Learning in Organizations

Complexities and Diversities

Peter J Smith, Eugene Sadler-Smith

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2006
• Print ISBN: 9780415356046
• eBook ISBN: 9781134252107
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Taking a fresh and innovative approach to the complexities and challenges inherent in organizational learning diversity, the authors show that there are no generic solutions. They argue there is no 'best way' of planning, organizing and implementing learning in relation to the workplace and instead provide context-specific solutions to the dilemmas and issues that diversities present.

With an international approach, grounded in theory and incorporating strong practical examples, this book is essential reading for all those studying, teaching or practising human resource development, human resource management or professional education.

1 Designing Learning in Complex Environments

Introduction

Learning and the creation of knowledge assets are two keys to individual and organizational effectiveness in the information age. The management of the learning process is inherently a complex activity involving the accommodation and balancing of a whole range of dimensions of individual and contextual variability. Traditional approaches to human resource development (HRD) have attempted to reduce complexity by simplifying the planning, design, implementation and evaluation of HRD. Our assertion is that the time is right for the profession of HRD to acknowledge and embrace, through a process of enquiry and reflection, the complexities, diversities and ambiguities associated with learning in the workplace. Therefore, this book is concerned with assisting those whose responsibility is the planning, implementing and evaluating of workplace-related learning in managing the complexities and diversities that confront them in their strategic and operational learning activities and projects. It is not a critical HRD studies text; it is a practical book that will be of interest to those professionals who may be labelled broadly as ‘learning specialists’ or ‘learning practitioners’ and also those concerned with the education, training and professional development of learning professionals. Within an organization this will include instructors, trainers, learning and development advisers, HR managers, training managers and managers more generally as well as those providers of learning and development who are external to an organization such as consultants and lecturers. These individuals are, in their strategic and operational responsibilities, confronted with a highly complex set of variables (for example, individual differences between learners) and their interactions (for example, the impact of organizational context upon learners’ motivations). Each organization is, almost by definition, bound to be unique with regard to its learning system since it is within individual organizations that the various issues that we will identify and discuss come together in complex and causally ambiguous ways.

The planning and management of workplace-related learning cannot have one right answer; there can rarely ever be a definitive and prescriptive solution that is generalisable and transferable between contexts. On the other hand it cannot be left to chance. Therefore the individual practitioner has to be able to identify the salient issues in her or his own context and manage these appropriately. The identification of the pertinent issues for each individual depends first upon an understanding of the various dimensions along which the system may vary; and second, the ability to ask pertinent questions through reflection and enquiry in order that the identified dimensions may be understood and better managed. This is the core pursuit of this book: to explore the workplace-learning related dimensions of diversity and some of the questions that a practitioner may ask in order to understand and manage them more effectively.

In shaping our arguments we use various terminologies that are best defined at the outset. By ‘learning’, for example, we are referring to a longer-term change in the knowledge possessed by an individual, their type and level of skill, or their assumptions, attitudes or values which may lead to their having increased potential to grow, develop and perform in more satisfying and effective ways (Sadler-Smith, 2006). Training is seen as being a focused, specific and instrumental means by which a predetermined task-related learning need may be met. ‘Development’ is an increase over the longer term of the capacity that an individual has to live a more effective and fulfilling professional and personal life as a result of the acquisition of knowledge, skills and attitudes (Sadler-Smith, 2006). Human resource development (HRD) is defined as ‘a wide range of interacting, integrating processes aimed at developing greater purpose and meaning, higher levels of performance and achievement and greater capacity for responding to an ever-changing environment leading to more effective individuals, teams and organizations’ (Davis and Mink, 1992: 201). In each of these areas, particular individuals have certain tasks and responsibilities – it is these individuals whom we refer to as ‘practitioners’ and it is they and the practitioners of the future who are the primary audience for this book.

Complex Environments

Learning practitioners operate in complex environments. The internal environment of the workplace itself may vary in terms of the physical space for learning and this may include the factory floor, the classroom, the meeting room, the office and so forth. These environments may be real, but increasingly they have also a virtual element to them with the advent of the internet and intranets. The environments may vary also in terms of who occupies them and what their interests and agendas are; for example, the new recruit straight from school or college may have a different level of engagement with learning than does an older worker coming up to retirement; a fast-tracked manager may have a different agenda and motives from a part-time peripheral worker; general managers may have different priorities and interests to serve than do HRD managers; senior managers may have shareholder value to the fore in their mind and hence may operate from a different set of assumptions than do other stakeholders. These differences may manifest themselves in a variety of ways: in different motivations, different needs, different conceptions of learning, different sets of beliefs and values – they each will see HRD differently.

The internal environment may also be complex in terms of the various organizational and operational issues that structure the day-to-day functioning of the business. The people and technology issues are a rich source of complexity and diversity and they themselves may interact to compound the richness and variety that confronts the learning practitioner. The social characteristics of work groups are also an important element of the complexity of the learning environment and the learning practitioner increasingly has to conceive of learning and working as being in some senses inextricably linked, and this itself presents challenges if learning is to be managed more effectively.

The external environment for learning may also vary in terms of its physical space and may include the university lecture hall, the conference floor and the premises of a supplier or competitor or customer. The external environment within which the business itself operates may be subject to external forces from political, economic, social, technological and legal influences on its strategy and operations. These external forces are often cited as a source of uncertainty and pressure which means that organizations constantly need to be agile in the face of technological developments, market pressures, economic and demographic forces and so forth. Hence, the environments in which learning practitioners operate are complex, and cause-and-effect relationships are not always simple and linear. The practitioner needs tools and techniques that acknowledge these complexities and uncertainties and allow him or her to be comfortable in addressing complex, uncertain and sometimes ambiguous sets of circumstances.

Learning and Competitive Advantage

Organizations in the 21st century face a variety of challenges. From an internal perspective, whilst many organizations are or have been subjected to ‘downsizing’ and the implementation of flatter management structures there are increased performance expectations on the part of customers, managers and shareholders. In addition, employees are central to quality enhancement and the shift in the structure of the economy has meant that there often is now a high premium placed upon knowledge work and knowledge workers. From an external perspective organizations generally have faced the deregulation of their markets, accelerating pace of technological change, increased regionalisation and globalisation of business marketplaces and demographic changes in population structures. These issues are widely documented and discussed in this book.

As a result of these pressures organizations are constantly seeking difficultto-imitate ways of configuring their resources, structures and processes. The skilful adaptation of the organization to the complexities of local conditions in ways that are also aligned to the strategic needs and goals of the business may mean that competitors may be unable to respond in a like way and hence an organization is able to differentiate itself from the competition. In this respect learning is a key attribute of competent and successful organizations, and the ability of the individuals and the organization itself to acquire new knowledge and skills and the capability to learn is a core competence of an organization.

Learning and its knowledge and skill outcomes provide benefits to customers and shareholders. The competence at the level of the organization to train and develop the workforce is a complex and company-specific, and hence competitively unique, resource. Moreover, the competence of learning represents an opportunity for future growth and development through the creation of new knowledge and a capability to create new knowledge. Prahalad and Hamel (1990) defined a core competence in terms of a number of characteristics including the attributes of providing benefits to customers, not being product-specific or an asset in the accounting sense, competitive uniqueness and forward-looking in the sense that it represents a gateway to the future. Hence in this sense the capability to manage learning and development in an effective manner may be seen as a core competence that may confer non-imitability and hence competitive advantage upon the organization. The knowledge and knowledge-creating processes that HRD may leverage are an intangible resource that competitors may find difficult to reverse engineer and hence make up a competence upon which an organization can build a lasting competitive advantage (Garcia and Vano, 2002). If the ability to differentiate oneself from one’s competitors is a means of achieving competitive advantage, the question then arises of how may HRD be configured in such a way as to enable this to happen.

One answer to this question is by acknowledging, rather than glossing over, the dimensions of diversity that exist in each situation and by attempting to manage these dimensions in productive ways. This requires an approach to learning and development in organizations that:

1. designs HRD practices around the diversities that will inevitably exist in any organization;
2. rather than trying to iron out these differences (and provide a one-size-fits-all solution), managers should attempt to use the diversities as strength and as a source of differentiation.

However, in order to do this it is important that complexity, the situated nature of learning and the processes of enquiry and reflection need to be accommodated into the organization’s HRD practices. This calls for an HRD based upon, amongst other things, an acknowledgement and accommodation of the complexities of workplace learning and the dimensions of diversity. The establishment of an HRD in this way configures the process and system uniquely to the organization and therefore has a greater likelihood of being a difficult-to-imitate organizational competence and one that may help to differentiate a firm from its competitors.

Learning Design

Learning design proceeds traditionally on the basis of a generic plan–do–check cycle sometimes known as the ‘training cycle’ or the ‘systematic approach’. The number of stages in the process can vary from three to as many as a dozen; a commonly used five-stage version of the cycle might consist of identify, analyse, design, implement and evaluate, and represents a systematic process that is applicable across a whole range of human endeavour. Within this cycle the learning practitioner fulfils a variety of roles (investigator, analyst, designer, implementer and evaluator) on the basis of her or his professional knowledge, skills and expertise. The approach may call for team working, or for some elements of projects to be contracted out to specialists (for example, e-learning designers, specialist consultants and so forth). Most of the variants of the approach have one thing in common: each stage of the process depends on the preceding one.

Each element of the process cannot be in any other position within the sequence, and there are clear parallels with areas such as total quality management and continuous improvement. In a learning and development (L&D) context, the design phase can be evaluated by means of pilot testing and the implementation phase can be evaluated by formative ongoing evaluation. The evaluation becomes a summative activity once the implementation stage is complete, and it is at this point where overall issues can be addressed (by asking questions such as ‘Were the objectives achieved?’, ‘Was there an impact on job performance?’ and ‘Was there a bottom-line pay-back?’). If the results of the preceding stages are invalid (for example, because of misdiagnosis) the subsequent stages of the process will by definition have limited validity also. This is a core element of HRD practice and one which enables the novice practitioner to begin to understand and manage HRD.

The systematic approach has been the mainstay of HRD and training practice for half a century. The process has an inherent logic and amongst its many strengths is the undeniable fact that it is proven and well tried and tested. One of the drawbacks of the approach is the extent to which it may inadvertently lead to an over-simplification of the complexity of local conditions and the variations at the individual and organizational levels that may exist in any system. Furthermore it represents an attempt to make the planning and management more certain; it aims to reduce ambiguity and complexity. However, a number of authors have argued that the complexity of HRD is perhaps something that is not reducible and may therefore need to be acknowledged and embraced. For example, Vince (2003: 559) noted that HRD practitioners are often searching for certainties in an uncertain world of contradictions. He argued that it might be more useful to search for contradictions as they are in more plentiful supply and made a plea for HRD to get ‘more complicated’. One way in which this complexity may be engaged with is by recognising and acknowledging the range of diversity that exists in relation to workplace-related HRD. Hence, we are arguing not that the systematic approach is invalid – indeed on logical grounds it is entirely defensible – but that HRD needs to get more complex through acknowledging and accommodating diversity and thereby enabling an organization to differentiate itself from its competitors through HRD (amongst other things).

Learning Design in Complex Environments

An underlying assumption of this book is that designing learning in a way that acknowledges diversity is one way of leveraging competitive advantage. What are the dimensions of diversity that need to be recognised and which may be understood and managed in order to differentiate an organization? In a system as complex as a business organization there are a multiplicity of dimensions along which it may vary. Our approach has been to select those that we see as being most relevant to the practice of workplace-related learning. The dimensions of diversity that we single out for discussion and analysis in this book are shown in Figure 1.1, together with their interrelationships with each other.

Figure 1.1 Complex and diverse environments

Diversities Amongst Organizational Contexts for HRD

Human, intellectual and social capitals are at the heart of HRD. Therefore it is important to understand these different forms of capital and the ways in which their significance is likely to vary between and within organizations. Related to this notion of capital is the concept of knowledge and knowledge workers and the ways in which these are conceptualized within the differing cultures of organizations. The creation of useful knowledge in organizations usually takes place in the context of social relationships and within different forms of networks. The different forms of networks that may be observed are a further means by which the organizational context for learning may vary, and furthermore the ways in which such networks are interpreted and managed is an important aspect of HRD activity within organizations. HRD is an element of human resource management (HRM) and the approach that an organization takes to the management of its human resources is also likely to affect in turn its approaches to HRD. Finally, organizational size is a factor that HRD research has revealed to have a significant impact upon learning and development practices. Therefore it is important that the issue of size is considered as an element of the organizational context in which HRD is situated.

Diversities Amongst Learning Contexts

Learning is sometimes viewed as an individual activity. When we are concerned however with learning in organizations we are, almost by definition, concerned with a process that takes place within a social context and which is based upon or geared towards collaborative actions and behaviours in the workplace. For these reasons work-related learning is in essence the acquisition of knowledge and skills in the midst of action, often as a collective process and geared towards the current task in hand. The socially constructed and task relevance of learning is especially important in adult learning in the workplace where participation with others, and especially those who are more expert than ourselves, is an important means by which individuals may acquire and construct new knowledge. Concepts that are of central importance in this view of learning are the community of practice and the community of learning. But workplaces will vary in terms of the extent to which such communities are present and also in terms of the extent to which individuals are legitimately engaged with these communities. The engagement with such communities is often a naturalistic process. However, activities such as coaching and mentoring are means by which the inclusion or participation of individuals into the community may be managed. It is important therefore that the learning practitioner is able to recognise, understand, interpret and, where possible, influence or manage the learning processes that are associated with such communities of practice.

Diversities in Learning Orientation

There is a wide range of individuals...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• Preface
• 1. Designing learning in complex environments
• 2. Diversities in organizational contexts
• 3. Diversities in learning contexts
• 4. Diversities in learning orientation
• 5. Diversities amongst learners
• 6. Diversities in learning methods
• 7. Diversities in learning supports
• 8. Responding to diversity through flexibility
• 9. The reflective HRD practitioner
• References
• Index