Agentic Behaviour at Work: Crafting Learning Experiences

Abstract

A key priority for research on professional development is elaborating how employees become and remain high-performing workers who are able to effectively respond to the changing requirements of their work. This chapter focuses on how workers develop such high performance at work. It is proposed that current accounts of professional expertise development lack a consideration of the variety and breadth of work-relevant experiences necessary to generate expertise, including employees who deliberately contribute to that development. Although deliberate practice as originally conceptualised by Ericsson et al. (1993) may not be readably identifiable in work contexts, certainly analogous processes and other agentic efforts shape the quality of workplace learning. It is illuminated how employees can deliberately influence their expertise development by seeking additional work experiences and proactively securing information and feedback.