Maintaining and improving the capacity to be effective in work is held now to become an important social goal in order to maintain, individual, local and national well-being, including standard of living (Organisation of Economic and Cultural Development (OECD), 1996). Yet, without knowing more about how individuals are able to engage in work and learn through that work, and are motivated to continue to learn there can be no certainty about whether the expectations upon individuals are realistic. This paper reports the initial findings of an investigation that aims to understand something of these relations through understanding the working lives of five individuals. It aims to explore these individuals' working lives including how they exercised their agency ethically at work. In doing so, it aims to identify how this agency is shaped by individuals' identity and subjectivity, and how these shape their participation in and learning through work.