Welcome to Lyndsey Jenkins who has just joined us as a new research student within the Centre for Social Informatics at Edinburgh Napier University. I am Lyndsey’s Director of Studies, with Professor Robert Raeside, Director of the Employment Research Institute at Edinburgh Napier University, as second supervisor. Lyndsey’s study is entitled Enhancing the capacity for workplace learning and innovation in Scotland.
This ESRC-funded research will investigate innovation and best practice in skills development in the workplace in Scotland, drawing comparisons with the rest of the UK and other countries. Lyndsey will explore how employee-led workforce learning can be encouraged to deliver innovation that leads to competitive advantage, employment growth, and increased productivity. The aims of the work are to:
- Identify factors that underpin successful workplace learning and innovation.
- Determine how skills innovation in the workplace is facilitated by organisational culture and strategy.
- Demonstrate how a skills agency can support innovation in the workplace.
- Formulate practical and workable recommendations to policy makers concerned with the skills agenda in Scotland.
The study will furnish insight into how existing knowledge is shared, used, stored, and created in organisations. The work will also make contributions to policy development in Scotland as related to investment in workplace learning for the benefit of the economy.
The study is supported through a partnership between Scottish Graduate School of Social Sciences – Doctoral Training Centre (SGSSS-DTC) and Skills Development Scotland. It is hosted by the Information Science pathway of the SGSSS-DTC.