The future of work and education (1)

COURSE: WORK AND LEARNING

FORUM: The future of work and education

TOPICS: whole systems, chaos, Taylorism

Link to Itslearning

Beck’s article was interesting in that it gave a very readable overview of possible scenarios. I do not believe that we are moving towards an age of “increased production.” In fact, many production sites have scaled down their work, even in Germany, where the figure of “working citizens” (Beck, p. 51) has dominated the scene for decades.

Recent developments may make us more critical of Beck’s article, however I find that the closing paragraph is right on target.

“What must happen politically to ensure that everyone doing something outside the classical careers – whether on a short-term contract without job security or without any kind of contract – should nevertheless remain or become a full citizen? How can the basic right to participate in the basic rights of modernity be reaffirmed in a context of deregulation and fraying of the work society?”

Beck provides us with an socio-political overview, whereas Marsick and Watkins present metaphors that help us understand the meta-dimensions of organizational learning in these changing times. The transition, within just a few decades, from a tayloristic approach, to a more modern one is still in process. I believe that an “open system” approach has not yet been fully explored, whereas we are already talking about moving on to learning organizations based on “holographic” and even “chaos/complexity” premises.

I personally still need to fully understand the whole system approach envisioned by von Bertalanffy, (Marcick, p. 203) which I regard as a powerful tool to function in networked systems.

Here is a link on that: http://www.geocities.com/~n4bz/gst/gst0.htm