Social innovation and sustainable employability

The course Social Innovation and Sustainable Employability (SISE) provides a profound study of contemporary debates on themes such as social innovation and sustainable employability in relation to contemporary business enterprise and its changing institutional and technological setting. Modern workplaces are rapidly changing, which leads to debates on new professionalism, changing institutional settings, new technologies, remote working (e.g., due to COVID-19), and the development of (new) competencies for work ('the new way of working'). This implies that employees should undertake lifelong learning to adapt to changes for sustained employability in the new knowledge and mid-pandemic economy. Put differently, employees have to share knowledge and skills to enhance productivity and effectiveness in a diverse, high-tech, workplace. They also have to deal with a renewed work-home balance and recovery opportunities due to these changes.
It is essential to understand these debates in the light of organizational, technological, and societal transformations. Central to these transformations is our focus on various forms of innovation, more in particular social and sustainable innovation.
This course has a multidisciplinary character, but has its origin in the field of Work and Organizational Psychology. It can be considered more a 'journey of discovery', leading to interaction and debate, than an attempt to transfer well-defined body of knowledge. With this course we try to prepare BSc students for the fuzzy reality of ongoing (technological and institutional) changes in organizations, making use of insights from W/O-psychology. The ultimate pedagogical aim is teaching BSc students to position themselves in these debates.

Additional lecture information:
Based on a series of 8 lectures combined with 3 team debates (5 students per team maximum) in which teams will fullfill 3 roles as defense, opponent, and jury, students will write an academic group paper (5 students per group at maximum) which will be part of the exam.

After this course, students should be able to:

• discuss key changes in workplaces and organizational settings
• discuss current issues regarding the new way of working
• have insight into the role of organizations in Social Innovation (SI) and Sustained Employability (SE)
• think critical about how SI and SE can be achieved, and how they can designed and/or implemented in real practice
• debate about SI and SE topics in the light of organizational, technological, and societal transformations
• position themselves in these debates
• write a short paper based upon the outcomes of the group debates

Je moet voldoen aan de volgende eisen

• Ingeschreven voor een andere opleiding dan
• HBO-TOP Applied Physics, Schakelprogramma
• In Blok 1 mag je geen deel uitmaken van één van de volgende doelgroepen
• Uitgesloten studentgroepen
• Minimaal 1 van de onderstaande cursussen moet(en) zijn behaald
• MMGO (non IE) (1JK00)
• Fundamentals of wop (1JV00)

• To be announced Selection of academic journal papers