Building Better Programmes: Learning Networks in the Promotion of Workplace Innovation

This paper starts by providing a generic conceptual framework to improve understanding of critical success factors for the social effectiveness of programmes that promote workplace innovation. Thereafter, the paper shows how this framework can be applied in making choices about the content of projects in the programmes. A distinction is made between user-oriented, method-based, and learning network types of project. The three types are examined and compared, in terms of their ability to provide four kinds of outcomes, programme learning and policy learning. The pa-per also shows how learning networks can be applied to overcome some of the problems involved in the two other types of project. In elaborating the argument, the author makes use of the experiences gained from the implementation of learning network projects in the Finnish Workplace Development Programme TYKES.