‘Working’ culture: exploring notions of workplace culture and learning at work

Abstract

This article is based on research into the practical problem of masculinity and learning and practising safety in the mining industry. The research began with a post-structural analysis of gendered subjectivity in miners' yarns but argues that a concept of ‘culture’ is needed to elucidate a middle-level relationship between individual workers and the organisation. Concepts of ‘culture’, however, are problematic in this context because they have been used uncritically in organisational literature. The author explores the enactment of a concept of ‘culture’ through an ethnographic study of mine workers. It was found that workplace cultures are characterised by violence and aggression, risk taking, and competitiveness, which impact on learning and practising safety. In emergent understandings of culture in this study the author suggests that ‘culture’ can be reconceptualised in order to involve workers in their own cultural analysis and to articulate the relationship between the complex, collective, and contested nature of contemporary workplaces and the learning that takes place there. Such a cultural analysis enables the possibility of identifying sites of change and ‘culture’ as a concept that can be mobilised as a technology for workers to intervene in their own workplace practices.