Journal of Workplace Learning Applying the learning organisation concept in a resource squeezed service organisation Margaret Somerville Alison McConnell-Imbriotis
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Article information: To cite this document: Margaret Somerville Alison McConnell-Imbriotis, (2004),"Applying the learning organisation concept in a resource squeezed service organisation", Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 16 Iss 4 pp. 237 - 248 Permanent link to this document: http://dx.doi.org/10.1108/13665620410536318 Downloaded on: 20 April 2015, At: 18:33 (PT) References: this document contains references to 16 other documents. To copy this document:
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Applying the learning organisation concept in a resource squeezed service organisation Margaret Somerville and Alison McConnell-Imbriotis
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University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales, Australia Downloaded by UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN SYDNEY At 18:33 20 April 2015 (PT)
Keywords Workplace learning, Learning organizations, Elder care, Non-profit organizations Abstract This paper explores the results of applying a diagnostic questionnaire for measuring the dimensions of a learning organisation in a resource squeezed service organisation. The questionnaire was conducted as the first stage of an ethnographic study of workplace learning in an aged care organization. It was distributed to the 600 employees in nine facilities to provide baseline information to be complemented by qualitative data collected in the second stage. Strengths in the dimensions of leadership and systemic connection and weaknesses in the areas of dialogue and inquiry, team learning and empowering people were revealed. Preliminary qualitative data support the findings and add to the meaning of the questionnaire results. Subsequent discussions with the organisation about the questionnaire suggest that it was a useful tool to enhance workplace learning.
Introduction This research project was developed in partnership with educators from the Staff Development Unit of a church-based organisation (Careco) that runs nine not-for-profit aged care facilities and a community aged care program in regional and rural NSW. The organisation experiences intense and ongoing resource pressure, in common with other not-for-profit organisations providing aged care. At the end of 2001, two facilities within the organisation were forced to close with a high level of personal distress for workers and residents. Increasingly, because of these resource constraints, aged care organisations have employed large numbers of untrained entry level staff who carry out most of the direct care work. Very limited training was initially provided for these entry level workers but with the passing of the Aged Care Act in 1997, all aged care organisations were required to provide training. The Staff Development Unit of Careco was established to ensure the individual facilities would be in a position to meet accreditation standards. In 2002, the Staff Development Unit had a staff of four to provide training for nine facilities and 600 workers operating at all levels of the organisation. These included managers, nursing staff, care assistants, technical, gardening, catering and cleaning staff. The nine workplaces in which these workers are employed have diverse histories and cultures ranging from a large facility originally managed by the State Health Department to local community based facilities. The workplaces are also differentiated into high care (nursing homes) and low care (hostels) with their own cultures and learning requirements. They support learning in different ways. The Staff Development Unit is currently the focus of learning in the organisation and provides ongoing education and training for all care workers as well as other staff in the facilities that respond to their needs analysis. This puts intense pressure of workload
Journal of Workplace Learning Vol. 16 No. 4, 2004 pp. 237-248 q Emerald Group Publishing Limited 1366-5626 DOI 10.1108/13665620410536318
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on the Staff Development Unit and centralises the training and learning focus within the Unit which is geographically distant from some of the facilities. Several other problems have been identified in relation to training and learning in the organisation which were the genesis of the research partnership. Intense pressure on resources means that each person in training at the Staff Development Unit is not available for care work, resulting in a perception that there is a conflict between caring and education. There is a differential approach to supporting participation in training from the different facilities. It had been observed that there is a difficulty in the transfer of learning from the Staff Development Unit to workplace practice (Interview, 9/5/01). In discussions between the researchers and the co-ordinator of the Staff Development Unit it was decided that a possible solution to the learning problems of this resource squeezed organisation might lie in changing the focus from training to learning. It was identified that under conditions of intense resource pressure the only resource that can be expanded is the human learning potential. The learning organisation concept seemed a useful way to begin to think about how this might happen. The concept of the learning organisation shifts the focus from centralised education/training onto workplace learning and aims to embed learning at all levels of the organisation. The research was designed in order to find out how learning, rather than training, currently happens in the organisation in order to establish a baseline, from which, to begin to apply the learning organisation concept. The research question guiding the research was “How does workplace learning currently happen in Careco and how can it be enhanced?” The focus of the study was on care workers, including managers who continue to have a function in relation to care work. The study was designed to use quantitative and qualitative research methods to gain both breadth and depth of data about learning in the organisation. The quantitative aspects of the study, the subject of this paper, invited the 600 workers to complete a questionnaire applying the learning organisation concept in order to obtain a broad picture of learning across the organisation. Following this, 25 workers were interviewed in depth, including a number of trainees who were also researched using focus groups over the 12 month period of their training. Some of the preliminary results of these interviews are used to illuminate the findings from the questionnaire. The learning organisation concept and the service sector The learning organisation concept appears to have been mainly taken up in the corporate sector by managers and human resource personnel and discussed in the management literature. However some notable adult educators have been proponents of learning organisation theory, in particular Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins. Marsick and Watkins (1999, p. 206) suggest that all organisations learn but that learning organisations are characterised by “proactive interventions to generate, capture, store, share and use learning at the systems level in order to create innovative products and services”. Burns (1995, p. 65) suggests that a learning organisation is characterised by eight key features which can be summarised as: a systems approach to learning; commitment to lifelong learning; flexibility and adaptability; shared vision; flat management structure; participation in a cooperative industrial framework; a wide view of learning; managers accept that learning and work are intertwined. Other adult education theorists have criticised the concept as a tool for oppression and control of workers by management (Forrester, 1999; Solomon, 1999; Spencer, 2002).
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There is little discussion in the literature of the application of the learning organisation concept in the public or service sector. Spencer (2002) suggests that the application of the concept in non-business organisations results in the imposition of business rhetoric:
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Another problem in the literature is the tendency to treat all organisations as if they are the same, this partly reflects the imposition of business rhetoric on non-business organizations such as public services, universities, hospitals, non-profit and non-governmental organisations, all are seen as dealing with “clients” within the context of a “business plan” and having to apply business principles to the “bottom line” (Spencer, 2002, p. 301).
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Spencer argues for the sanctity of the service organisation compared to the corporate sector. “We should defend public sector services precisely because they can move to a service orientation and internal democratic processes without having to meet profit targets” (Spencer, 2002, p. 304). The contemporary reality of the resourcing of service organisations; however, is such that they are as affected by resource considerations of as any corporate entity, perhaps even more so. In the case of this resource squeezed service organisation, it is precisely the reason why we had thought of applying the learning organisation concept. The difference between the corporate and the service sector may be that service organisations are more likely to apply the concept with different values and thus give us a different insight into the potential of the concept. In the case of Careco, the organisation and its workers demonstrate high levels of commitment to non-economic values such as caring and spirituality which will influence the outcomes of the application. Marsick and Watkins support the idea that the concept has multiple possibilities in their contention that “the learning organisation is not a prescription, but rather a template for the examination of current practices (Marsick and Watkins, 1994, p. 354). They believe that “[o]rganisations need to develop the capacity to diagnose their learning orientations, and, when necessary, to add to their repertoire of learning responses or to change them” (Marsick and Watkins, 1999, p. 211). In this sense, organisations can apply the concept to think about how to enhance workplace learning in a manner that benefits both the goals of the organisation and the individual workers who make up the organisation. When we looked at the literature to see how this had been done however, we found that many researchers have commented that there is an empirical void on the topic of the learning organisation. Griego et al. (2000, p. 6) claim that “[t]he vast majority of the literature on learning organisations is theoretical in nature”. Moilanen (2001, p. 6) notes that “[t]oo often, however, this discussion has remained at the level of describing and defining, and the efforts to diagnose and measure the concept have been very rare”. De Weerd-Nederhof et al. (2002, p. 320) refer to “the scarceness of empirical studies in the area” and suggest that such studies might be “a means to test learning models, theories, and concepts for their validity, usefulness, and practical value in understanding real-world phenomena”. The reporting of this study is an attempt to contribute to a baseline of empirical studies about the application of the concept. Diagnostic tools Some researchers have developed, identified and reviewed a range of tools for assessing an organisation’s status in relation to the learning organisation concept. Moilanen (2001) reviews eight such learning organisation diagnostic tools and
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develops a comparative table. These range from the first diagnostic tool presented by Pedlar et al. (1994) from Moilanen, 2001 to Marsick and Watkins’ (1998) Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire. Moilanen evaluates Marsick and Watkins’ Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire the most highly of all the diagnostic tools because it is the most comprehensive and scientifically supported (2001). He generally criticises the other diagnostic tools because of the failure to relate the development of the instrument to the theoretical work in the area and because they are designed almost exclusively for the use of managers. One of the most significant areas of difficulty raised in his review is that “presenting the instruments does not in itself shed light to the way in which they can be utilized” (Moilanen, 2001, p. 10). This paper begins to address this identified gap. Griego et al. (2000) apply two diagnostic tools, Marquardt’s Learning Organisation Profile (1996) and O’Brien’s Learning Organisation Practices Profile (1994) to find predictors of learning organisations. These diagnostic tools were trialed with 48 working professionals from a population of approximately 150 students in a Human Resource Development Master’s Degree program. They found that “those participants who answered positively that they received rewards and recognition on the job and belong to an organisation that emphasised training and education were most likely to assess their work environment as a learning organisation”. While this study shows the potential usefulness of these tools in identifying what characteristics Human Resource Managers associate with the learning organisation concept, it does not tell us anything about the relevance of these tools in the examination of current practices. Moilanen (2001) used the results of his review to develop a new diagnostic tool, “The Organisation Diamond Diagnostic Tool” (2001) and tested it with 691 respondents from 25 organisations. This study tested the potential of the assessment tool rather than its application in a specific organisation, the focus of this present study. Applying the questionnaire It was decided to apply a learning organisation diagnostic tool to provide a baseline data from across the organisation because the qualitative data was intended to be in-depth rather than giving a broad picture. Marsick and Watkins’ (1998) Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire was chosen as the most appropriate diagnostic tool for the reasons discussed above. We also believed, on the basis of other related ideas espoused by Marsick and Watkins, such as the family friendly workplace, that female adult educators are more likely to have an underpinning philosophical approach that is sympathetic to a predominantly female workforce. The Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire contains 55 questions about learning in organisations divided into three groups, Individual Level, Team or Group Level and Organisation Level. The examples of questions illustrates the differential focus at each of these levels: . Individual level: In my organisation people help each other learn. . Team or group level: In my organisation teams/groups focus both on the group’s task and on how well the group is working. . Organisational level: My organisation enables people to get needed information at any time quickly and easily (Marsick and Watkins, 1998).
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The respondents are asked to respond to each question by ranking them from 1 to 6, with 1 representing almost never and 6 almost always. Five final questions aim to collect demographic information about the respondent and the organisation. The questionnaires were distributed through the Staff Development Unit of Careco either directly to workers in the facilities or through the Managers to the workers. Workers were provided with a stamped, addressed envelope to return their responses so they would be confidential and anonymous. Seventy-two completed questionnaires were received. It is not clear how many of the 600 staff of Careco received a questionnaire but the proportional response rate to the total possible number of participants is 11 per cent. The relatively low response rate and the inability to determine whether each site is equally or relatively represented means that the results should be interpreted with caution. The questionnaire results are also interpreted in the light of preliminary interview data. For the purpose of analysis, the questions in the questionnaire are grouped by the authors into nine sequential categories with questions 1-7 relating to continuous learning; 8-13 relating to dialogue and inquiry; 14-19 relating to team learning; 20-25 relating to embedded systems; 26-31 to empowerment; 32-37 to system connections; 38-43 to leadership; 44-49 to financial performance; and 50-55 to knowledge performance. The nine categories are listed below, each accompanied by a question to illustrate the nature of the category: . Continuous learning – in my organisation people are rewarded for learning. . Dialogue and inquiry – in my organisation people are encouraged to ask “why” regardless of rank. . Team learning – in my organisation teams/groups revise their thinking as a result of group discussions or information collected. . Structures capture – my organisation maintains an up-to-date data base of employee skills . Empower people – my organisation invites people to contribute to the organisation’s vision. . Systemic connection – my organisation helps employees balance work and family. . Leadership – in my organisation leaders generally support requests for learning opportunities and training. . Financial performance – in my organisation customer satisfaction is greater than last year. . Knowledge performance – in my organisation the number of individuals learning new skills is greater than last year. Following the process outlined by Marsick and Watkins (1998), a mean score (average) for each category was derived from the sum of the responses for each question within the category. The overall score was then derived from these subtotals. The overall scores were presented to the managers as a radial chart in order to make apparent the relative strengths and weaknesses of the organisation in relation to its learning organisation capacity.
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As this questionnaire was used to identify areas of potential investigation, the mode (most frequent answer) for each question, and each section, was also calculated. The results were examined for patterns, for example answers which had a big variation in responses or which had clusters of responses at opposite ends of the scale. Results Profile of participants Role in the organisation. The majority of people who answered this question were identified as being non-management hourly employees. The breakdown of responses to this question is as follows: . Senior management – 2 per cent . Middle management – 10 per cent . Supervisory – 11 per cent . Non-management technical/professional – 24 per cent . Non-management (hourly employee) – 53 per cent Educational level. Of those who responded to this question the vast majority have completed secondary education with 54 per cent having gained further qualifications ranging from certificate qualifications to postgraduate qualifications. The breakdown is as follows: . Did not complete high school – 14 per cent . High school graduate – 32 per cent . Certificate or associates degree – 33 per cent . Undergraduate degree – 5 per cent . Graduate degree – 16 per cent Strengths and weaknesses as a learning organisation The scores indicate that, on the basis of the responses to this questionnaire, the organisation has high level strengths in the areas of leadership, and systemic connections. Moderate level strengths are found in the areas of financial performance, structures capture, knowledge performance and continuous learning. The weaker areas were perceived to be in team learning and dialogue and enquiry with empowering people being identified as the weakest. Table I is a numerical representation of these results. Patterns of responses within categories Leadership showed the most consistent pattern of scores with a variation of 0.5 between scores. Knowledge performance, dialogue and inquiry, and systems connection also appear to have a consistent pattern of responses with each of these categories having a 0.6 variation in the scores. Other categories had a high degree of inconsistency between averages for individual questions. Empowerment of people had the most variable responses with a variation of 1.4 from lowest to highest scores. In this category, Question 26: My organisation recognises
Category
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Continuous learning Dialogue and inquiry Team learning Structures capture Empower people Systemic connections Leadership Financial Knowledge
Score 4.0 3.9 3.9 4.1 3.8 4.3 4.4 4.1 4.0
Notes: Based on a six-point ranking, from almost never, 1 to almost always, 6; overall score: 4.1; range of results for categories: 3.8-4.4; results for all categories are clustered around the median
people for taking initiative was most frequently given a ranking of 5 (near almost always) while Question 30: My organisation supports employees who take calculated risks was most frequently given a ranking of 1 (almost never). Continuous learning also had variable responses with a variation of 1.3 between highest and lowest scores. In this category, all the questions except for two were most frequently given a 5 ranking. However Questions 3 and 4 have modes at either end of the spectrum with Question 3: In my organisation people help each other learn most frequently ranked as 6 (almost always) and Question 4: In my organisation people can get money and other resources to support their learning is most frequently ranked as 1 (almost never). Discussion The results of this questionnaire have provided a useful tool for thinking about the organisation’s learning practices (Marsick and Watkins, 1994, p. 354). A radial chart expressing the results presented at a meeting of senior executives and managers stimulated productive thinking around learning and how this can be a resource for the organisation. This changed the focus from the grinding reality of managing care work with limited resources to one where resources could be conceived more laterally. The results are interpreted in the light of this potential for thinking about the organisation and in terms of preliminary qualitative data. The demography of participants in the questionnaire appears to adequately reflect the range of job roles but not the proportion of these roles across the organisation. About half of the respondents are qualified supervisory or professional staff and half are entry level workers which is a greater proportion of qualified staff than exists in the organisation. The educational level reflects this schism between the qualifications of entry level workers and those of supervisors/managers and professional staff. In part at least, this is the educational/learning challenge with a ceiling on the possible responsibilities and opportunities for learning of entry level workers. The level of education is also likely to have influenced those who actually responded, a factor which will be discussed later. The strongest features of the organisation in terms of the dimensions of a learning organisation are the links between leadership and learning. In a strongly hierarchical organisation the emphasis on leadership might be expected but the perceived link between leadership and learning is not necessarily so simply because of strong
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Table I. Averages
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leadership. In this organisation, it is perceived that the leaders support the learning of their workers. The strength of the relationship between leadership and learning proved to be a useful beginning point for self examination because it is important for managers to know what aspects of the organisation that are doing well. It is important that senior executive and managers recognise and build on the links between leadership and learning. This finding is supported by a quote from one of the interviewees who commented about the organisation: I felt, when I started with Careco, I remember walking in and there was an education calendar and I thought I’d fallen into heaven because I’d attended my three fire lectures and as far as I knew that was all the education you got in aged care. I didn’t actually realise that that was your minimal requirements so, yeah and that was, education wasn’t even discussed as an option when I was going through as an AIN [Assistant in Nursing].
The initiative that led to the research partnership, the commitment and enthusiasm of the educators and the large numbers of workers participating in educational sessions also support this view. The second dimension of strength, systemic connections, suggests the presence of strong links between the organisation and other systems within and outside of the organisation. This is a recognition of an added dimension that the organisational structure itself has brought to a number of facilities that were operating independently. This finding is generally confirmed by preliminary analysis of qualitative data with the sense that as a largely female, resource squeezed organisation there are great strengths in networking both within and outside the organisation. The Staff Development Unit serves an important function in bringing workers from across the different facilities together and providing informal learning spaces for networking and exchange. A need for further development in this direction was emphasised by the manager of one facility, however, suggesting that perhaps the differences between facilities are significant: Yeah well having them understand where they’re up to in terms of the industry and getting a broader picture outside of X Facility is critical, because they’ve been very inwardly focused . . . Because they’re so big they’ve had no need to look outside particularly and so they haven’t particularly and that’s been to their detriment. So trying to have them look further a field than X Facility for benchmarking, for information, for best practice, for industry standards and comparisons about our problems and our issues – that’s a big one – and broadening their scope.
The concern for this manager is with systemic connections outside of the organisation to the aged care industry in general. This is important to situate their particular concerns within the broader context of aged care generally. This concern links closely with an area of identified weakness in the dimension of dialogue and inquiry. The fact that dialogue and inquiry is a weak area is predictable in a low status, feminised workplace with a hierarchical structure. Despite this many of the interviewees reinforced the idea that it is critical for their facilities to develop a climate of critical inquiry and advocacy. I think is important so that they keep on the agenda that we are an aged care facility – one of three and a half thousand in the country – and our issues are often other people’s issues as
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well, you know in terms of funding and those sorts of things; and just keeping a dialogue going with them about it, which they’ve never had.
This interviewee believes that such a climate has been lacking and that critical advocacy across the industry is necessary. Considering the dimension of dialogue and inquiry has already begun to change the practices of learning in the organisation. It was observed that current trainee assistants-in-nursing had many issues they wanted to raise about the workplace. A problem they identified was that if they raised a critical issue and the education co-ordinator intervened there would be a pay back in the workplace. We put in place an agreement that at the beginning of each weekly training day the trainees would have the opportunity to raise questions and criticisms in confidence and with an assurance that the discussion would go not further. This ensured the beginning of a practice of dialogue and inquiry with important implications for empowerment as well. The area of team learning is another area of weakness that has been confirmed by preliminary interview data. Both workers and management have expressed concerns about the need to develop team skills. Worker’s concerns are about the power dynamics that new workers face when trying to implement their learning from training programs in teamwork with older and more powerful workers. Manager’s concerns are about how to deal with cultures of conflict and undesirable team dynamics. An industrial chaplain employed in one of the facilities discussed programs designed to address these power dynamics and at another site a manager talked about communication and conflict resolution programs designed to address workplace culture issues. The issues about team work are multi-layered and need to be addressed with multiple strategies. The usefulness of this as a finding from the questionnaire is that it allows the problem to be raised at an organisational level. Other facilities that have not addressed such problems can discuss and address the issues with other managers or through programs with the Staff Development Unit. It has also been significant in the inclusion of a specific focus on team work in the qualitative research through following the above programs and identifying specific ways that team work can be incorporated into the research methodology. Again, from a researcher perspective, the finding that empowerment of people is the weakest dimension is not surprising and links with the comments above about dialogue and inquiry. In a low status feminised workplace that operates within a hierarchical leadership structure, it is likely that workers (and, indeed, residents) are not empowered. On the other hand, to make the link between learning and empowerment and to make articulate the naturalised assumptions about workplace culture is a powerful strategy enabled by the application of this diagnostic tool. It has suggested productive directions for the qualitative research in addressing the question of what are the barriers to workplace learning for new trainees? How are they disempowered within the workplace culture and how can this be addressed? The approach by one of the managers to the issue of empowerment is a strategy that clearly has benefits for both workers and residents and is worth considering as a teaching learning strategy for a workplace pedagogy (Billett, 2001). I can see that she’s struggling with “how does this work?” you know. “Why is this person becoming aggressive?” and her answers at this stage are “because they don’t like doing it” or you know it’s almost a bit of a blame mentality but, yeah, and I’m working with that without
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trying to discourage them from writing incident reports . . . that staff member to try and say “look we’re getting you to education but maybe try it this way or maybe think about it differently”.
This manager is balancing the need to encourage a new worker to fill out incident reports with an educative role about how to deal with residents with a dementing illness. She does this sensitively by working alongside the new worker and making suggestions about her approach to the resident. Formal training will also be provided in dementia care but most importantly the underlying issue of worker empowerment and learning is addressed in the workplace. With regard to the patterns of response, it is again worthwhile to reflect further on the significance of the relationship between initiative and risk and the relationship between learning from others and being able to ask for resources for learning. The variable response between people taking initiative and people taking risks could be related to the nature of the workforce and the industry where there are strict rules and demarcations about what workers at particular levels of the organisation can or cannot do. However, it may also be important for the organisation to consider that some level of personal risk is required for learning and that ideas around what constitutes a risk may need to be more flexible. Preliminary qualitative data in relation to this area suggests that innovative and committed managers and supervisors will allow workers the scope to take risks while at the same time providing a safety net of support and consultation that may be absent in other cases. Sharing such strategies with other supervisors and managers may make incremental leaps in organisational learning. Regarding questions about supporting continuous learning, the variable responses between the high rating for learning from other people and the low rating for provision of resources for learning are predictable but it is also important to consider this contradiction further. Learning from other people has been found to be a strong characteristic of workplace learning in aged care workplaces (Heikkila and Makinen, 2001). Anecodotal evidence, observations, and preliminary data analysis suggest that learning from other people can be highly positive but is not without its problems. For new workers especially, more experienced workers are often too busy or unwilling to share information and difficulties can arise where this is the main or only strategy of workplace learning. At times new practices are impossible for trainees to transfer into the workplace culture. More time and attention to enhance the process of learning from others is critical when this is a highly significant workplace learning strategy. The finding that resources are not provided to support learning is also entirely expected in a resource squeezed industry such as aged care but resources do not always mean money and some lateral thinking may be required about how individual learning can be better supported by the organisation. Such initiatives are multiplied many times in their overall value to the workplace. Innovative and committed managers seem to find the resources to provide the essential reward and recognition necessary for the support of learning. Conclusion In contemporary economic circumstances, many public and service organisations are under extreme resource pressure. This paper has discussed the application of the learning organisation concept in one such resource squeezed not-for-profit aged care organisation. The same approach could be usefully applied in any organisation
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wishing to maximise its scarce resources by focussing on its learning potential. In this organisation it was perceived that the one resource that could be expanded was the learning capacity of workers and that this could potentially benefit all in the organisation, including managers, workers, and residents. The learning organisation concept was applied cautiously in the light of criticisms of its origins in the corporate sector as a means of exploiting worker/learner subjectivities. It was found that the application of the tool was experienced positively as a means to examine the learning practices of the organisation. The subsequent discussion and practical implementation opened up ways to move beyond established power hierarchies and traditional conflicts by thinking laterally about enhancing learning and training resources. The application of the diagnostic tool as a written questionnaire was to some extent problematic and the response rate was relatively low, especially from entry level workers who make up the majority of employees. Entry level employees in aged care come from low socio-economic backgrounds with low levels of formal education. They often have low levels of written literacy which would operate against them completing a written document (Somerville, 2002). Moreover, under the new regulations about accreditation, entry level workers are responsible for the massive amounts of documentation required for ongoing funding. This can lead to a resistance to filling out forms (Bernoth, 2003). The application of the diagnostic tool, however, was only the first stage of a longer ethnographic study using qualitative research methods in which many entry level care workers participated. It is in the light of this that the usefulness of the tool is interpreted. The benefits of applying the learning organisation concept and the diagnostic tool in this organisation were multiple. Preliminary discussions about the learning organisation concept with the educators at the Staff Development Unit have already shifted the educational focus from training in the Unit to learning throughout the organisation. Despite the shortcomings of the questionnaire, the Staff Development Unit felt that the results “ring true”. The results of the questionnaire were initially presented to senior executives and managers at a meeting using the visual representation of the radial chart. This visual representation made the differential results between, for example, leadership and learning and empowerment and learning, obvious. There appeared to be a high level of interest in, and acceptance of the results as indicative of areas for consideration. The function here was to show the leaders of the organisation to themselves in a language which has persuasive power. Then, if the leaders of the organisation believe it is a true representation and they wish to change, they have a basis to begin from and a reason for undertaking the change. This was greatly assisted by the fact that the relationship between leadership and learning was an organisational strength. The powerful language of a statistical representation was complemented by preliminary qualitative data analysis that gave the statistics a human face. This further reinforced the findings of the questionnaire and the motivation to examine learning practices across the organisation. This was a two way process. Not only were the findings of the questionnaire reinforced but they also suggested useful directions for the ongoing qualitative research. An example of this is that the finding that team learning was an area of weakness has led to the development of innovative strategies for researching team work within the organisation which was a notable absence from the usual methods of qualitative data collection. The overall conclusion is that, in
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combination with other methods of thinking and research, the learning organisation concept can be usefully applied in a resource squeezed service organisation. It can be used practically to examine current practices and can also enhance the learning strategies, including those of critical advocacy, in the organisation. References Bernoth, M. (2003), “Feedback on the results of the questionnarie”, personal communication. Billett, S. (2001), Learning in the Workplace: Strategies for Effective Practice, Allen and Unwin, Sydney. Burns, R. (1995), The Adult Learner at Work, Business and Professional Publishing, Sydney. De Weerd-Nederhof, P.C., Pacitti, B.J., da Silva Gomes, J.F. and Pearson, A.W. (2002), “Tools for the improvement of organisational learning processes in innovation”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 14 No. 8, pp. 320-31. Forester, K.P. (1999), “Work related learning and the struggle for subjectivity”, paper presented at Researching Work and Learning: A First International Conference, School of Continuing Education, Leeds University, Leeds, pp. 188-97. Griego, O.V., Geroy, G.D. and Wright, P.C. (2000), “Predictors of learning organisations: a human resource development practitioner’s perspective”, The Learning Organization, Vol. 7 No. 1, pp. 5-12. Heikkila, K. and Makinen, K. (2001), Different Ways of Learning at Work, Conference Publication, 2nd International Conference on Researching Work and Learning, University of Calgary, pp. 380-90. Marsick, V. and Watkins, K. (1994), “The learning organization: an integrative vision for HRD”, Human Resource Development Quality, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 353-60. Marsick, V.J. and Watkins, K.E. (1998), Dimensions of the Learning Organisation Questionnaire. Marsick, V.J. and Watkins, K.E. (1999), “Envisioning new organisations for learning”, in Boud, D. and Garrick, J. (Eds), Understanding Learning at Work, Routledge, London, pp. 199-215. Moilanen, R. (2001), “Diagnostic tools for learning organisations”, The Learning Organization, Vol. 8 No. 1, pp. 6-20. Solomon, N. (1999), “Culture and difference in workplace learning”, in Boud, D. and Garrick, J. (Eds), Understanding Learning at Work, Routledge, London and New York, NY, pp. 119-31. Somerville, M. (2002), “Learning potentials and limitations under globalisation in aged care workplaces”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 14 No. 2, pp. 68-76. Spencer, B. (2002), “Research and the pedagogics of work and learning”, Journal of Workplace Learning, Vol. 14 No. 7, pp. 298-305.
Further reading Watkins, K.E. and Marsick, V.J. (1993), Sculpting the Learning Organisation: Lessons in the Art and Science of Systematic Change, Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA. Watkins, K.E. and Marsick, V.J. (Eds) (1996), Creating the Learning Organisation, ASTD, Alexandria, VA.
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