Purpose

The purpose of this study is to identify the challenges of low hierarchy and self-organised structures for employees’ learning and competency development at work. In the past decade, interest in employees’ and organisations’ self-directedness has increased. Self-organised structures are perceived as better able to answer to the quickly changing requirements of clients and business environments. Within these structures, employees are expected to take on more responsibility and maintain more control over their workplace learning, which means they must be self-directed and autonomous. An important question for this approach is how can workplace learning and employee competence development be enhanced.

Design/methodology/approach

Two self-organised Finnish information and communication technology-companies participated in the study. With the help of data-driven content analysis, 36 interviews were analysed.

Findings

Unclear roles, structures and areas of responsibility caused challenges during the guidance and support of learning, for long-term and sustainable professional development possibilities and in organising and prioritizing work tasks related to learning.

Practical implications

In self-organised structures, there should be a means of the better supporting individual- and team-based learning. This will allow learning to have as much value as possible in the future and, therefore, be more sustainable. The findings are also important to be taken into account in managers’ and HR professionals’ education and training.

Originality/value

The findings of this study can offer insights into employees’ well-being emerging from the possibility to learn and be supported in that learning especially in self-organised structures, which so far has been scarcely studied.

中文翻译：

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ICT领域的自组织结构：员工工作场所学习的挑战

目的

这项研究的目的是确定低层次和自组织结构对员工在工作中的学习和能力发展的挑战。在过去的十年中，对员工和组织的自我指导的兴趣增加了。自组织结构被认为能够更好地满足客户和业务环境快速变化的需求。在这些结构中，期望员工承担更多的责任，并对工作场所的学习保持更多的控制权，这意味着他们必须是自我指导和自主的。这种方法的一个重要问题是如何增强工作场所的学习和员工能力的发展。

设计/方法/方法

两家自组织的芬兰信息和通信技术公司参加了这项研究。在以数据为依据的内容分析的帮助下，对36个访谈进行了分析。

发现

不清楚的角色，结构和责任领域在学习的指导和支持，长期和可持续的专业发展可能性以及与学习相关的工作任务的组织和优先排序方面造成了挑战。

实际影响

在自组织结构中，应该有一种更好地支持基于个人和团队的学习的方法。这将使学习在将来具有尽可能多的价值，并因此更具可持续性。调查结果在经理和人力资源专业人员的教育和培训中也应加以考虑，这一点也很重要。

创意/价值

这项研究的发现可以为员工的幸福感提供见解，而这种幸福感是通过学习的可能性而获得的，尤其是在自组织结构中，这种学习得到了支持，到目前为止，该研究还很少进行研究。