The inseparable nature of working and learning: peripheral management practice that facilitates employee learning

摘要

For many organizations learning at work still, rather narrowly, refers to attendance at training events. Despite a considerable expansion of the workplace learning literature, noticeably less attention has been given to the role that frontline managers play in aiding employee learning at work. In addition to being the strategist, decision-maker and workflow organizer, the frontline manager is also increasingly "hands-on." Thus, frontline managers today are often "bogged-down" operationally. They are frequently the "experts" in their departments, and therefore much of the actual work or "doing" starts (and, in some instances, ends) with them. Frontline managers' work in most organizations is complex and demanding, and often unremitting. They make decisions on the run, deal with complex projects, handle client queries, juggle excessive workloads and manage budgets, in addition to supervising their people in as timely a manner as possible. For most frontline managers, there are simply not enough hours in a day. Central to learning within an organization is the role frontline managers play, and coaching and guidance provided by frontline managers is fundamental to organizational learning. Beattie (2006, p. 101) argues "that line managers as much as, if not more than, the Human Resource Development (HRD) function play a critical role in facilitating [such] organizational and individual learning."