ABSTRACT
Within sociology the topic of workplace learning, while having only recently come into prominence, nevertheless has its roots in the work of the founding fathers. Marx, with his concern for the conditions of the working class, sought to demonstrate the impact of work on the workers’ experience of the world. His work on alienation has been picked up and developed by Blauner in the 1960s, although there it became almost synonymous with work satisfaction (Blauner, 1964). Durkheim (1893/ 1964) used the division of labour as one of his central themes, highlighting the impact of the ‘abnormal’ forms in limiting the opportunities for learning that were available to workers. Both of these were concerned with showing how the way in which we organize work conditions the worker’s experience of the world. The mechanism through which workers acquire their specific perceptions of the world is, of course, the process of learning. Thus, while not specifically concerned with the process of learning, both revealed the fundamental proposition, that the way in which we organize work shapes and conditions the individual’s perception of the world.
