Citation
Cervai, S. (2013), "Editorial", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 25 No. 8. https://doi.org/10.1108/JWL-08-2013-0054
Publisher
:Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Editorial
Article Type: Editorial From: Journal of Workplace Learning, Volume 25, Issue 8
We have now completed our 25th volume. This has been our 6th volume as Editors, and while we have not always been completely happy with things, we are quite content with the Journal and its developments. We have an active and knowledgeable Editorial Advisory Board with scholars from 20 different countries, as well as regular reviewers from around 30 countries. This has helped make us a really international journal. The latest 2010-2013 volumes have included articles and research from all continents. Traditionally, workplace learning research has been strong in the UK; Canada, Australia and the Nordic countries; nowadays we increasingly get submissions from new-to-JWL countries such as Iran, Namibia, Pakistan, Russia, and others.
We are also happy with the developments at Emerald Publishers. They have been at the forefront of electronic publishing and the changes they have made have increased our readership tremendously. The number of downloads has doubled during our time at the helm. It is our humble wish that this increase is not completely due to the intelligent publishing but also to the relevance and quality of our content.
This issue again contains four new research articles. We start off with “Impact evaluation of T&D at the societal level by Luciana Mourão and Jairo Borges-Andrade. They find, based on multiple studies including a survey of 1,150 organizations, that the societal impact of training and development activities is rarely measured even by public organizations and large business corporations. Several of their evaluation indicators could be beneficial in direct T&D evaluation by practitioners.
Next, we dive in the world of professional theatre through a study by Annie Goudeax and Germain Poizat. They have studied the professional practices and informal learning of prop makers and scene decorators at the Grand Théâtre de Genève, and develop an interesting three-component “conservation-invention-distribution theory on their professional development. Next, Abdul Rahim Zumrah studies job satisfaction as a moderator between transfer of training and learning in a Malaysian setting. This paper therefore, is a good example of the growing “non-Western context of workplace learning. Finally, we have Kirsi Kettula and Sami Berghälls case study on drama-based role play, that also connects to many earlier studies of workplace learning published in JWL. These three articles illustrate the broad range of workplace learning topics being studied around the world now, when we enter our 26th volume.
We hope you enjoy this selection, and get motivated to participate actively in the research community attempting to understand and improve workplace learning!
Sara Cervai and Tauno Kekäle