Rover Learning Business Learning Organisation - Case Study Example

Running Head: STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF A LEARNING ORGANISATION Strengths and Weaknesses of a Notion of Learning Organisation [Insert Writer's Name] [Insert Name of Institution] Strengths and Weaknesses of a Notion of Learning Organisation The learning organisation is another tool used to symbolize a methodology for the management of change. It does, nevertheless, pay particular attention to valuing employees and to the execution of structures and mechanisms which allow employees to identify the value placed on them and to contribute to the development of their own work area and of the organization. The Rover Case "Rover Learning Business" is a business within a business accountable for learning within the Rover group. Rover has had (extensive and high quality) open learning centres for many years but these were only partly successful as deliverers of training. In 1990, Rover took the decision to form the new RLB division as part of its commitment to quality. In addition to other initiatives, each employee was given '100 towards any (approved) learning of their own choice - inside or outside the organization. Such learning could incorporate ballroom dancing, driving lessons, flower arranging or whatever. This was viewed as being proof of commitment but also as a means of generating "the learning habit". All learning is registered (on a central database) and rewarded (not in financial terms). Employees are given some time within working time to use the open learning centres - but more learning occurs in the employees' own time. Employees are reinvigorated both in terms of evaluating their own learning and in terms of their work -employees on the production line have a "right" to stop the line - at large cost - if they feel something is wrong. Evidence suggests that whenever, as in this case, employees feel cherished they respond accordingly. There is no headstrong stopping of the line. Clearly, this all sounds very simple and naive. Change is never easy - and cultural and attitudinal change is the toughest of all. In the Rover case, the main people were a small number of "change agents" -people with the skills of interviewing, counselling, coaching and convincing - whose role was not to establish the nature of change but to make it happen. They are required at various levels to act as catalysts, sounding boards, motivators, and sources of feedback, monitoring and control. If you can recognize suitable change agents, you are half way to success. They don't have to be people in the line structure - it is possible to ascertain practises which allow them to work outside of the line structure using the "authority" of an overall, senior co-ordinator. Critiques of the Learning Organisation Concept In spite of the extensive interest in the notion of the "learning organisation" as is shown by the proliferation of research literature as well as popular books, it is a difficult concept and, indeed, a contested one (see, in particular, the critiques of Brown and Keep (2003) and Fischer (2003), who provided source material for the Cedra learning organisation project). There is censure among many sociologists and researchers in adult and community education but also in the occupational education and training (VET) community, for example in Germany (Fischer, 2003). They see the idea of the learning organisation as being seated in a normative or prescriptive business-school management concept that is founded on pitiless American/Anglo-Saxon economic principles of organisational effectiveness. They disapprove of the use of sophisticated cultural and psychological theories by modern management to maximise benefits for the company without paying a big deal of attention to ensuring personal learning benefits for employees or workers. This analysis is reinvigorated by a feeling of being disappointed by the non-fulfilment of the hopeful forecasts in the 1980s regarding the emergence of more human-centred workplaces in the post-Tayloristic period that would improve the quality of working life for everybody (see Piore and Sabel, 1984). They indicate that the reality for many workers, today, is a rebirth of Taylorism in the form of neo-Taylorism or perhaps disguised in the form of "lean-production" or "flexible working". This feeling is also related to a sense of disenchantment about the potential of ICT not being exploited to create more autonomy and freedom at work, as speculated by many commentators. In many cases the opposite is the case, with ICT being used as an instrument for the introduction of new types of bureaucracy and control. The lack of proof of examples of organisations illustrating, in an empirical demonstrable manner, regarding the implementation of learning organisation theory is also cited as a reason for discrediting the theoretical legitimacy or practical usefulness of the concept (see discussion on this point in Cressey and Kelleher, 2003; Fischer, 2003). The learning organisation notion is cast off, therefore, by some critics as nothing more than a decontextualised theory that has been popularised in management literature as a formula or recipe for instant success. Moreover, other critics point out that irrespective of the arguments about the validity of the learning organisation concept, it is now seen to be out of date with the interest in it having peaked during the mid-1990s and now being replaced by theories of knowledge management (Brown and Keep, 2003). For the above-mentioned reasons, the notion of the learning organisation has not been taken on board by many in the educational community. They tend to be extremely incredulous about engaging with the learning organisation idea, which they strongly locate within the framework of hard-hearted human resource management (HRM) and HRD theory. Extreme critics see it to be nothing more than an effort by management to delude people into becoming "organisational men and women". For these, it is a discredited concept and merely a controlling device (see Sennett, 1998). The Learning Organisation As A Way Of Dealing With Competing Interests As already mentioned, some of the above criticisms were articulated by contributors to the Cedra learning organisation project. They raise grave issues that need to be addressed. Nevertheless, majority of the contributors to this project argue against the extreme criticisms in arguing for the legitimacy and bearing of the learning organisation concept as a way of understanding and dealing with the complex and competing interests that have to be addressed within organisations. This paper suggests that it is very important to carry on research and development work on organisational learning in order to exploit human creativity for organisational competitiveness as well as ensure learning benefits for everybody working in organisations. However, this goes without saying that the task of addressing the competing interests of the organisation and the individual workers is very hard to achieve. Work is an extremely vital but challenging part of people's lives. Certainly, the snags for both individuals and organisations are emphasized in today's disorderly economic environment that is marked by increasing competition, globalisation, mergers and acquisitions, and job insecurity in the private sector, and privatisation and outsourcing in the public sector. Nevertheless, the difficulty and the subtle balancing act that is entailed in implementing the learning organisation concept - and as rightly pointed out by critics does not come off in many cases - is no more than a manifestation of the intricacy of the environment that we are living in. Thus, while identifying the difficulties in integrating business, organisational and individual needs in the context of building learning organisations, it is argued that the challenge of the learning organisation must be addressed (see also Nyhan and Kelleher, 2002.) The relevance of learning organisation thinking is corroborated by other recent research work. In a book recapitulating on the results of numerous European research studies on innovation, carried out in the framework of European Union sponsored socio-economic research, Lundvall and Borr's (1999) emphasise the importance of interactive learning that draws on learning organisation thinking. Another recent important book entitled Handbook of organisational learning and knowledge containing contributions from 30 leading academics, managers and consultants from ten countries makes a strong case for the relevance of organisational learning[4]. It is asserted that: "the case for the long-term significance of organisational learning and knowledge creation as a field of academic inquiry can be made on two levels; practical relevance and conceptual fruitfulness"[5]. Moving on to a New Agenda However, we must move onto a new agenda in the current stage of the development of the "European project" which takes up some of the questions raised by critics but also challenges them to evaluate their assumptions and reflect on those criticisms that are misplaced. While keeping in mind that the educational and humanistic dimension is central to the European social model, the agenda-setting must follow a path based on negotiation and agreement about shared meanings and interests regarding how businesses can operate in the competitive environment while also enhancing the quality of people's learning at work. The aim is to enable organisations to become more effective and the individual members of these organisations to find meaning in what they are doing and thus realise their potential on behalf of the organisation but also for their own benefit. This entails building work organisations in which the vast majority of individuals, in particular, in the context of VET - intermediate-level and front-line workers - and not just managers, are participating in, contributing to and benefiting from learning organisations. It means establishing new relationships between the wider social goals of vocational/professional education and the more business focused goals of HRD that relate to the economic goals of individual companies. This entails new thinking about HRD policies (see Nyhan, 2003) and the relationship between HRD and VET (see Fischer, 2003). It also requires the adoption of new theories of learning in the context of the knowledge society where competence has become more knowledge intensive. The development of knowledge is a co-production issue entailing collaborative learning along learning organisation lines (see Nyhan, 2002). The prescriptive and simplistic formula-based view of the learning organisation does nothing more than discredit the concept. A learning organisation cannot be created by applying a formula. It can only be brought to life by the people who work and learn in the organisation. This is not about applying an external theory but rather a construction process based on a lived collective practice. Each organisation has to devise its own unique theory based on its own distinctive practice. Multidimensionality and Inter-Relatedness In his book, Images of Organisations, Morgan (1997) states that people working in organisations use images and metaphors as ways of seeing, understanding and managing organisational dynamics. The learning organisation is such an image enabling people to interconnect two different realities - the world of "organisations"[6] and the world of "learning" - or more correctly in the case of the latter, the complex phenomenon of interactive collective learning. To represent the learning organisation concept adequately one has to use different images. The overarching image of "inter-relatedness" enables one to understand how different dimensions need to be related to each other and seen from a holistic or systemic perspective. From a learning point of view, this entails interconnecting the bottom-up humanistic and developmental educational interests with the more top-down strategic management interests. The aim is not to polarise these but to understand how they relate to, and complement, each other. The learning organisation concept can be put forward as a heuristic tool that enables members of an organisation to generate and construct new ways of understanding and dealing with different kinds of inter-relatedness in workplaces. The double-sidedness of the learning organisation - "a process of becoming" and "a state of being" As an illustration of the different dimensions and complexity of a learning organisation we can see how the term can be interpreted in two senses. It can refer to the "process of becoming" a learning organisation, that is - the organisational learning process. But, it can also refer to an organisation that has achieved certain aspects of the "state of being" a learning organisation (see Figure 1). However, regarding the second meaning, no organisation can claim to have become a learning organisation as the concept implies that an organisation must be continuously learning from, and striving to influence, its internal and external environments. An adequate description of a learning organisation has to include both of these meanings - process ("organisational learning") and goal ("a learning organisation"). However, it must be stressed that particular emphasis should be placed on the organisational learning process as a continuing transformation process[8]. If an organisation, behaving in a smug and self-confident manner, considers that it has achieved the goal of being a learning organisation, it has ceased to be a learning organisation. The advice of Schiller is to be heeded in this respect - "Follow the one who is searching for the truth but take no notice of the one who claims to have found it". A learning organisation, therefore, has to go through a continual process of becoming a learning organisation (see also Cook and Brown (1999) on "the generative dance between organisational knowledge and organisational knowing"). Engaging all the actors As already discussed the learning organisation concept has not captured the imagination of many educationalists, including those in the field of vocational educational and training, because of what is perceived to be its narrow hard-nosed business orientation to the detriment of the professional development of individual employees/workers. This is in part due to the fact that, up to recent years, learning organisation theory tended to have a strategic management orientation without being concerned with an analysis of how workers could contribute to, or benefit from, organisational learning (see Ellstr'm, 2003). This situation is also explained by the psychological orientation of dominant educational theories that make many educationalists reluctant to stray from individualistic and formal thinking about learning. Thus, they tend not to be at home with collective, situated and informal notions of learning. However, the new agenda calls for the development of learning theories that can engage all of the actors and interest groups in multidisciplinary research and development work. While Dierkes et al. (2001) state that there has been a move away from seeing senior managers as the principal learning agents towards paying attention to teams and actors at all levels, the discipline of education is singularly missing from the many disciplines outlined in their book as contributing to organisational learning theory. Of the 30 contributors to the book, only one appears to be from a university education faculty. Similarly, Easterby-Smith (1997) also omits education and learning theory from his list of the six disciplines that form the basis for organisational learning theory. Clearly the education dimension must be integrated in the new agenda in the context of building learning organisation that foster lifelong learning. This is a complex matter requiring willingness to change and an openness to boundary-crossing between management thinkers, organisational specialists, educationalists and others. European Agenda - Fostering Shared Meanings One of the main aims of the Cedra learning organisation project has been to promote dialogue across different national and disciplinary boundaries with the view to working towards European shared meanings. This is part of the "European development project" (see Elliot, 1998; N'voa and Lawn, 2002). The manner in which work is organised and the nature of the learning values and processes that underpin it will play a central role in shaping the future European agenda regarding the quality of life for the average man and woman. In the present state of the development of the European Union, the German philosopher J'rgen Habermas (2001) states that "Europe cannot just be based on common economic or political interests but also on some founding ideas and values". Elsewhere, Habermas has argued that "what makes the core of the European identity is more the character of the learning process than the outcome of it" (cited in Therborn, 2002, p. 15). Taking up this point (and keeping in mind the earlier view of the learning organisation as being both goal-oriented and process-oriented) the European learning process among the research community in studying the learning organisation is as important as the results attained. The Cedra project has attempted to situate itself within this larger European collaborative learning process. There is a distinctive European tradition in the area of innovation in work organisation. This, it is argued, can be postulated as forming, what might be called, the European roots of organisational learning. Thus, the European organisational innovation tradition fostering employee participation and human resourcefulness could be configured as organisational learning. The intention here is not to be Eurocentric and neglect to acknowledge the enormous American and Japanese contribution to innovation in the fields of organisational development, HRD, organisational learning and knowledge development. Rather, the purpose is to take stock of and explore the European tradition of innovation in work organisation with the view to using it as a foundation to be built on in drawing up and addressing today's agenda. Understanding The Tensions In Organisational Learning One of the predominant impressions one gets in analysing the different papers assembled under the ambit of the Cedra learning organisation project, is the enormous complexity of the tasks facing managers[9] of modern organisations. In the context of organisational learning, today's managers have to be able to deal with numerous conflicting interests and goals. In the first place, they have to give shape to an organisation to pursue certain strategic directions, while at the same time being open to constant change. Second, they have to reconcile individual idiosyncratic behaviours and learning with that of orchestrating organisational behaviours and learning. The case studies of British Telecom (Cressey, 2003), Deutsche Bank (Reimann, 2003) and Guinness (Findlater, 2003), in particular, illustrate how managers and employees and their representatives are struggling to learn to deal with a constantly changing turbulent environment. Tomassini (2003) discusses the knowledge development challenge that faces modern companies. The paper of Brown and Keep (2003) questions the degree to which company productivity and individual learning needs can be accommodated in today's organisations. Fischer (2003) takes up the issue of reconciling individual and organisational learning. Both of these latter papers share a concern with that of Van Woerkom et al. (2003) to address the wider agenda of learning from a personal or occupational/professional/career identity and development perspective. The papers by Sambrook et al. (2003) and Poell and Chivers (2003) show how HRD departments and HRD professionals are struggling to transform their traditional roles, moving from that of "providing training" to that of becoming consultants to line management so that they can take direct responsibility for integrating organisational, team and individual learning within everyday work contexts. A central hypothesis that we are proposing on the basis of our reflections on the issues explored by the authors who contributed to the Cedra project is that the key to organisational learning lies in the capacity to understand and see how the different and often seen as opposing dimensions of organisational life can be reconciled. Modern organisational life is full of real and apparent tensions, which are derived from a complex external and internal environment that requires a host of different objectives to be reconciled. All of the different actors, managers, HRD specialists and employees, have to be able to understand the reasons for these tensions and be able to reconcile them if they are to learn to live and work in modern organisations. The two major tensions in implementing organisational learning, which we wish to discuss, are those between: 1. the need to build a tangible organisational structure but also simultaneously promote an organisational culture based on intangible shared values and meanings; and 2. the need to promote cohesive and effective collective/organisational strategies while at the same time fostering an environment for individual initiative and autonomy and individual development. These two sets of tensions are depicted in the form of continuums running along horizontal and vertical axes. The first one, relating to the horizontal axis, has to do with the contrasting demands between, on the one hand, the need to formalise, objectivise, make explicit and transparent, that is make tangible, while on the other hand, there is also the need to pay heed to the informal, the subjective, the tacit - the intangible. The second tension - on the vertical axis - focuses on the need to devise learning strategies to meet organisational (corporate) identity and performance objectives while at the same time encouraging personal responsibility and initiative based on a sense of individual identity. This figure can be seen as a representation of a conceptual framework for understanding the nature of organisational learning that occurs at the intersection of the two axes and has to do with the management of the tensions along the two continuums. There is also the wider societal context - the learning economy - which also has to be taken into consideration. It is our contention that the dynamics within these continuums are often not effectively explained in much of the populist management and organisational consultancy literature, engendering oversimplified understandings and bewilderment among managers and policy makers. The introduction of a contemporary form of management is often depicted as the implementation of a new template to replace the old Tayloristic one, that is, simply moving from the left side of the horizontal axis to the right side. However, this can only lead to a divide. The issue at stake in organisational learning is bringing the two dimensions of the horizontal continuum into dialogue with each other. They are part of a "dialectic" in the classical meaning of this term in Greek language (which is related to the word "dialogue") and that conveys the meaning that to understand reality one has "dialogue with", "converse with" or "speak across" the different dimensions of reality. An organisation has two facets - objective/structural and subjective/cultural - and both have to be considered in organisational learning. In rebuffing, what he terms the "fortress of linearity", Hampden-Turner (1990) states that learning is about the ability to resolve dilemmas that appear and reappear in continually varying forms. He rejects the linear "either-or" approach, instead contending that the key to learning and progress is based on a "both-and" approach which entails dealing with a configuration of values rather than the selection of equally restricted alternatives. Hence organisational learning is about dealing with the creative tension between structure and culture on the one hand, and the individual and the organisation on the other hand. The role of HRD and progressing education training professionals and researchers is to help managers to intercede the conversation between the right and the left and the top and bottom dimensions of the figure presented above. Learning facilitators and researchers have a vital role to play in development of what Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995) regard as "emerging spaces" and Engestr'm (1987), after Vygotsky (1978, 1987), calls "zones of proximal development", within which people can talk and research in order to learn to work together in building new realities. Bibliography Argyris, C., Sch'n, D. (1978), Organisational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, . Brown, A., Keep, E. 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