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Barbara Ofstad has more than 20 years of managerial experience in various roles in the electro-technical industry. In 2017, she assumed responsibility for the corporate vocational education and training (VET) operations of Siemens in Germany currently responsible for 3,000+ apprentices and dual students. She has served in various vocational education boards (VDMA, VHU, BDA) and is a member of the board of trustees of the Fraunhofer Institute for Industrial Mathematics (ITWM Kaiserslautern).
In September 2022, she defended her Doctorate in Business Administration (DBA) on the topic of “Boundary spanning in digital transformation: A mixed-method single case study about learning in a vocational education and training department” supervised by Prof. Anne Bartel-Radic from the Université Grenoble Alpes. Her thesis explores how and why boundary spanning in VET helps improve technical skills and methods of VET trainers. Use cases and open, people-oriented venues of learning can foster boundary spanning propensity, thereby contributing to social learning.
Thesis Direction
Pr Anne Bartel-Radic
Thesis Title
Boundary Spanning in Vocational Education and Training: Case Study of a German industrial vocational education and training department undergoing digital transformation
Abstract
The empiric case of a German MNE’s Vocational Education and Training (VET) department in digital transformation explores how and why boundary spanning in VET can help bridge from the old world of VET to “new work”.
A Vocational Education and Training department – sometimes the little sister of a corporate learning department – operates at the bottom of the talent building echelon and typically caters for professional tertiary education. VET is considered a cornerstone of the German education system and a warrant of “Made in Germany” standards and skilled workforce. During a period of two to four years, apprentices and dual students are employed by a company and learn skills
in a training center that they cannot acquire during their practical phases on the shop floor respectively in a department, or in vocational school. A VET department manages these training centers and offers an interesting personnel assembly of VET veterans, people with teaching
background and recent additions from the businesses or factory floors – all of them truly dedicated to learning and teaching.
Recent developments in technical apprenticeships in Germany have added digital competencies to the vocational schools’ and companies’ apprenticeship training curricula. As professional education and training changes, VET trainers need to acquire new skills and, specifically, digital
competencies, to adopt new VET approaches and a new mindset regarding the philosophy of VET. These digital competencies of trainers are often company specific. Intra-organizational boundaries – i.e., borders – may hinder efficient exchange of know-how and learning. Via a
phenomenon called boundary spanning, such borders may be overcome.
As this thesis shows, boundary spanning propensity, along with trainers’ relational abilities, leadership, and trust, significantly contributes to social learning. Propensity is defined here as the individual trainer’s attitude that more boundary spanning across training centers, regions
and towards internal customers should be done to proliferate information, innovative learning methods and enhance technical skills of trainers. This research also empirically proves that boundary spanning propensity significantly correlates with open learning set-ups and use-cases.
Leaders should act as role models in learning and bridging across teams, while striving to create an atmosphere of openness and trust. As a qualitative result, they should also give time and room for learning. These are relevant findings for a practitioner; academically, this thesis helps to expand the academic notion of boundary spanning beyond bridging from one company to another company or beyond bridging from one corporate entity to another one: bridging can as
well happen within an entity to enhance learning and improve future readiness of operations.
As a further scientific contribution, this research adds a definition of boundary spanning propensity to the research body.
Understanding how VET teams learn to bridge skills gap, tackle anxieties, and adopt a new culture in the context of digital transformation is a worthwhile case to observe and draw practical conclusions from; it may also serve as an example for learning challenges in digital transformation of other companies or teams, such as factory floor workers or technical service personnel.