Lena Abrahamsson

Production economics analysis of investment initiated to improve working environment.

This article describes the results of an evaluation of a new work place for ladle preparation at Swedish Steel in Luleå, Sweden. The company initiated a development project related to ladle service work, in order to come to grips with the difficult working environment and problems associated with absenteeism due to illness and occupational injuries. The evaluation was performed for the first three years after implementation of the project and it shows that the new work place considerably improved working conditions and increased both the quality and efficiency of production. The purpose of this article is also to discuss some methodological problems. The follow-up of the various changes in working environment and personnel statistics was fairly simple to carry out. But in terms of production effects, the companys in-house production follow-up system proved to be too unspecified and oversimplified. It was also difficult to decide which changes should count as effects of the new work place and to value these in monetary terms. The profitability calculation shows that an investment initiated to improve the working environment can yield good profitability.

Trainers and learners constructing a community of practice: Masculine work cultures and learning safety in the mining industry

Abstract This article begins with the practical problem of the failure of training in safe work practices to result in changes to the rate of accident and injury in mining workplaces. A review of the literature in workplace training and workplace learning suggests that there has been little investigation of the relationship between how trainers train, and what learners learn in the workplace. Interviews and participant observation were carried out with 20 mine workers in a coal-mining organisation and seven trainers in a Mines Rescue Service about masculine work cultures and teaching and learning safety in the mining industry. In this article we analyse the cultures of mine work in which trainers and mine workers operate and specifically, their responses about their teaching and learning practices. Analysis suggests that even though trainers and workers do not work in the same organisation or geographical location, they co-participate in the ongoing construction of a community of practice that reinforces strong implicit masculine storylines. Mine workers were found to learn safety through the experience of doing their work, while trainers report safety training using simulated environments and codified practice. Understanding how mine workers learn safety in the workplace, within a community of practice, is critical to attempts to improve safety training and safety records.

Academic Entrepreneurship – Gendered Discourses and Ghettos

In this article, we explore how the academic entrepreneurship discourse is constructed and gendered, based on texts on academic entrepreneurship and interviews with teachers and researchers at two Swedish universities. We show that the global entrepreneurship discourse is met by both counteracting and contributory discourses in academia. We also show that entrepreneurship-promoting texts in which only men are depicted address both women and men, while pictures of women are only targeted to women, often found in ‘entrepreneurial ghettos’ and conceptualized as in need of support, as less risk-willing and less willing to commercialize their research. Another problem addressed in this article is how to design gender mainstreaming interventions without reproducing such stereotypes. We believe the solution is not gender neutrality, but to move back and forth between liberal feminist and social constructionist approaches.

TQM: an act of balance between contradictions

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the discussion of organisation and management by uncovering some embedded contradictions in total quality management (TQM). Design/methodology/approach ...

Restoring the order: gender segregation as an obstacle to organisational development

This paper raises questions about the links between gender and organisational changes. The empirical base for the discussion is a qualitative study of the effects of organisational changes in the pulp and paper industry, the electronics industry, the food industry and the laundry industry in Sweden during the mid-1990s. At the studied companies, restoration responses in the work organisations brought the organisation back into its original form and function. The study shows that gender exerts an influence both on the existing work organisation and in the organisational change. The modern organisation, with its focus on integration and decentralisation, challenges the gender order, which is a strong system, built on segregation and hierarchy. The conclusion from the study is that gender segregating and stereotypic gender-coding of workplaces and work tasks were strong restoring mechanisms and obstacles to strategic organisational changes.

From Grounded Skills to Sky Qualifications: A Study of Workers Creating and Recreating Qualifications, Identity and Gender at an Underground Iron Ore Mine in Sweden:

Over a period of 50 years at Kiruna iron ore mine in the far north of Sweden we can see a transformation of work from underground to remote control at surface level. What characterized the old underground workface was the close relation between man and the hard rock centred on arduous physical work under dangerous conditions. Today, the face miners are located ‘up in the sky’ on the seventh level of an office building close to the mine. The workers leave their job at the end of the shift just as clean as when they arrived. The contact with the hard rock is mediated by machines controlled by remote control technology. The modern technology has created a new type of work - new in terms of competencies and knowledge as well as workload. The purpose of this article is to reflect on the technical development of underground mining in Kiruna and to consider the implications it has had on qualifications, identity and gender. There is an emerging, and in many aspects already evident, knowledge transformation - from the old and obsolete physical and tacit knowledge and skills (for example the ability to ‘read the rock’) to something new which can be described as abstract knowledge. But the old culture still provides an important context for workplace learning and the construction of identity and gender. This is associated with a degree of ‘worker identity lag’ and to difficulties in adapting attitudes and norms to the demands and structures that result from the new technology and the new work tasks. The new forms of work in the mine have less need for the traditional mining competencies, attitudes and ideals. The traditional workplace culture and its ‘macho style’ have also been challenged. Workers have to find new ways to learn and to develop a workplace culture more attuned to a new type of worker identity and masculinity.

Learning Gaps in a Learning Organization: Professionals' Values versus Management Values.

Purpose – The aim of this article is to challenge the concept of “the learning organization” as unproblematic and inherently good.Design/methodology/approach – The research looked at how teachers – as an example of public sector professionals in a work organization that claims to be a learning organization – view their conditions for learning.Findings – By using this approach, the normative values surrounding the concept of the learning organization were discussed. This approach identifies power‐relations: i.e. who has the priority of interpretation to define what learning is desired and considered relevant as well as when, how and where one learns. In addition, it gives indications to how and why the implementations of management concepts are not always successful.Originality/value – This article shows how the implementation of a governance concept (learning organization) in fact can be seen as bringing with it unintended consequences for the organization as a whole – and especially for the professionals...

Future of metal mining: Sixteen predictions

The worlds metal mining industry faces a number of challenges which must be anticipated and managed wisely. The prevailing recession will force the industry to further rationalisations that require both new technologies and new organisational forms that supports both high productivity and good working conditions. Based on what was said at three international mining conferences, the authors of this paper present 16 predictions for the mining industry of the future. In one or another way the mining industry of today must address them all.

Reframing practice through the use of Personas

The focus of this paper is a development process of ‘Personas’; fictitious characters are used to reflect on norms and perspectives of practice. Although reflective practice is a well‐known process to enhance and support learning, improvement, development, etc., it is not easy to implement. Drawing on theories of action, this paper describes learning gained through using the Persona method within a research project called the Future Factory. The process of developing a Persona includes a reflective examination of the case approached and an analysis and Persona creation development that go hand‐in‐hand. Lessons learned are that the process of creating Personas has contributed to a critical reflection of investigation contexts and that both the technique itself and the process of creating Personas has contributed to re‐framing practice among participants in the Future Factory project.

Gender-based learning dilemmas in organizations

Raises questions about the links between gender and organizational changes, and between gender and learning at work. The empirical base is a qualitative study of organizational changes in the pulp and paper industry, electronics industry, food industry, and laundry industry in Sweden during the late 1990s. In the studied companies, restoration responses in the work organizations brought the organization back its original form and function. Shows that gender exerts an influence on the existing work organization and on the organizational change. The learning organization, with its focus on integration and decentralization, challenges gender order, which is a strong system, built on segregation and hierarchy. Concludes that gender segregating and stereotypic gender‐coding of workplaces and work tasks were strong restoring mechanisms and obstacles to strategic organizational changes, and to individual and to organizational learning.