2.1.2 Non-permanent work

2.1.2 Non-permanent work

The growth of non-permanent work is a global phenomenon that is set to intensify in an environment characterised by shorter business cycles and the outsourcing of jobs (Brown et al. 2011; Ross, 2008). Traditional “smokestack” manufacturing and long-cycle production industries have in many advanced economies been usurped or are being usurped by knowledge and service-sector industries working on shorter-term production or turnaround cycles, demanding a core of ongoing workers and a flexible, temporary periphery, depending on the often rapidly shifting demand for the enterprise’s “niche” or customised products and markets.

The diverse nature of non-permanent work involves shifting between different identity roles, clients and languages. This can create a juggling act of competing contracts, demands and expectations across a variety of contexts, in which understanding the norms of various environments becomes valuable. This needs to be done while appearing to adapt to each client’s needs and being able to offer knowledge only in contexts where it is valued (Fenwick, 2008). In this sense, one needs to be a shape-shifter and a skilled time manager, while presenting a coherent “professional self” for the particular client at hand (Bound, Rushbrook, Evans, Waite & Karmel, 2014). Retaining some type of visible identity marker to avoid a sense of fragmentation can be very difficult in this situation, but it is important for psychological and pragmatic reasons (Edwards & Usher, 1996).

For some non-permanent workers, expertise is increasingly deployed in relational and multifaceted ways, cutting across areas of specialisation. These workers develop multiple identities according to their positioning and contribution to different work teams they participate in. In occupations of all kinds, and at all levels, people come to figure out who they are, through the social, economic and political contexts in which they participate and by how they relate to others both within and beyond these contexts. Success can arise from the development of capabilities to make multiple transitions and to navigate these “figured worlds” . Skills and knowledge have to be developed and changed as they are operationalised in the culture of new workplaces, requiring recontextualisation (Evans, Guile & Harris 2009) across mental, material, social and cultural planes (Lobato, 2003). Furthermore, it is not just the skills and knowledge that develop, but the whole person, as he or she adjusts, with greater or lesser success, to working in a new environment, as Hager and Hodkinson (2011) have argued. That adjustment depends as much upon the receptive or expansive nature of the new workplace, as on the individual non-permanent worker (Bound et al., 2014).

In their study of 100 non-permanent workers in Singapore in three different sectors, Bound et al. (2015) found that what they call “occupational affordances” (more appropriate for non-permanent workers than the concept of workplace affordances) “facilitate or inhibit the non-permanent worker’s navigation of the complex terrain of non-permanent work,” but, the authors remind us, “occupational affordances do not absolve the individual of his or her agentic involvement in seeking out and acting on the affordances” (p. 43). These authors found that being a purposeful non-permanent worker requires strong integration of entrepreneurialism, craft identity and learning-to-learn skills, or what they call “integrated practice” . The combination of entrepreneurialism and craft identity enables recontextualisation, and reflexive and meta-cognitive learning, in deeper ways that guide the non-permanent worker to seek out certain jobs, people and learning, but not others, towards building specialised skills and carving a particular niche or positioning in the marketplace (Ibid).

Assessment for this kind of work needs to be holistic rather than atomistic. For example, does the assessment (formative, sustainable and/or summative) support learners’ ability to combine entrepreneurial with technical, vocational and/or professional capabilities, build learners’ capabilities to navigate complex multiple environments and so on?

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