Jensen, Lars Peter

Kofoed, L.B.

Rosenørn, T.U.

The initiating question guiding this study is how employee participation can be established during an organisational change process in order to ensure the employees' involvement in the design of their future work environment. A case study where an "experimentarium" (learning lab) was set up in a medium size Danish company (200 employees) is presented in this paper. The study shows that management as well as employees have to learn respectively to manage and to participate in the change process and to deal with the unforeseen problems during the change process. The case study demonstrates that it is feasible to generate employee participation in designing their future working environment in the experimentarium when careful attention is given to the influence of situational factors and the work in the experimentarium is supported by management. Furthermore a common learning process was started in the experimentarium, and it is shown that the role of managers and supervisors is very important for the outcome of the learning. Results from work in experimentaria show that management and employees have unclear, different and not communicated expectations to each other and that this is a barrier for a successful change - and learning process. Reliability, confidence, visibility and communication skills are the most wanted management qualifications seen from the employee's point of view. Flexibility, reliability, willingness to learn and to take more initiatives and responsibility are qualifications manangement wants the employees to acquire. These qualifications are to a certain extent obtained by the employees in the experimentarium

Managing Changes with focus on Employee Involvement and Learning:An experimentarium as a learning arena

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