Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study how the characteristics of the learning environment enable and/or constrain employee participation in competence development activities. By the concept of learning environment, we refer to conditions that enable and/or constrain learning at an individual-, group- or organizational level (Ellström, 2005). The notion of participation, as used in this study, refers to the employees' engagement in learning activities. In this paper we focus on the behavioral, emotional and cognitive nature of engagement in competence development activities (Fredericks, Blumenfeld & Paris, 2004).

The following two questions will be addressed:

1. How do employees perceive and respond to the opportunity to participate in competence development and learning activities at the workplace?
2. Which factors related to the learning environment enable and/or constrain employees' participation in competence development activities?

Methodology or methods/research instruments or sources used:

The study comprises three SMEs that received support from the European Social Fund, i.e. the Objective 3 programme. According to the legislative framework, the subsidiaries from the Objective 3 Programme should target competence development of employees and/or organizational development in SMEs. All three SMEs included in the study had completed their planned competence development activities. The three SMEs were selected on the basis of theoretical sampling. More specifically, based on the data from a previous study (Kock, Gill & Ellström, 2006) it was possible to select two companies using an integrated strategy of competence development and one company using a formal strategy. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews. In total 23 employees in the three companies were interviewed. The informants were selected on the basis of age, educational background, and position within the companies.

Conclusions or expected outcomes or findings:

The final analysis is, at this momement, not completed . However, it is possible to present some preliminary findings. The engagement of the employees may be characteized, among a vast majority of the participants, as active and committed. Moreover, there are several interesting differences concering the level of behavioral engagement, emotional engagement and cognitive engagement regarding the employees participation in the competence development activities The level of engagement is to a high degree connected to the learning environments of the firms. Examples of enabling conditions are a supportive leadership, the complexity of the work tasks, and the opportunity to cooperate with co-workers.

References (including own publications):

• Ellström, P.-E. (2005). Two Logics of Learning. In: E. Antonacopoulou, B. Elkjær, & P. Jarvis (Eds.), Learning, Working and Living. Mapping the Terrain of Working Life Learning. London: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Fredericks, J. A., Blumenfeld, P. C. & Alison, H. P. (2004). School Engagement: Potentials of the Concept, State of the Evidence. Review of Educational Research, 74, 1, 59-109
• Kock, H., Gill, A. & Ellström, P-E. (2006). Strategies for Competence Development at the workplace: Learning environments and Learning outcomes. Paper presented at European Conference on Educational Research (ECER), Geneva, Switzerland