Each chapter presents evidence – taken from both private and public sectors – to illustrate how the Working as Learning Framework provides a means by which employers, researchers and policy-makers can:Improve the conditions for nurturing and sustaining learning at workBuild appropriate workforce development plans within given constraintsRecognize that the creation and use of knowledge is widely distributed
Mobilize existing workplace resources to support learningEnhance and extend our understanding of how workplace learning is shaped by relationships at, and beyond, the workplaceThis topical book will appeal to an international readership of undergraduate and postgraduate students, vocational teachers and trainers, human resource professionals, policy-makers, and researcher
What is the vision for this profession? Learning environments of health visitors in an English city
Full text linkThis paper discusses the attempts by a group of health visitors in a provincial English city to reform their working practices in order to work more collaboratively and, hence, create a more expansive learning environment. The health visitors self-consciously sought to create a ‘community of practice’, a term they felt captured their ambition to move away from the historical conception of health visitors as professionalsworking largely on their own but under the direction of others. The paper shows that the outcomes of the health visitors’ attempts to engineer changes to their work organisation were shaped by the constraints and opportunities offered by their relationships with a diverse and fragmented network of fellow professionals, including other health visitors, doctors,managers and personnel from other social care agencies. Our analysis contextualises the uncertain development of discretion and trust in the work organization of health visitors within the broader horizontal and vertical relationships of the productive system in which they are embedded. The paper argues that, whilst much was achieved and considerable learning took place, the group’s vision was ultimately unsustainable due to the characteristics of the wider productive system
Repositioning knowledge and skills in a local authority: rationalizing service encounters, enchanting service users
No full textThis paper draws on the analytical framework offered by the concept of ‘productive systems’ which shifts attention away from examining sites of work as self-standing units to one which places them in a configuration of relationships. The concept is used in this paper to track how the introduction of a call centre can reposition knowledge and skills from one part of the system to another. The empirical evidence for the paper drawsfrom a case study of a call centre which was set up as the primary access point to services provided by a local authority in the Midlands. The paper argues that the productive system perspective highlights the ways in which this call centre facilitated the rationalization of organizational proceduresand practices in its back offices, while simultaneously promoting a degree of personalized service
Praxis: Working to learn, learning to work
No full textThis edition of Praxis explores one way of investigating, codifying and actively promoting the embedded or intrinsic potential of work as a means of learning: through the Working as Learning Framework (WALF).Drawing on a four year investigation into the relationship between workplace learning, the organisation of work and performance; this edition of Praxis highlights wide variances in the opportunities available to employees to learn and develop, even within jobs that are ostensibly identical. Why do some exercise instructors have more opportunity to learn and develop than others? How can changes to the management structures of primary care in the NHS impact on the capacity of Health Visitors to collaborate and innovate?The answer, the authors argue, lies in the workplace but also, crucially, in the wider context of the productive systems and processes that shape the workplace as either an expansive or restrictive learning environment.<br/
Learning, communities and performance: evidence from the 2007 communities of practice survey
No full textTransforming knowledge and skills: reconfiguring the productive system of a local authority
Full text linkThis paper draws on the analytical framework offered by the concept of ‘productive systems’ which shifts attention away from examining sites of work as self-standing units to one which places them in a configuration of relationships. The concept is used in this paper to track how the introduction of a call centre can reconfigure knowledge and skills from one part of the system to another. The empirical evidence for the paperdraws from a case study of a call centre which was set up as the primary access point to services provided by a local authority in the Midlands. The paper argues that the productive system perspective highlights the ways in which this call centre facilitated the rationalization of organizational procedures and practices in its back offices, while simultaneously promoting a degree of personalized service
Making a sales advisor : the limits of training 'instrumental empathy'
No full textThe use of participant observation is relatively rare in qualitative studies of vocational education and training. However, such an approach provides a detailed picture of training content and how what is taught contributes to or impedes learning. Based on participant observation, this paper examines the training of sales advisors in a large chain of private fitness clubs. It shows that although the training course taught trainees how to control and enchant customers, once back on 'home' territory trainees approached customers with far less instrumental empathy than they had been taught. This contrast is explained by reference to the past dispositions of sales workers and the local conditions in which the selling process takes place
'The prawn sandwich will live forever': learning to innovate in commercial sandwich production
No full textThis paper examines processes of innovation in one of Britain’s fastest growing industries, commercial sandwich manufacturing. It is argued that the industry is characterized by two different productive systems, which we designate Retailer Label and Manufacturer Label. New product development (NPD) in the former is skewed towards high-volume, low price products that match existing market trends. However, strategies of profit maximization in the latter facilitate the emergence of ‘new to the market’, premium priced products. The paper argues that these strategies reflect the contrasting balance of power between retailers and manufacturers in the two productive systems. This, in turn, shapes the learning environments and learning affordances available to NPD workers
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