Going beyond the official domain in the search for the culture of employee learning: The case of junior support staff at a South African university

George Mavunga

doi:10.14426/cristal.v7i2.172

Abstract

Based on HCT (human capital theory), employee learning and the culture associated with it in South Africa and globally have generally been researched from the perspective of the normative government or employer-initiated policies and programmes. Using Bernstein’s (2000) theory of the pedagogic device, this paper suggests the existence of different domains of learning with respect to junior support staff at a South African university. The paper also borrows from critical realism to advocate an approach which asks questions pertaining to the influence of structure and agency on the form of the culture of employee learning in different domains with respect to the junior support staff members. The answers to these questions, the paper suggests, would help with a holistic characterisation of the culture of employee learning associated with this category of employees at the South African university.

Highlights

Employee learning for workers in South Africa and globally, whether they occupy junior or senior positions, is an inescapable imperative for a variety of reasons
Drawing insights from Bernstein (2000), Bhaskar (1989), Quinn (2012), and Mingers (2014), employee learning at an institution of higher learning can be conceptualised as taking place in the official, social and pedagogic domains within which we find structures and agents that have an influence on the culture of this type of learning
Drawing insights from Bernstein’s (2000) theory of the pedagogic device which suggests that knowledge produced in one area can be transferred to another, the suggested approach is based on conceptualisation of the culture of employee learning as being layered and existing in three domains, namely, the official, social, and pedagogic

Summary

Introduction

Employee learning for workers in South Africa and globally, whether they occupy junior or senior positions, is an inescapable imperative for a variety of reasons. As discussed earlier, this would entail investigating this culture at two other broad levels- the employees’ social contexts (social domain), that is, their biographies and their experiences (pedagogic) in terms of actual participation in the employee learning curriculum at the institution. In addition to collective agency, I perceive as existent in the social domain, a significant degree of individual agency which is contributory to the form of the culture of employee learning at the university This emanates from the influence of biographies, identities, self-direction, lived experiences, subjectivities and different levels of intentionality which individuals bring to the employee learning situation and shape the culture associated with it. Of interest to the researcher, should be the specific features of the social environment and how individuals respond to them

H CONTEXT I S SETTING T

Conclusion