Work, Learning, Inequality and the Academy

• Main Author: Spencer, Bruce
• Format: Conference Object
• Language: English
• Published: 2012
• Subjects: HRM; Occupy Wall Street; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/2149/3236

Paper led to a good discussion on the question of “what are universities for?” plus the issues of funding and alternative structures This paper will look at the connections between work, learning and inequality and apply these understandings to the academy as a worksite. (Theorizing from the literature) Introduction The connection between “work and learning” and human resource management (HRM) as a management control mechanism have been discussed previously. In this paper we want to link these arguments more closely to issues of inequality, (linking to the debates about the “Dominance of the 1%” and “Occupy Wall Street”) and finally to the structural and cultural practices of the Academy as a work-site that mirrors mainstream society. Both authors have written previously, and separately, about the key issues referred to above but have not brought the analysis together to focus on inequality and how that plays out in work and learning literature and the academy as a worksite. The Purpose of this Exploration/Argument Any argument about “work and learning” in the present context should take account of, or at least acknowledge, the major changes that have resulted from the rise in the global importance of financial capital and the resulting crisis of 2008 (Nolan, 2011) and its after-shocks in European countries such as Iceland, Greece, Ireland and Italy. It can be argued that “workplace learning” as essentially an offshoot of Human Resource Management (HRM) is therefore a party to the current economic crisis. Management education in general may be more to blame for the unquestioning acceptance of hegemonic neo-liberal economic ideas but mainstream work and learning practice, teaching and scholarship has also been complicit. It has been argued that “it is an inconvenient truth that many of those implicated in the disasters that have beset Wall Street and the world’s other financial centres are MBA graduates” (Currie, Knights and Starkey, 2010, p.1-2) and we would add ditto for scholars of work and learning and ...