The trinity of learning: a critical perspective

Lifelong learning and continuous professional development have attracted a lot of attention during the last years both from academics and from practitioners. Talk is even of learning becoming the distinctive mark of modern societies – the so called learning society. Tight (1998) sees the concept of learning in modern societies becoming part of a trinity of: lifelong learning, the learning organization and the learning society. This learning trinity is thus “articulating the importance of continuing learning for survival and development at the levels of the individual, the organization and society as a whole” (ibid., p. 254).

What are the factors that can explain this rising interest in learning on all levels of the learning trinity (macro-level, meso-level, micro-level)? How is this emphasis on learning linked to the wider societal change brought about by globalisation and what is the driving force that is shaping the modern notion of learning? What are its implications for the practice of HRM and what does lifelong learning mean for the employee? This essay will try to answer these questions from a critical perspective. The paper is structured as follows: first, a short overview over recent economic and social changes triggered by globalisation will be given. This will be followed by a short presentation of the concept of the flexible firm developed by Atkinson (1984) which provides an important analytical frame for analyzing recent changes in the workplace affecting the employees. Then the meaning of learning will be analyzed on the three levels of the learning trinity: 1) the learning society and in how far can it be regarded as a panacea against unemployment, 2) HRM and its relation to employee learning and development, 3) life-long learning and its implications for employees. Finally, a conclusion will be drawn about the character and perspectives of the learning society.


The triumph of competition

The world economy has undergone massive changes in the last twenty years and globalisation has become the catchword to describe this phenomenon. Stability and long-term prospects have become notions of the past; change is the defining principle of our age (Giddens & Hutton 2000). More and more parts of our societies and our own lives are organised according to market principles and are thus following a logic of competition. This process has not suddenly started out of a void. A continuity of events leading to globalisation can be traced back as far as the industrial revolution at the end of the 18th century. However, a series of political and technological events starting in the late 70s have given the decisive push to globalisation and have made it possible. What have been these events and what are still the drivers for this development?

The political and economic theory that prepared the grounds for globalisation is often referred to as neoliberalism. This school of thought was developed during the 1960s and 1970s by such prominent thinkers as Friedrich Hayek, Milton Friedman and Michael Polanyi. In essence, neoliberalism calls for minimum involvement of the state in economic matters and advocates for unregulated trade and markets. Policies following neoliberal ideas were put into reality during the 1980s by Ronald Reagan in the USA and Margaret Thatcher in the United Kingdom. Internationally neoliberal recipes were pursued by the World Bank and the IMF. The end of the Cold War in the early 1990s then allowed for a culmination of neoliberal practice worldwide with rapid capital market and labour market liberalisation, privatisation of state enterprises and properties and a push for open markets around the world.

On the technology side a decisive thrust for globalisation was the world-wide communications revolution produced by global TV networks, cheap telecommunications and the Internet. In addition, transport of people and goods has become much cheaper during the last two decades and has allowed for a massive increase in product trade and tourism.
Globalisation has thus undoubtedly led to a fierce increase in competition on the macro level between countries, on the meso level between companies and the micro level between employees. On the macro level the effects are that countries are competing for investors trying to provide tax incentives and reducing labour cost. On the meso level the effects are companies striving for constant innovation and a maximum of flexibility. And on the micro level the employees are affected by a deregulated labour market and have to remodel themselves as entrepreneurs constantly investing in their employability to achieve some kind of job security.


The flexible firm

The flexible firm is a term coined by John Atkinson (1984) in the early 1980s. Although Atkinson developed his model before the “hot phase” of globalisation, the increased competition brought by globalisation has made his model even more relevant and describes now something that has become a reality for many businesses and employees around the world. The model of the flexible firm can be seen as a response of businesses to an economic environment that is characterised by constant change and short term decisions.

The Atkinson model (Atkinson 1984) of the flexible firm distinguishes three kinds of manpower flexibility that firms are trying to achieve: functional, numerical and financial. Functional flexibility means that employees are able to perform different tasks and activities and that the firm can shift employees between the tasks as required. Numerical flexibility means that the firm can easily increase or decrease its workforce according to market demand for its products. Financial flexibility means that the pay system of the firm allows for a high degree of differences in remuneration of employees for example through assessment-based pay.

To achieve these three types of flexibility the modern firm divides its workforce into a core and peripheral groups. The core group of workers consists of high skilled employees that are difficult to substitute like managers, technicians, craftsmen, etc. The emphasis for the core group is on functional flexibility and training. The peripheral groups consist of a low skilled workforce that can easily be substituted and the emphasis for the firm is on numerical flexibility. Thus, it’s unlikely for the firm to provide training opportunities to peripheral staff.

For Atkinson (1984, p.38) the flexible firm implies two sorts of change for the employee. “First, the gap between the conditions of employment of these different groups of worker is widening. At the core, job security, single status conditions and performance-related pay systems contrast with the relatively poor conditions, insecurity and pay levels driven down by competition in the labour market, which are found among most peripheral and external groups. Second, the numerical balance between these groups appears to be changing, with some managers anxious to push as many jobs as possible into peripheral categories.”


Learning society - a panacea against unemployment?

As mentioned above globalisation and the resulting emphasis on competitiveness can be seen as the defining principle of our age. Globalisation, the flexible firm, the flexible employee and the idea of a learning society are not independent phenomenons but very much interrelated. Edwards (1997, p. 41) argues that “it is the requirement to increase flexibility and competitiveness which has resulted in the current focus of interest on lifelong learning and its concentration in the realms of economic policy. This is a position which is shared across the political spectrum, including by business and trade union organisations, as well as major political parties and international organisations, such as the European Commission, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.”

A multiplicity of discourses and notions exist with regards to the learning society. Edwards (1997, p. 184) distinguishes three major strands of discourses of a learning society which can be summarised as follows:
“The learning society is an educated society, committed to active citizenship, liberal democracy and equal opportunities. This supports lifelong learning….. The aim is to provide learning opportunities to educate adults to meet the challenges of change and citizenship.”
“A learning society is a learning market, enabling institutions to provide services for individuals as a condition for supporting competitiveness of the economy….. The aim is for a market in learning opportunities to be developed to meet the demands of individuals and employers for the updating of skills and competences.”
“A learning society is one in which learners adopt a learning approach to life, drawing on a wide range of resources to enable them to support their lifestyle practices. This supports lifelong learning as a condition of individuals in the contemporary period to which policy needs to respond.”

Edwards (1997, p. 185) notes that “it is the notion of a learning society which embeds a learning market that has become dominant in recent years.” This is understandable if one assumes that the political emphasis on a learning society in recent years was mainly triggered by economic globalisation. In a globalized world national economies compete against each other in order to attract foreign capital and direct investments and to retain local investments. With regards to the labour force foreign and local investment is attracted by two main factors: 1) the cost of labour and 2) the skills of the workforce. Although attempts have been made to reduce labour costs in many European countries, it is clear that this is not a viable road for highly developed countries to compete on the world market. However, the development of a skilled workforce in order to compete internationally is a socially accepted goal and thus explains the political popularity of discourses of a learning society.

Unemployment is still very high within many countries of the European Union (see for example Walwei 2001) and is thus on of the major political concerns. For politicians the pursuit of a learning society discourse offers two advantages. First, the idea of a learning society suggests that high levels of employment can be gained without significant reduction in labour costs if sufficient emphasis is put on the training and education of the workforce. A hypothesis which has not yet been validated (Morris 1999). Second, the idea of a learning society introduces a division of responsibility for employment between politics, business and the employee. It’s no longer the sole responsibility of politicians to secure high levels of employment, but part of the responsibility now rests with the employees who have to increasingly invest in their skills in order to qualify for employment.

With regards to the practices of life-long learning Edwards (1997, p.110) identifies three major trends: “the development of open and distance learning, the moves towards outcomes-based assessment and accreditation, and the reconstitution of workplaces as learning organisations.” The development of open and distance learning aims at increasing access to learning and training for adults, for whom it would be difficult to attend institutions on a regular basis. The variety of learning environments and the multiplicity of learning providers produces a need for outcomes-based assessment and accreditation. Employee learning also takes place at the workplace itself. Many organisations have realised the potential for workplace based learning and turn them into learning organisations in order to increase their competitiveness.

The deregulation of labour markets, the political emphasis on a learning society or live long learning and the requirements of workforce flexibility of many modern organisations have created a new environment for employees. The workforce is increasingly being divided into core workers and peripheral workers. Whilst generally core workers benefit from the modern day work environment with its emphasis on flexibility and life-long learning, peripheral workers tend to loose out on employment rights, access to learning opportunities and other benefits accruing to core workers.

Under conditions of a learning society the access to training becomes a fundamental issue for every employee. Rainbird (2000, p. 184) notes that “in a deregulated training system, where there are neither individual rights of access to training nor an obligation on employers to invest in training, an emphasis on individual responsibility for learning might be expected to reinforce patterns of inequality.” To close the widening gap between core and peripheral workers the question of employee rights for education and training becomes increasingly important. Research shows that peripheral workers in the UK tend to have substantially less access to training than core workers (Rainbird 2000). “Until training and skills development are treated as a collective good regulated by all the stakeholders (not just employers) and employees have an entitlement to the different types of work-based learning and are supported by structures which positively encourage them to take advantage of them, it is difficult to see how patterns of inequality of access can be effectively challenged (ibid., p. 195).”

The political emphasis on life-long learning and a learning society is sometimes justified with the prospect of the creation of high skills economies and the subsequent reduction in unemployment and low skills jobs. However, Crouch et al. (1999) note that over recent years in the USA, Japan and some European states, net employment growth has not been in high skill jobs but in part-time low-skill jobs. Likewise Grugulis (2003) observes that “most jobs in Britain demand few skills”, and that a high skills route for competitiveness has not yet been adapted by British companies. Morris (1999) therefore sees a danger of national overspending on training and education, as “there is little or no unequivocal evidence that this investment will lead to a reduction in unemployment.”


HRM and employee learning and development

The management of employees has undergone significant changes in the last two decades. The most obvious sign for this change is a shift in the denomination of the practice of managing employees from “Personnel Management” to “Human Resource Management”. According to Legge (1995) this shift in language has its roots in globalization, changes that occurred in product and labour markets, new technologies and a swing to right-wing i.e. neoliberal political ideologies. Storey (1995, p.5) proposes the following definition for Human Resource Management: “Human resource management is a distinctive approach to employment management which seeks to achieve competitive advantage through the strategic deployment of a highly committed and capable workforce, using an integrated array of cultural, structural and personal techniques.” A distinction between “hard” and “soft” normative models of HRM can be made. Hard models of HRM are characterized by “utilitarian instrumentalism” whereas soft models are characterized by “developmental humanism” (Henry and Pettigrew, cited in Legge 1995).

Employee learning and development plays an important role in modern Human Resource Management. Modern organisations usually have a HR development strategy, which defines what are the learning and development needs for the organisation and who should be involved in training activities (Torrington et al. 2005). The Human Resource manager has a broad array of methods of learning and development at his disposal, which can be divided in three broad categories:
1) Off-job methods: education and training courses
2) Learning on the job: Manager coaching and teaching, Mentoring, Peer relationships, self-development
3) Open, distance and e-learning

In recent years two developments with regards to employee training can be observed. First, greater emphasis is laid on individuals taking ownership for their learning needs. And second, a shift from formal development programmes to more informal trainings such as on-the-job development, mentoring, peer relationships and self-development (Torrington et al. 2005). Two possible explanations could be provided for this phenomenon. Informal training programs through their more personal nature might be more effective. But modern organisations might also prefer informal training programs as they tend to be less costly for the organisation because the training burden is put on the shoulders of the employee and has not to be financed directly by the organisation.

The provision of employee learning and development activities as defined through a HR strategy may differ for core and peripheral workers. As mentioned above, peripheral workers in general are less likely to benefit from learning and development opportunities provided by firms than core workers. This fact could be interpreted in the sense that many firms combine “hard” and “soft” models of HRM in reality. Hard models of HRM, which have more of an instrumental view of the employee don’t put an emphasis on learning or development of the employee. This approach is more likely to be adopted towards peripheral workers. In soft models of HRM, which have a more holistic view of the employee, learning and employee development play an important role. According to Legge (1995) soft models of HRM usually focus on generating employee commitment and are thus more likely to be directed towards core workers. The provision of learning and employee development activities can be a powerful tool to generate employee commitment. The extent to which learning and development activities are provided can thus be seen as an indicator of whether a firm adopts a “hard” or a “soft” model of HRM.

The increased emphasis on employee learning and development brings up the question of pay. How are new skills acquired through learning rewarded? This question becomes especially important if the skills have been acquired through individual learning or peer-learning and thus constitute an extra effort on behalf of the employee. How are new skills assessed and how are employees motivated to invest in this kind of self-training? New pay system and skill based pay may be seen as an answer. New pay writers advocate for payment systems that are variable and contingent on performance. Moreover, the variable elements in new pay system are not consolidated over time but have to be continually re-earned through high performance. As learning generally improves the employee performance, new pay systems could be seen as an adequate tool to motivate employees to invest in their own learning. However, several problems are associated with new pay systems. Heery (2000) observes that new pay systems imply a transfer of risk from employers to workers. Moreover, new pay systems might not have the desired effect and may ultimately be counterproductive. Heery (2000) cites two case studies of skill-based pay that both describe “employee dissatisfaction with and resistance to the technique and its tendency”.


Life-long learning and its implications for employees

How does a culture of life-long learning look like for employees, what are it’s implications? The most obvious implication is that the “front end” model which links childhood with education and adulthood with work, is being replaced. Learning in adulthood can rarely be full-time because of the requirements imposed by work, nevertheless it is similar to childhood learning in the sense that it is becoming compulsory (Tight 1998). Bureaucratic careers are becoming more unlikely because of the fact that large corporations have become lean and flat and are constantly restructuring themselves. This leads to a situation where the employee needs to invest in his own skills in order to adapt to these rapid changes, if he wants to move up the career ladder or avoid finding himself suddenly in the category of “surplus” workers. Learning is thus a sensible strategy for an employee in order to keep “fit” for both company internal and external job markets through the “acquisition of externally validated credentials, in-house training programmes, social contacts and networks” (Brown et al., p.118).

Life-long learning is increasingly being seen as a means to develop individual employability in an uncertain world. In order to increase his employability the employee is encouraged to regard himself as an investment object and to develop a skills portfolio through self-motivated learning activities. However, employability is an ambiguous concept and it is not clear that individual learning will always lead to an increase in employability. Some authors (Hillage and Pollard, cited in Brown et al. 1998, p. 118) see employability as being “about having the capability to gain initial employment, maintain employment and obtain new employment if required’. Brown et al. (2003) see this definition as ideologically loaded. They argue that employability is rather determined by labour market conditions than individual capabilities.

A strong link between organizational strategies of business process reengineering, downsizing or lean management and the pressure on employees to subdue them “voluntarily” to a regime of life-long learning can be observed. The mentioned strategies usually lead to a qualitative and quantitative intensification of work. This results in the need to have a labour force that is able to do more in less time which is only possible if the employee expands his skills. Thus results an emphasis on learning and employee qualification. However, the short–term interests of shareholder value driven companies often does not allow for these companies to invest sufficiently in training their employees to cope with the new requirements imposed. Even if financially the company would be willing to invest in employee training, many lean organisation encounter difficulties to send employees on training as nobody will be able to replace them during their absence. This can lead to a situation where the weight of learning imposed through new organizational strategies is mainly carried by the employee. Thompson (2003) sees little evidence that employers are living up to the expectations of carrying their part to foster employee learning. He states that “not only are employees being asked to take over responsibility for career development, studies show that employers are making less investment in training and skill development, in part because of fear that such investment will be lost through redundancy or exit from their firm” (ibid., p 365).

From an individual perspective the life-long learning agenda can also be understood as an attempt to move from peripheral work positions into the core group. However, this strategy will not work for all employees, as the positions available within the core group are limited. If the base of “core” jobs does not expand, a greater supply of better educated employees might only increase the competition for these kinds of jobs and thus lead to a deterioration of working conditions for the core. This problem has become more acute with the rise of mass higher education because it is creating a mass market of well educated workers. Brown et al. (2003) refer to this phenomenon when they state that “the idea that the ‘more you learn the more you earn’ has a degree of validity as long as other people are not learning the same things, otherwise one is running to stand still“ (ibid., p.110).

The implications of the life-long learning agenda for the individual employee must be seen within the broader context of increased competition brought about by globalisation. The logic of competition demands that the employee is acting like an entrepreneur, meaning that he is willing to take risks and being ready to invest in himself. Failure to do so may result in self-inflicted unemployment. The constant talk about the learning society may lead to a situation where structural unemployment is mainly being seen as a problem of the individual. Thus a silent transfer of risk from the society to the individual is happening. Ulrich Beck (2000, p.167) refers to this when he says “your own life – your own failure.”


Conclusion

The essay started with a short outline of the rise of competition and flexibility as the main organizational principles in modern societies. It then analyzed the meaning of learning at the levels of the society, the organization and the individual and discovered important relationships between competition and the meaning that learning has acquired within these tree spheres. The notions of a learning society and life-long learning can thus clearly be linked to a wider process of increasing competition brought by globalisation. Notions of learning not related to competitiveness and employability such as personal growth and fulfilment through learning are not playing a dominant role in the current discourse. The potentially liberating effects of a learning society are thus not being achieved.

Many critical questions arise whilst analysing the current notion of a learning society, like who determines, what should be learnt and for what purpose? Who has to carry the financial burden of continuous learning? How much control should individuals have over their involvement in lifelong learning? It stands to fear that the predominant notion of learning will become an instrumental one with view of the job market rather than as ends-in-itself.

Oberlindober (2005) sees the knowledge and learning society potentially to turn into a horror vision. In that vision learning in the context of a learning society is nothing else than the extension of work time. Reduction of work time in favour of the extension of training periods will ultimately reduce the free time available to humans, in which they determine, what they do. The learning society may become one of unequal chances, in which the access to knowledge and education is depending upon social group affiliation. To put simple: a highly educated ruling elite may arise, that prescribes the remainder of the population what useful knowledge is and what they should learn.

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