Since the early 1990s, the workplace has been rediscovered as a vital site of learning during adulthood which provides extensive and unique learning experience barely available in formal education. Workplace learning is responsible for building the backbone of occupational socialisation. Without a proper job at hand young people cannot complete their professional development as they miss out on key competences available in workplace learning only.  

Analysing the interplay of individual and organisational bounded agency in workplace learning has been uncovered as a new research frontier. Only by better understanding of the interplay of individual and organisational bounded agency in workplace learning can a deadlock situation be overcome where all actors involved support workplace learning, yet little progress is actually achieved. Moreover, for understanding the impact of societal environments, which are restricting or expanding individual and organisational agency with regard to workplace learning, it is key to better understand how workplace learning emanates  within the intersection of individual and organisational bounded agency.

For crafting a framework for studying the interplay of individual and organisational bounded agency in workplace learning, strands of the literature on workplace learning (Fuller and Unwin, 2004; Koike and Inoki, 1990), on organisational institutionalism (Scott, 2014) and on new structuralism in social stratification (Tomaskovic-Devey, 2014) are combined with approaches to individual bounded agency in workplace learning (Evans, 2007; Evans, 2017).

The symposium presents findings of 17 in-depth organisational case studies designed to shed light on the interplay of individual and organisational agency in workplace learning, applying a cross-sectoral and cross-country comparative framework and focusing on the workplace learning available within the first ten years of occupational careers in a particular sector. Sectors studied comprise of retail (studied in Flanders (Belgium), Denmark and Estonia), metals (studied in Bulgaria and the Basque Region (Spain)) and adult education (studied in Austria, England (UK), Italy, and Slovakia).

The symposium comprises of four papers. The first paper discusses the theoretical and conceptional framework applied for studying the interplay of individual and organisational bounded agency in a cross-country comparative manner. The framework applied for making sense out of differences in societal environments for both individual and organisation agency is presented. It also covers the common research methodology applied across the studies presented in the following papers. The second paper deals with early career workers learning in the workplace in retail, comparing organisations in Denmark, Flanders and Estonia. The third paper discusses workplace learning in the metal sector in Bulgaria and the Basque Region (Spain). The fourth and final paper studies workplace learning of early career adult educators in different subfields of adult education in four countries (Austria, Italy, Slovakia, UK).

Evans, Karen (2007). Concepts of bounded agency in education, work, and the personal lives of young adults. International journal of psychology, Vol. 42, No 2, pp. 85-93. Evans, Karen (2017). Bounded Agency in Professional Lives. In: Goller, Michael and Paloniemi, Susanna (eds). Agency at Work: An Agentic Perspective on Professional Learning and Development. Cham: Springer International Publishing, pp. 17-36. Fuller, Alison and Unwin, Lorna (2004). Expansive learning environments: integrating organizational and personal development. In: Rainbird, Helen; Fuller, Alison and Munro, Anne (eds). Workplace Learning in Context. London: Routledge; New York, N.Y., pp. 126-144. Koike, Kazuo and Inoki, Takenori (eds) (1990). Skill formation in Japan and Southeast Asia. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press. Scott, Richard W (2014). Institutions and Organizations - Ideas, Interests, and Identities. (4th extended edition ed.). London: Sage. Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald (2014). The Relational Generation of Workplace Inequalities. Social Currents, Vol. 1, No 1, pp. 51-73. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/2329496513514032