Rosa Lisa Iannone

Refuge to Centre Stage: The Story of Arash

This chapter presents the story of Arash Kamangir, a young Iranian refugee who came to Luxembourg to fulfil his musical dreams. A stronghold of peace and justice, his new country offered him both the freedom and the stage for creative expression. During the first few weeks of his settlement, Arash focused his efforts on building new relationships, navigating his way through Luxembourgish culture and networks. He started volunteering his talent at various community events in hopeful preparation of the day he would receive a residency. Ever since, he has been on a unique and rewarding journey of independence and emancipation through his artistic entrepreneurship.

Learning strategies for competence development in enterprises

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine learning strategies for competence development at the enterprise level, and how these can be actualised in practice. The authors focus on three influential aspects, namely: the highest valued employee skills, main triggers for learning and investment in learning, as well as the most successful types of learning. Design/methodology/approach The empirical research was designed according to abductive reasoning. The data draw on research we undertook between 2013 and 2015, including semi-structured interviews with management, human resources and union representatives, as well as questionnaire responses from a total of 31 EU and 163 EU-competitors, across 53 industries and 22 countries. Findings Competence development requires flexible, learner-centred strategies for initiatives that respond to immediate business needs. Additionally, despite soft competences being so highly valued and sought after, investment (financial and other) by enterprises in developing them is low, relative to the investments poured into hard competences. Also, there is a clear employee demand gap for learning that develops soft competences. Originality/value Findings and recommendations are based on a large-scale empirical study, providing state-of-the-art knowledge, upon which we can renew our current learning strategies in workplaces.