The concept of "negotiation" is often used to describe and explain the interactive nature of vocational learning. Such learning is accomplished as workers engage in the joint activities that comprise their occupational practice. In doing so they interact with the material and cultural resources that enable their work to produce and…

Using an ethnographic approach, the aim of this study was to explore how social workers learn and make sense of experiences in their daily practices. Five events that took place during an ordinary day of child investigation work are described and serve as the basis for the analysis. The findings imply that investigation work is largely a social…

Health care organizations are facing rapid changes, frequently involving modification of existing procedures. The case study reported here examined change processes and learning in a health care organization. The organizational change in question occurred in the emergency clinic of a Finnish central hospital where a new action model for…

Professional learning is a critical component of ongoing improvement and innovation and the adoption of new practices in the workplace. Professional learning is often achieved through learning embedded in everyday work tasks. However, little is known about how professionals self-regulate their learning through regular work activities. This paper…

This paper discusses how discursive power and creativity are found to be inter-related in a context not traditionally associated with creative work; the operating theatre of a hospital. Here, it is proposed that creativity relies on socio-cultural factors emphasizing the practical nature of creativity, and highlighting the fact that a large part…

Work in call centres is often presented as a form of unskilled labour characterized by routinization, technological surveillance and tight management control aimed at reaching intensive performance targets. Beyond delivering business objectives, this control and efficiency strategy is often held to produce counterproductive effects with regard to…