Editorial

Citation

Gimson, A. (2013), "Editorial", Development and Learning in Organizations, Vol. 27 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/dlo.2013.08127aaa.001

Editorial

Article Type: Editorial From: Development and Learning in Organizations, Volume 27, Issue 1

Welcome to the first issue of the journal for 2013. In this New Year, some of us have, no doubt, returned to work energized by the thought of what we might achieve in the coming twelve months. Some, on the other hand, will be amongst the growing number of malcontent workers, the problem addressed in our Viewpoint by Joan Marques. She shares some interesting statistics on what might be driving these increasing levels of dissatisfaction. Perhaps more importantly, though, she sets out how we might go about improving things.

We also hear much through the media about employer dissatisfaction with the lack of skills amongst their younger, newly-qualified employees. But, some schools are responding. Barry Jackson has been working on developing the mentoring skills of 15 year olds and in his article, he draws parallels between the issues they faced – and how they learned to address them – and the kinds of situations mentors in organizations encounter. You might, or might not, be surprised at the similarities.

Clinton Longnecker, Sam Beard and Joseph Scazzero take a look at the benefits to be gained from corporate volunteering schemes – not from the more usual perspective of the organization, but from those actually engaged in the work. They outline the top eight reasons given by respondents in a survey of twenty six organizations across the manufacturing, service and public sectors in the US.

It is estimated that a massive £18.7 billion per year is lost by UK businesses due to employee misunderstandings. How you drill down to figure out what knowledge and skill gaps might be contributing to this is explored in the article by Mary Clarke. Using examples from high-risk sectors (railways and utilities) she makes a sound case for conducting online assessments of both employee competence and employee confidence.

Dealing with a different type of risk, Anne Llewellyn and Sarah Frame bring us an innovative case study where social work professionals are learning how to better safeguard vulnerable children in the UK. They show how online digital media simulation is providing a far richer and more effective learning experience than traditional e-learning.

Our first two review articles also examine aspects of the online learning world. Firstly, in “Online corporate social networking” we hear about research conducted in Brazil – one of the world’s leading emerging markets – which demonstrates that companies with a greater degree of involvement in social networking develop organizational learning practices which improve their results. Secondly, we are introduced to the world of multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs) in “Game on for virtual work and play”. As organizations require greater levels of global, virtual teamwork, those people who are already skilled in MMORPGs may already have developed many of the skills required – virtually interacting with others, joining virtual groups to achieve common goals and carrying out complex missions.

And finally, if all this online exploration gets too much, we finish with a review of some of the more recent work on emotional intelligence (EI) in “Emotional intelligence ‘wow’ factor” which, at the very least, will allow each of us to reflect on our own levels of self-awareness and empathy and our abilities to manage our own emotions and build effective relationships. If proponents of EI are to be believed, improving our capabilities in all four areas will have a positive impact on our personal success during 2013. Thirteen – lucky for some hopefully?

Anne GimsonBased at Strategic Developments International, UK. anne@stratdevint.com