Competence development through the lens of structuration - Does age matter in Finnish IT workplaces?

This thesis is about existing employees’ competence development, with a particular focus on middle-aged and late-career employees in the Finnish information technology field. Research on adult education, workforce development and workplace learning has traditionally relied on economic, psychosocial and learning theories. The lower participation rate of older workers in skills training is explained in terms of lowered abilities and willingness to learn, or through employers’ cost- driven strategies, which prioritise younger employees. While earlier studies tend to focus on either the employee or the learning environment, this thesis emphasises the relationships between an employee’s agency and the enablers and constraints apparent in the work environment.

The aim is to understand differences in employees’ participation in competence development activities within the workplace and the significance of various factors involved. A pragmatic ontology is applied and a methodology of mixed methods, integrating data collection and analysis of a structured survey across industries (N=1,119) and face-to-face interviews (N=27). Theoretically, a novel approach is developed by building on key concepts of structuration theory (Giddens, 1979, 1984).

The core argument in this thesis is that the frequency of competence development activities is an outcome of the pre-existing interaction between the employee and the learning environment. The thesis contributes to theory by providing an empirically grounded and theoretically informed conceptualisation of employees’ competence development, firstly, in the form of an analytical framework, and secondly, in the novel categorisation of agentic orientations.

The thesis proposes that employees engage in competence development activities at different levels as a result of their agentic orientation, which may be proactive, reactive or restricted. Following these orientations, employees perceive factors in the learning environment as either enabling, supportive or constraining, leading to the agentic actions to initiate, accept or reject opportunities for competence development.

Empirically, the study demonstrates that late-career employees are as active in their competence development activities as middle-aged employees are but face specific challenges of indirect age discrimination related to on-the-job learning. The holistic framework and the categorisation of proactive, reactive and restricted employees supports policymakers and practitioners to adjust their adult education and training offerings by observing individual agentic orientation rather than chronological age. In addition, these serve to avoid age and gender biases related to on-the-job learning.