The 13th Researching Work & Learning (RWL) International Conference
Linköping University, Sweden
June 17-19th 2024
The Researching Work & Learning (RWL) International Conference Series is the world's longest continuously running international research conference series in the field of workplace learning. It was initiated in 1999 by researchers at the University of Leeds (UK), and as of 2022, it has visited ten countries across five continents. This year, the conference theme was "Researching Work and Learning in Times of Change".
The 13th RWL Conference was hosted by Linköping University, Sweden. There were many participants from around the world, ranging from first-year doctoral students to scholars who are leading experts in their fields. Speakers from New Zealand, Australia, Brunei, South Africa, Singapore, South Africa, Finland and the UK presented their work on such broad fields as vocational training, educational policies, lifelong learning and skills development. Keynote speakers covered such topics as precarity, postabyssal research, green transitions, and anticipatory governance.
The paper I presented considered the concept of organizational change according to the political cleavages as envisioned by Seymour Lipset and Ronald Inglehart. As opposed to learning demonstrated by an individual, or even for specific groups or communities of practice, this is learning as an organization in a much more organic manner, sometimes despite the individuals who make up the organization. I chose to focus on political organizations because these are human systems that are required to learn through both external forces (the electorate and the political climate) and internal tensions (its own membership), by way of positive and negative focus learning, from both continuous renewal and episodic process. Although the two concepts are frequently contradictory, elections are by definition episodic processes, but a political party would not be able to achieve success without continuous renewal.
I chose to compare two Green parties because the Global Greens is an organization that consists of over 400 Green parties around the world, all participating equitably and sharing a common Charter. I focused on Die Grünen and the Green Party of Taiwan, one considered one of the most electorally successful Green parties in the world, while the other has yet to see success in the form of a parliamentary position. These are two Green parties established in two very different parts of the world, during two distinct eras, each exhibiting how it conforms and diverges from Inglehart’s cleavages.
The paper concludes with a discussion on whether Green parties anticipated the cleavages due to their transnational ties through the Global Greens, and whether the concept of cleavages needs to be updated once again to reflect today's political and governance trends. Finally, it raises the question of whether Green parties, which advocate a grassroots form of governance, can retain its voters in a top-down structure.