Ian Hampson

Transfer of training: A review and new insights

Even successful training programs cannot guarantee that newly learned knowledge and skills will be transferred to the workplace. This has led to researchers interests in understanding the transfer process. Notwithstanding that transfer issues have been studied for several decades, the recent emphasis on workplace learning, especially the so-called situated learning approach, suggests that conventional training transfer research may be inadequate to understand the dynamics of performance improvement through training. Against this, the authors point to the increased policy emphasis on the development of transferable generic skills, which underscores the ongoing importance of training transfer. This review paper suggests that the role of trainees themselves has not been dealt with sufficiently in research, which leads to a new direction for studying the transfer of training.

Putting the process back in: rethinking service sector skill

Service skill definitions have been over-extended, by equating compliance with skill, and underdeveloped, by not recognising service jobs’ invisible social and organisational aspects. Existing approaches to determining service skill levels draw on occupational qualifications and capacity for labour market closure, on knowledge worker/ knowledgeable emotion worker dichotomies, and on the conceptual conflation of labour process deskilling, unskilled jobs and unskilled workers. The theoretical and empirical basis for a new framework identifying hitherto under-specified ‘work process skills’ is outlined. This framework allows recognition of the integrated use of awareness-shaping, relationship-shaping and coordination skills, at different levels of experience-based complexity, derived from reflexive learning and collective problem-solving in the workplace. Political struggles over the use of combinations and levels of these ‘skills of experience’ may result either in jobs designed to reduce autonomy, or in improved skill recognition and development, enhancing equity and career paths.

The Accord: A Post-Mortem

Abstract The recent election rout of the Australian Labor Party (ALP) and the industrial decline of the unions should provoke a renewed questioning of the Accord. This article argues that the Accord contributed to the industrial decline of the unions and, ultimately, the electoral decline of the ALP. The Accord was caught in the contradiction between an economic liberal approach to industrial adjustment policy, pursued by the ALP in government, and the interests of the ALPs own working class constituency. The Accord drifted away from policy approaches that could have corresponded more closely to these interests, including in particular an interventionist and comprehensive industry policy. The inability or unwillingness of the ALP Government to deliver on this part of the first Accord, and the failure of the union leadership to rescind the agreement despite this, placed the burden of industrial adjustment on workers. Thus the Accords subsequent incarnations were fatally flawed, since they associated the ...

Post-Fordism and Workplace Change: Towards a Critical Research Agenda:

Despite the well-developed academic critique, in particular that directed against the work of John Mathews, post-Fordism is still an influential account of workplace change. This is interesting and serious. Interesting, because it raises the question of how a discredited doctrine remains influential in the teeth of intense academic criticism. Serious, because post-Fordism propagates an image of workplace change that could confuse the deliberations of those vitally affected by the latter. This article identifies three incompatible positions on the nature of post-Fordist work organization within the work of Mathews. We argue that post-Fordism. in particu lar the work of Mathews, fails to distinguish favourable from unfavourable (for workers) forms of work organization, misreads developments in management strategy, and neglects the gender dimension of workplace change. Accordingly we counterpose a critical research agenda to that suggested by Mathews. We attempt, hesitantly, to take the debate towards a sociology of knowledge of post-Fordism, by pointing to some of the political interests post-Fordism serves.

Training Reform: Back to Square One?

A number of recent inquiries into Australias national training system have found it to be on the sick side. This article seeks the causes of this in the recent evolution of training policy, which commenced in the late 1980s. The article traces the demise of the first moderately interventionist National Training Reform Agenda, which union reformers played a role in shaping, through the increasing marketisation of training policy. Under the Liberal National Coalition, budget constraints and the short term interests of employers have increasingly driven training policy. The drift of policy is against the grain of prescriptions drawn from the international literature, which shows the need for interventionist measures to correct ‘market failure’, and to ensure adequate expenditure and the integrity of qualifications.

An intention-based model of transfer of training

Purpose - – The purpose of this paper is to explicate and test an intention-based model to explain transfer of training behavior. The theory of planned behavior (TPB) is utilized to examine the role of transfer intention in the transfer of training process. Design/methodology/approach - – A sample of 132 construction practitioners in Hong Kong was adopted. All measurement and structural models were assessed with structural equation modeling. Findings - – Results showed that the three antecedents positively affected transfer intention, while perceived behavioral control and transfer intention affected transfer behavior positively. Moreover, a post hoc analysis supported the mediating role of transfer intention in the relationship between the antecedents and transfer behavior. Practical implications - – Confirmation of the mediating role of intention has ascertained that it should be the core of a transfer of training model. To strengthen the transfer behavior, one has to find ways to increase the intention to transfer. Originality/value - – This paper examined an intention-based model of transfer of training based on the TPB. The latter has rarely been applied to the prediction of transfer behavior.

Industry Policy under Economic Liberalism: Policy Development in the Prime Minister's Manufacturing Task Force

The sudden decline in Australian manufacturing associated with the current resources boom necessitates a renewed examination of the foundations of industry policy. Since the reforms of the 1980s, industry policy has been characterised by an economic liberal approach, the purity of which has been compromised by political pragmatism — particularly evident in the continued support for the auto industry. This article examines the issues raised by industry policy, and the history of industry policy in Australia, as a context for a review of a Report recently released by the Non-Governmental Members of the Prime Ministers Task Force on Manufacturing. This review finds useful proposals within the document, as well as a strong statement of the need for interventionist policy, albeit buried in the main text and an appendix. That this discussion is not front and centre in the Reports presentation indicates ongoing sensitivity about the main choice in industry policy — whether the government should selectively intervene, or leave the organisation of industry to the market.

The Management of Organizational Structure and Strategy: The New Professionalism and Management Redemption

From the 1970s management has encountered seemingly endless external pressures and internal operational problems. In response managers have sought more knowledge and information about the structures and process of organizations. An expanded trade in ‘ideas’ that offer solutions, prescriptions and panaceas for effective management has developed. The trade has become increasingly faddish. The 1990s has seen more management writers criticize these fads and quick-fixes. This paper focuses on a recent contribution to this literature by Frederick Hilmer and Lex Donaldson (1996). These authors not only condemn the excesses of fads but also propose a thoroughgoing professionalization of management. There is much merit in their propositions. Nevertheless, it is argued in this paper that Hilmer and Donaldson misconceive the nature of the problem of management fads and fail to appreciate what professionalization of management involves.

Slow to Learn: Regulatory Oversight of the Safety of Outsourced Aircraft Maintenance in the USA

Abstract Aircraft maintenance outsourcing and offshoring is now prevalent in the airline industry. In the USA, the safety implications of this shift in work organisation have aroused serious concerns — concerns magnified by six serious incidents between 1995 and 2009. Subsequent investigations, audits and reviews of outsourced maintenance activities identified significant failures in regulatory oversight. However, the air safety enforcement agency — the Federal Aviation Administration — was slow to respond to these shortcomings, despite sustained criticism from other US government agencies responsible for transport safety and governance. This paper provides a case study of regulatory failure and the difficulty of reshaping regulatory regimes in the context of rapid changes to work organisation. It highlights challenges in regulating outsourcing and subcontracting — challenges not confined to the USA — as well as problems in reshaping enforcement regimes.

Supply chains, maintenance and safety in the Australian airline industry

This article examines potential regulatory and safety problems arising from the outsourcing and offshoring of heavy aircraft maintenance. We raise questions about the advisability of using increasingly complex supply chains in the aircraft maintenance industry where safety standards are paramount. Greater disarticulation of maintenance work makes regulatory oversight more convoluted and expensive to do thoroughly and transparently. Using a Pressure, Disorganisation and Regulatory Failure model, the article highlights how new work arrangements involving increased use of supply chains are developing more quickly than adequate airline, union and regulator responses to the safety problems engendered by those changes. In often heated industrial debates between licensed aircraft maintenance engineers (LAMEs) and airline managers about business needs and safety, we urge that more attention be paid to LAME concerns about outsourcing.