Serife Erol: Work Orientation and Further Education

Life-long learning: A Study of the Relationship between Work Orientation and Further Education amongst Workers in Germany

The challenges in the world of work in the course of digital transformation require constant adaptation to the new skill requirements by the employees, so the willingness and ability of people to lifelong learning with regard to their employment opportunities has become an important issue. This dissertation project aims to make a contribution to a better understanding of the further training behavior amongst employees in Germany. Beyond socio-demographic factors it has been proven that the factors of workplace and professional context play a primary role in order to explain the learning activities of employees. However, the assumption that employees under the same or similar living and working conditions are assigned the same training behavior remains unsatisfactory. Is it possible, that in fact very individual work patterns and professional life plans do exist under the same working and living conditions, which in turn determine the further education behaviors of employees?

Work orientation is useful for exploring the workers’ behavior in respect of further training because it is argued that the same work conditions and situations may be experienced and interpreted by workers differently and subsequently cause different behavior patterns among them. This raises the question of the extent to which the social institutions (market, profession, social network, organization) determine the "objective opportunities for action" and their perception in employment biographies. In light of changes in the labor market, such as the varying distribution of job insecurity, it is worth considering whether the work orientation of workers might provide an explanation for differing patterns of behavior amongst workers in regard to further training. Therefore, this dissertation project aims to investigate the role of work orientations in explaining the work-related further training behavior among the employees in Germany.