Tài liệu Learning Networks as a Means for Work Organization Development pptx

Learning Networks as a Means for Work Organization Development Recent Finnish Experiences Tuomo Alasoini Finnish Workplace Development Programme Ministry of Labour tuomo.alasoini@mol.

Learning Networks

as a Means for Work Organization Development

Recent Finnish Experiences

Tuomo Alasoini Finnish Workplace Development Programme

Ministry of Labour tuomo.alasoini@mol.fi

Paper prepared for the Nordic R&D Conference on University and Society Cooperation, Ronneby, 14-16 May 2003

Introduction

Finland is now considered one of the most competitive industrial nations in international comparison Finland’s performance in innovation also enjoys a high reputation According to the EU Innovation Scoreboard 2002, Sweden and Finland are the two innovation leaders among the EU Member States (www.trendchart.cordis.lu/Scoreboard2002/index.html) By a closer look, however, Finland’s good performance is mainly based on achievements in the area of technological development and innovation This is one of the main conclusions of the Science and Technology Policy Council of Finland (2003) in its newest triennial review The review examines the main challenges facing research and innovation funding and it contains a list of policy recommendations for the future It states, “Technological development and

technological innovations are generally considered the strongest area of Finnish innovation

/…/ Well-deserved attention has begun to be paid to the relative weakness of social

innovation in the entity of innovation Its development alongside technology is a major

challenge for society and for the economy As yet Finland has no clear development strategy for social innovation The challenge concerns both the organizations responsible for social development, the development of working life, and the safeguarding of individual development and opportunities by means of research-based innovations.”

From the point of view of work organization development policy the unbalanced development

of technological and social innovation can be seen as follows:

(1) The relatively favourable overall growth of productivity in Finnish economy in recent years conceals the fact that there are remarkable sectoral differences in productivity development The rapid productivity growth in sectors which produce information and communications technologies (ICT), such as the electrical and electronics industry, is contrasted with slackened growth in most other industries Finnish companies’ overall record

in turning the new technological opportunities permitted by advanced ICT into gains in productivity has been relatively poor This indicates that many companies have not managed

to implement sufficient improvements in their work and human resource management (HRM) practices to achieve synergistic effects of combined use of ICT and new forms of work organization

(2) There is no clear evidence indicating of a positive association between the extent of the use of ICT and the improvement of the quality of working life (QWL) at company or workplace level in Finland The new technological opportunities have been so far insufficiently utilized as a means to deliberately improve work processes, work organization and work designs from the QWL point of view

Finland is not alone among the industrial nations with these problems Though industry- and plant-level survey data from various sources indicate that superior productivity gains usually are a combined effect of new technologies and supplementary management and work organization innovations (e.g Antila and Ylöstalo 1999; Breshanan et al 2002; Gjerding 1999; Kumar 2000; Lewis et al 2002), work organization development as such has so far played only a minor role in public-policy decision-making, especially when compared to the development of new product and production technologies For instance, Brödner and Latniak (2002) found out that only seven of the 15 EU Member States had ongoing public-supported work organization development programmes in 2002

This paper outlines a fresh approach to work organization development which utilizes learning networks as a means for disseminating and generating knowledge of new practices, and examines opportunities for this approach in Finland by looking at university-industry cooperation University-industry cooperation in Finland is analysed with the help of experiences of the Finnish Workplace Development Programme (1996-2003) The last part of the paper examines learning networks as a model for interaction and cooperation at four different levels

Towards a New Approach in Work Organization Development

Bases for Innovation-Promoting Work Organization Development

Typical goals of the ‘first-generation’ of work organization development programmes dating from the 1960s to the 1980s included improvements in job contents, working conditions, work environments, employees’ opportunities for participation and labour-management relations (Den Hertog and Schröder 1989) The two main weaknesses with these ‘first-generation’ programmes were that the objects of development were often perceived as abstract and unattached to strategic business goals by management and that the programmes lacked effective means to communicate and disseminate project outcomes to other companies Their poor record in these two respects can be contrasted with the simultaneous success of the Japanese quality movement in improving performance of Japanese companies (Cole 1993) Maintaining and strengthening the social legitimacy of work organization development policy

in today’s globalizing and increasingly networked economy calls for an approach, which explicitly focuses on the promotion of productivity-boosting organizational innovations Work organization development designed specifically to promote innovations differ by its

strategic goal-setting from its predecessors, which were designed specifically to promote

QWL and employee participation, but it can be linked to their value basis in two ways:

(1) Innovations provide a way to boost productivity and thus to improve the competitiveness

of companies and economic growth in general Countries, regions and companies which are unable to compete in the field of innovations are in danger of losing their strategic room for manoeuvre in global competition They will then be forced increasingly to seek their competitive advantages in lowering the costs of traditional production factors such as labour

On the corporate level, this has the long-term effect of undermining the job security of the employees, making atypical employment more widespread and reducing companies’ interest

in developing the competence and skills of their employees For society as a whole, the threat lies in a weaker financial base for social expenditure and a growing economic and social gulf between different population groups The consequences could easily be a self-perpetuating vicious circle which would be hard to break Maintaining good QWL calls for a sound growth

of productivity which is based on organizational innovations

(2) Promotion of innovation activity within companies makes them more interested in improving employees’ opportunities to contribute to development work In this respect, the Japanese quality movement provides both a good and a bad example It is good in the sense that it became in effect a mass movement for quality improvement in Japanese companies It

is, however, a bad example in the sense that it did not, in fact, break down the hierarchical decision-making structures within companies and lead to industrial democracy, giving rise instead to a development organization (e.g quality circles) which existed parallel to the

production organization (Lillrank 1995) By contrast, in the Nordic countries, where the responsibility for planning and development activities has recently been delegated to

employees and teams within the production organization, work organization development

aimed at boosting innovation has much better chances of further speeding up this line of development

The Role of External Expert Knowledge in Work Organization Development

Attempts to develop work organization can take many forms Figure 1 presents these different means in a two-dimensional diagram The x-axis illustrates the intensity of the role of external expertise in the change process, while the y-axis illustrates the relationship between expertise and practical knowledge (i.e knowledge that management and employees possess) in achieving change Typical traditional methods of work organization development include the ready-made expert solutions at one end of the x-axis (legislation, agreements between the labour market organizations, norms, standards and blueprinted consultancy ‘change packages’) and the dissemination of information at the other end (research reports, method guidebooks, databases, etc.) What these two methods have in common is that the outside expertise and in-house practical knowledge never meet during the actual process of change

Figure 1 Different roles of external expertise in work organization development

Dissemination

of information

Training programmes

Advisory services

Ready-made expert solutions

Company-specific expert solutions

Expertise directly guides process of change

Expertise

indirectly guides

process of change

Expertise and practical knowledge

in interaction

Expertise and practical knowledge unconnected

Participatory development

The potential for influencing change processes using these methods alone has dwindled in recent years Meanwhile, the importance of the methods in the upper right-hand corner of figure 1 has correspondingly grown There are two reasons for this Firstly, the pace of change

in the companies’ operating environment has accelerated and the issue of work organization is increasingly becoming a reflexive topic, which is subject to continuous discussion and redefinition If external expertise is really to have any impact under these circumstances, it must have a strong enough role in the actual process of change itself This is the justification for its position on the right-hand side of the figure At the same time, companies’

development challenges have become more complex as a result of globalized competition, networked economy and the rapid advances in ICT Their main focus of attention is no more

on renewal of individual business processes, but, increasingly, on continuous development of the entire product and business concept (Virkkunen 2002) This has also reduced the potential for solitary actors to find solutions to emerging problems, let alone to define the problems themselves properly In order to make proper definitions or to find successful solutions, it is increasingly important that there is interaction between different types of knowledge This, in turn, justifies the position at the top of the figure

The methods placed at the top right of the figure are company-specific expert solutions and participatory development These two methods also describe the typical role of expertise in work organization development programmes The division between these two methods broadly corresponds with the division into a design-oriented and a process-oriented approach (Naschold 1993) Design orientation applies here to cases where external expertise is mainly used to explore the possible future states and features of the organization on the basis of theories or models of ‘next-generation’ organizations or other good-practice design criteria and diagnosis of the current state of affairs in the organization, whereas in process-oriented approach external expertise is used to assist the organization to find proper ways to implement participatory processes of change on the basis of theories or models of change and intervention In innovation-promoting work organization development, this division should be bridged Seeing work organization as a reflexive topic lays increased stress on process-oriented approaches Increased reflexivity does not mean, however, that the company’s room for manoeuvre is no more bound by its current state of affairs and its own historical and other contextual factors, i.e also expertise in design issues is still highly important

The methods placed at the top right of the figure also create better opportunities than the other methods for mutual, interactive learning for both experts and practioners Involvement of experts in actual processes of change and their interaction with practioners promotes their opportunities for reflective observation and abstract conceptualization of the change processes, resulting into new models, methods and tools for development work From the point of view of companies, dialogue with experts helps them, in addition to solve practical

problems, improve their capacity to solve future problems

From Best Practices to Learning Networks

In traditional approaches of work organization development programmes, the aim is first to identify ‘best practices’ through experimentation within a group of companies, and then to transplant these to other companies The problems of these approaches have been dealt with

by a number of writers (e.g Fricke 1994; Gustavsen et al 2001; Lillrank 1995; Wareham and Gerrits 1999) For instance, the causal mechanisms through which the adoption of different practices lead to improvements in company performance are complex and context-bound, and the acquisition of these practices is not a case of a mechanical transfer of information; it is always a creative learning process in the company in question

One possible solution to the problem of accumulation of knowledge would be to abandon the idea of ready-made best practices and that of disseminating these practices afterwards According to the new approach to work organization development, enough companies should

be included in programmes and projects from the very start and companies should be networked together and also with expert organizations A large enough number of companies

and expert organizations might be termed critical mass Setting up solid channels for the

exchange of experiences and actual development cooperation within this critical mass can

facilitate the creation of learning networks

The term ‘learning network’ refers here to a cooperation forum between companies and expert organizations based on equal participation and confidential exchange of information and experiences which is intended to help companies define their development needs and find solutions to their problems The expert organizations involved in such networks are typically research and educational institutions, consultancy companies and development agencies These networks may take many forms and may also include other participants, such as customers, labour market organizations, intermediate-level organizations, etc They may be open or closed They may have a reasonably permanent structure or a constantly changing one They may have both permanent members and loosely connected contributors In many countries, learning networks have been actively promoted in recent years through various development programmes and projects (e.g Alasoini 2001; Bessant and Tsekouras 2001; Gustavsen et al 2001; Tell 2001) with the aim (1) to improve the potential for individual companies to carry out projects successfully (if critical mass has been achieved within projects and programmes, it improves the chances of successful development and lasting results); (2) to improve individual companies’ chances of receiving inspiration, ideas and encouragement to develop (the more critical mass projects and programmes have, the better the chances of companies using comparisons to understand their own situation better and thus

to support their own development); and (3) to boost the search for new, innovative solutions (the more interaction there is between different points of view within projects and programmes, the better the chances will be of finding fresh outlooks)

Also in work organization development according to this approach it is possible to talk of good or best practices The notion in this case, however, does not refer to ready-made, transferable solutions; it refers to practices as generative ideas, which serve as sources of inspiration for companies

Universities as Partners of Companies

Different types of network can be effective in different situations In cases of learning involving the search for solutions to problems which are already fairly well defined, it is useful if the network participants and their knowledge base are similar to each other With the

help of adaptive learning of this kind it is possible for the participants to find solutions

without needing to question norms and basic assumptions guiding their activity In cases where the focus is on defining the actual problems, differences in knowledge between the

participants can be a resource in itself This calls the participants for the kind of generative learning which does enforce them to critically assess their own norms and basic assumptions

Since both types of learning are often needed, the best situation could be ‘just the right difference’ between the network participants (Nahapiet and Ghoshal 1998; Schienstock and Hämäläinen 2001; Tell 2001) This helps enrich the knowledge base of the network but still leaves the participants able to understand each other’s fundamental issues, targets, language and value judgements

Figure 2 takes a closer look at this issue, from the point of view of adaptive and generative learning separately The underlying assumption here is that the opportunities for learning by the different network participants are a function of the difference in their knowledge base

This has an effect on their learning opportunities through two components: the ease of information exchange and the novelty of information exchanged The ease of information exchange decreases with the increase of difference in the knowledge base of the network participants The novelty of information exchanged, instead, increases with the growth of difference in the knowledge base of the participants The two inverse U-shaped curves in figure 2 depict the joint effect of these two components In adaptive learning the optimum point of difference is probably to the left from the optimum point in generative learning

Figure 2 Opportunities for learning and the difference in the knowledge base of the network participants

Adaptive learning Generativelearning

Difference in knowledge base

Opportunities

for learning

Innovations often call for posing entirely new questions or redefining old ones, i.e generative learning This means that innovation-promoting work organization development should focus

on creating and supporting learning networks with actors with relatively wide differences in their knowledge base Innovation-promoting work organization development, therefore, is an area in which researchers are supposed to have an advantage over consultants as development partners of companies, owing to their basically critical scientific approach towards the

‘reality’

It is an open question, however, whether scientific communities are ready and willing to expand their role in an area in which they are forced in a constant search for a satisfying balance between their own scientific norms and standards and the expectations of different groups of practioners Companies and universities constitute two different communities of practice with two different logics of operation Even in the Nordic countries with their high reputation for well-functioning ‘national innovation systems’ and their long tradition of work organization development programmes, university-industry cooperation in issues related to the work organization is much of an unexplored area for many companies, let alone universities (Gustavsen et al 2001; Nieminen and Kaukonen 2001; Svensson et al (Ed.) 2002; Tell 2001)

University-Industry Cooperation in Finnish Work Organization Development – the Case of FINWDP Network Projects

The Finnish Workplace Development Programme (FINWDP) is the first of its kind in Finland

in terms of its conceptual foundation and scale, i.e it is a national initiative in which the focus

is on work organization development FINWDP was launched at the beginning of 1996 as part of the programme of Prime Minister Lipponen’s first administration, and will continue until the end of 2003 under the programme of the second Lipponen Government The aim of the programme is to improve productivity and QWL by promoting new work and HRM practices in Finnish workplaces FINWDP is funded by the Finnish Government The total budget of the programme from 1996 to 1999 was EUR 16 million, and EUR 28 million for the second programme phase from 2000 to 2003

The programme can provide expert support to workplaces Expert support is used mainly for funding the use of researchers or consultants in the projects 1,300 workplaces and 120,000 employees in 550 development projects have so far taken part in the programme The main goals of the projects include the development of work processes, establishment of teams and groups, and improvements in leadership, personnel management, external networking and the functioning of workplace communities

About a third of the programme budget is earmarked for networks projects of a special kind This funding is intended for research and experimentation to support the creation and testing

of organizational innovations that have a potential for job creation The projects must involve

a sufficient number of companies in close and open cooperation based on mutual trust Cooperation between companies can be based on vertical (production) or horizontal (development) networks Vertical networks can be further divided into principal- and supplier-driven networks, and horizontal networks into topic-, region- and sector-based networks Most network projects are jointly funded by FINWDP and other R&D funding sources such as the Technology Development Agency Tekes The following takes a look at network projects with regard to their potential to act as learning networks

Network Projects as Learning Networks

So far FINWDP has supported 33 network projects, a half of which have been completed 20

of the projects are horizontal networks, and most of them (N=17) are primarily topic-based Where vertical networks are concerned, there are more supplier-driven networks (N=7) than principal-driven ones (N=5) The first type is typically a case of several small or medium-sized supplier companies led by one or two ‘core’ companies in trying to create system supplier capacity for their mutual production network through intensifying their cooperation There is one network project, which does not clearly belong to either of the two above groups This project aims to create technological and organizational infrastructure for networking between a group of workplaces There is only one project in which the primary justification is that it is regionally based, but about ten projects have this as their secondary justification for networking

Metal and engineering industry companies have participated more actively than anyone else

in network projects One third of the projects consist only of such companies, and they are also involved in many other mixed projects The other most active participants include the mechanical wood-processing industry and the electronics industry The total number of

participating companies is from 250 to 300, depending on the precise definition of

‘participation’ Most of them are SMEs

Table 1 shows how extensively different kind of actors take part in the network projects In 15

projects, the development coalition comprises only a group of companies and an individual

expert organization The other extreme is demonstrated by two projects in which one can find

as many as six different types of actors involved Of all expert organizations, research

institutes (N=15), technical universities and faculties (N=14) and consultancy firms (N=11)

are the most active participants in the projects The distribution of expert organizations in

Table 1 seems to correspond to the situation in Finland on the whole Nieminen and

Kaukonen (2001) have conducted a survey of how important companies consider

innovation-related cooperation with different partners Based on their material (374 companies in

manufacturing and knowledge-intensive business services), the companies considered

cooperation with their own client companies, equipment suppliers, material suppliers and

subcontractors fairly or very significant clearly more often than with any other partners 31%

of the companies also considered cooperation with research institutes such as the Technical

Research Centre of Finland (VTT) to be important Cooperation with private consultancy and

development agencies (28%) and technical universities and faculties (23%) was considered

more important than cooperation with polytechnics and other educational institutes (21%)

Meanwhile, the figure for universities was only 12% and for schools of business

administration only 3%

Table 1 Development coalitions and different types of participants involved in FINWDP

network projects

Number of different types of participants 2 3 4 5 6 TOTAL

Technical universities and faculties 6 2 3 2 1 14

The number of different types of expert organizations involved, the number of companies

involved, their variation by factors such as industrial sector and size, and the project duration

are some of the most critical structural characteristics depicting the ability of a project to

function as a learning network In actual fact, a project’s ability to function as a learning

network depends on many other factors too, as for instance the forms of interaction between

different participants in the course of the project, how advanced the methods are that the

project applies and how committed the various participants are to the project

The following includes short descriptions of three network projects which demonstrate aspects of learning networks They also constitute examples of three different kinds of networks, a horizontal (The Lohja Area Environmental Cluster), a vertical (The VAVE Network) and an infrastructure-creating network (The TEL LAPLAND Network)

Case I – The Lohja Area Environmental Cluster

The Lohja area is an old industrial area in western Uusimaa province in southern Finland The Environmental Cluster comprises 18 local companies, the organization Entrepreneurs of Lohja, the Lohja Hospital District and the City of Lohja itself The companies involved are among Finland’s leading corporations in the paper, wood processing, electronics and building materials industries and in energy production The University of Helsinki’s Länsi-Uusimaa Institute for Continuing Education acted as coordinator in a project (1999-2002), which gave rise to the establishment of the Cluster Various subprojects have brought also many consultancy firms into the Cluster

The Environmental Cluster is intended to launch and implement projects that aim to improve the state of the environment in the Lohja area, to create cooperation in environmental issues between authorities, companies and local residents, and to increase and utilize environmental know-how in the area It is hoped that cooperation will help find solutions and operating models that reduce environmental impacts arising from raw material acquisition, energy use and the manufacture, transport, distribution, use, recycling and disposal of various products The Cluster was a consequence of a competitiveness analysis of the area, carried out by a local partnership project in 1998 This showed that efficient handling of environmental issues was an important factor for companies’ competitiveness and for that of the area as a whole The Cluster is an open learning network seeking to expand Specific rules were set down right

at the outset, covering decision-making, the implementation of subprojects, funding, agreements and internal and external provision of information The companies have formed clubs amongst themselves for the personnel in charge of environmental issues, logistics, information and acquisitions, and for technical staff The operations of the Cluster have been aimed at both local residents and company personnel, and have taken the form of environmental and company surveys, training seminars, visits, joint development projects and various other events, such as a car-free day and a car-pool day The companies’ joint development projects focused on reducing the environmental impact of logistics chains, on more effective waste recycling, on efforts to boost the user value of Lohja lake, on developing environmental indicators and on working together on developing environmental management systems The Environmental Cluster is still operating even after its specific project funding ran out in 2002, and it has made deliberate efforts to assess and develop its own capacity to act as a learning network

Case II – The VAVE Network

The VAVE Network is a cooperation forum for the Tampere unit of Sandvik Tamrock Oy, which manufactures drill rigs, and eight of its suppliers The Network seeks to develop the competitiveness of the entire network through improved cost effectiveness, shortened throughput times and better delivery accuracy The acronym VAVE comes from ‘Value