Learning in Contract Work: An Actor-Network Theory Study of the Solar Photovoltaic Industry
- Publication Type:
- Thesis
- Issue Date:
- 2024
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With the extensive prevalence of contract work and the intense demand for solar energy, understanding the relations between learning and contract work is vital for addressing dynamic and unanticipated challenges emerging in everyday practice. However, much of the existing research on learning and contract work explores learning as individual acquisition or sociocultural participation. Few studies have investigated learning as enacted in practice; far fewer still have paid attention to learning in electrical contract work in the solar PV industry. Recent research in workplace learning has adopted practice-based approaches, including actor-network theory (ANT), to reconceptualise learning as emergence. Through the ANT empirical lens, this research’s innovative conceptual and methodological framework scrutinises everyday contract work by following a multitude of human and nonhuman actors, both significant and seemingly mundane, enacted as distributed network effects to generate a substantial dataset. Based upon the evidence from 12 solar installations, four solar electrical contractors, 303 hours of observations, 24 interviews, and document review, this thesis contributes new knowledge on learning as emergence in practice.
In so doing, the study critically examines contracts, contracting practices and installing practices to address the central research question, “How is learning in contract work enacted in solar PV installations?”, and two subordinate questions, “How are contracts enacted in practice?” and “How is learning enacted in solar PV installing practices?” On the first subordinate question, the study found that contracts unfold as matters of fact and matters of concern, and five salient contracting practices enact the contract. On the second subordinate question, the evidence indicated that learning is enacted in different connection efforts in re-forming, mutating, and persisting networks. Answering the central research question, since 2019, I have developed an original conceptualisation that learning is enacted as crafting-forward in contract work. This distinct conceptualisation has three components: 1) entwined contracting and installing practices oriented towards fulfilling the current contract, building reputation, and fostering future referrals; 2) four conditions of learning in contracting practices, attuning to contracts as matters of fact and matters of concern, that they a) matter, b) are liked, c) are populated, and d) are durable; and 3) learning in tinkering in installing practices, enacted in different connection efforts in re-forming, mutating, and persisting networks. This research is an empirical study that attends closely to the dynamics of everyday work, contributing to the fields of workplace learning, learning in contract work, and learning in the solar and construction industries.
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