Purpose The purpose of this paper is to discuss how Dewey’s notions of experience, inquiry and reflection can increase managers’ capacity to cope with sustainability transitions. Design/methodology/approach Problem-based learning is discussed as an approach for enabling sustainable management learning. Dewey’s concepts of experience, inquiry and reflection are used to conceptualize learning as an iterative “self-corrective” learning process toward sustainability. Two public managers’ experiences of a personal development module in a management education program are used to discuss how Dewey’s concepts work to integrate practice and theory. Findings Dewey’s problem-based learning framework has the potential to increase managers’ capability to cope with complex and multifaceted challenges such as sustainability because of its focus on problem-solving. Practical implications Management is a social practice. Management education can support management learning if management is perceived as a practice. Originality/value Sustainable management learning is presented as an iterative and gradual learning process aimed toward settled inquiry that emerges when sustainable solutions work satisfactory in relation to the multiple and contradictory forces, which are in play in real-life situations.

The purpose of this article is to initiate a Nordic exchange of research-based knowledge about elderly care education. The aim is to shed light on and discuss learning issues that the Nordic countries have in common. Changing ways of understanding and performing care work throughout the Nordic region create a need for new understandings of the roles of welfare professionals and of issues of their learning. In Denmark, elderly care education is anchored in social and health care programmes within the vocational education system. Targeted research has taken place in the field since 2006, but no attempt so far has been made to create a systematic overview of the existing research. This article presents the results of a scoping review of the research in social and health care education in the Danish context. The review includes 45 publications in which themes and types of learning actor are identified. The article concludes that there are relatively few studies that take a learning perspective on social and health care education programmes. The analysis shows a predominance of studies that examine the trainee as a learner, while few study teachers and care workers as learners or focus on organisational learning.

The aim of this paper is to raise awareness of problem-based learning (PBL) and more specifically the problem analysis as a set of learning principles and practices offering the potential to bridge higher education to the complexities and uncertainties of science and society. Literature on PBL often argues that PBL supports education aimed at developing students’ competences in problem-solving. However, as we increasingly face complex and wicked problems, we cannot assume that problems can be solved based on existing methods and theories; the focus needs to shift from problem-solving to problem analysis and complexity navigation. This paper describes and discusses the need to focus on authenticity, exemplarity, and interdisciplinary as key educational concepts when developing competencies to analyze complex problems. In addressing these key concepts, the paper touches upon the didactical implications of problem analysis as the most important competence to achieve during higher education and as essential when moving beyond education and into a complex world where problems are always interrelated, as reflected in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

Lean practitioners have always been very passionate about sharing their experiences and knowledge so others also can benefit from better processes and reduced waste. When lean practitioners get together to discuss and spread knowledge, the 'implementation of lean' is often at the core of the conversation. How do we get others to understand the nature of lean and how do we get them to implement it? Despite clearly documented, positive outcomes and strong business cases, we still encounter resistance and it can be challenging to even get our own colleagues to be engaged with lean.This paper explores what motivates individuals with different project roles to work with lean, when some research shows that knowledge and will is not enough to change. It considers why incentive measures and a focus on time and cost savings could have a negative impact on the motivation to change for some groups. This discussion is supported with survey data and experiences from a major infrastructure project and within the organisation of the client, Highways England.

Purpose This paper aims to contribute to the literature on distributed sensemaking by studying how the police establish and develop their new position as police contacts during the police reform. Design/methodology/approach The authors studied how the position of police contact, a cornerstone of the recent Norwegian police reform, was interpreted and practised. The authors interviewed police contacts at two different times during reform implementation to explore how they made sense of and practised their job. Findings The authors identified three interpretations of the position of police contact and describe them as ideal types: an administrative position, a professional position and a strategic position. The ideal types were reinforced rather than developing towards a shared understanding. Our data demonstrate that the sensemaking processes and experimentation to settle into the new position involved local actors internally in the police and externally in relation to local authorities, and reinforced local interpretations. Originality/value This study supports the notion of sensemaking as distributed but extends previous research by suggesting that “ideal types” help us understand the content of interpretations. This study also extends the understanding by showing that distributed sensemaking takes place as individuals make sense of more open-ended problems. This challenges the understanding of the term distributed, because unless challenged, distributed sensemaking in isolated pockets of the organization remain local, and the authors suggest that the term local distributed sensemaking captures this phenomenon.