The Learning Organisation in the Public Services

Citation

Lawson, F. (1998), "The Learning Organisation in the Public Services", Health Manpower Management, Vol. 24 No. 2, pp. 82-83. https://doi.org/10.1108/hmm.1998.24.2.82.1

The book embraces and seeks to describe those theories and philosophies that underpin and promote the concept of “the learning organisation” as originally expounded by Pedlar, Burgoyne and Boydell through their work, “the learning company”.

The primary purpose of this latest inquiry into the field of organisational learning and development is to explore and argue for the connections between these two key development and management processes within the public sector. It seems to me that the principal difference that this particular addition offers (to what is an already well stocked and published market) lies in its attempt to define and understand the extent to which such concepts and frameworks have achieved “sector transferability”.

That is, that these frameworks and strategies for organisational learning and development do have equal relevance to those organisations engaged in public service, that they do measurably contribute to improvements in their performance, stimulate significant shifts in culture and behaviour, direct and lead to noticeable and sustainable change.

The conclusion of the authors, supported by the experiences of their “case study” contributors is clear to the reader. That is, that such transferability is indeed possible and that there are increasingly more examples within and across the domain of public services where such ideas and concepts have been grasped and introduced into the fabric of the organisation itself, that they are understood as providing a powerful means of engaging others to initiate, shape, and direct strategies and actions that lead to significant improvement and change.

The main argument for why such transferability within the public services domain has been possible appears to be the rate at which change has been introduced into the sector in the last decade in particular. This has been stimulated and driven by radical shifts in the nature and direction of political, social and environmental demand which have challenged the very core values and purpose, role and contribution that such organisations had previously defined for themselves. It is only relatively recently it is argued that a larger constituency within the sector has now matured sufficiently to consider and apply these concepts to their own internal change strategies. Indeed, the authors argue that the human resources function in the sector has only begun to grasp the concept itself with the arrival and pressure of key catalysts for change such as investors in people. Indeed, one of the authors described the civil service personnel function being “locked into a conventional view of its role as a species of personnel technician”.

Finally, the authors argue that the sector does operate within a different context than that of its privates sector stablemates. For example, the voluntary sector has a value base often that is more in tune with supporting individual and collective learning.

These ideas and theories are laudable and indeed the book and its authors provide a “one stop” summary of those organisational learning, theories and principles. There are plenty of concise descriptions of what the underlying principles are and how to introduce them by practitioners in the field (ref. Chapter 4 in particular, Janice A. Cook), different cultural models where such interventions have been made as within the almost military like environments of the police and fire services.

My main concern with the book is that while its theory and research base is sound and robust, there is little that the well seasoned and experienced practitioner in this field would find sufficiently illuminating as an exposé and insight into the response by and progress of the sector in this arena. Of course, the range of contributors could be seen as the book’s very strength, but for me it also fell foul of being somewhat fragmented in its approach that could confuse or alienate too early those who may be less familiar with the field of organisation development and learning.

Therefore, I am not altogether certain of the target audience for this work ‐ not because it is not well written and its arguments not highly logical and sound, but whether it is sufficiently “reader friendly” for other personnel and human resources specialists or, and perhaps more importantly so, those very “significant others” as I choose to call them, such as our general and service manager population and all those staff closest to service delivery who ultimately make or break organisational development and learning within our organisations.