Management Learning David Beckett Faculty of Education The University of Melbourne NOTE: This document has three sections: A. Summary of Talk for ERA/AARE Conference, Singapore November 1996 B. Summary of Literature Survey on Management Learning for UTS, July 1996 and for Singapore November 1996 C. Selected References for Survey Proper: Work-In-Progress for 1997 Publication ________________________________________________________________________ _ A. Summary of Talk (ie three `overheads') for Singapore November 26 1996: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ ----------------------------------- How do managers learn in and through the workplace? Some examples: ¥ professional development plans/appraisals (structured) ¥ mentoring/coaching( semi-structured) ¥ personally, via reflection on practice, and in `hot action'(unstructured) This last point displays the learning which results from decision-making, and is apparent in the making of the right judgments `on-the-job' What makes a judgment `right'? Outcomes are the evidence: these will be practical, leading to the strategic. Some call this kind of learning `know-how'. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- How does research capture `know-how'? ¥ managers tell their stories/respond to `trends' surveys and so on -this is too individualistic -and lacks research rigor (resists generalisability) ¥ managers are grouped in `case studies' via industry, site, nation, -this is helpful if the context of the grouping influences the `know-how' -greater chance of research rigor if some `umbrella' concept(s) link the cases ¥ managers' `know-how' is constructed by a research paradigm -this `bench-marks' what sort of evidence will be sought (eg cognitive,socio-cultural,phenomenal) -most research rigor: generalisability is possible against a paradigm, so replicability is more likely. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -------------------------------------- What is the state of research literature? There are some case studies and a minimal range of paradigms (cognitive and socio-cultural). In particular, there is no evidence of a critical/educational paradigm, which is probably essential since we know from other learning especially in schooling that a lot of this is miseducative (oppressive, tedious, and so on). Until we have developed more sophisticated (that is, paradigm-sensitive) research, it will not be possible to give research-based answers to these questions: ¥ How can managerial workplace-based learning be improved? ¥ How can it be assessed? B. Summary of Research Literature Survey: for UTS seminar, Sydney July 1 and for Singapore November 26 1996: Consider this Abstract of a recent research article on workplace, and especially managerial, learning: There has been much recent interest in organisational learning, in the academic management literature and in the business press. This issue is especially salient in firms that operate in rapidly-changing environments and that rely on knowledge workers to make decisions in the face of high uncertainty. Much of the organisational learning literature is based on an organisation-as-brain metaphor and on characteristics of individual learning. This paper uses an organisation-as-culture metaphor to examine how knowledge-workers in bio-technology firms talk about organisational learning. Using content analysis of in-depth interviews with 44 managers, scientists and technicians at four bio-technology firms in Massachusetts, we analyze... (Elmes, M., and Kasouf, C. (1995) Knowledge Workers and Organisational Learning: Narratives from Biotechnology. Management Learning 26:4 Abstract) There is undoubtedly a new `paradigm' for managers' learning about work: that this is located through work, namely on-site, and that it is probably non-classroom-based. This is the context for a large research survey (Beckett: work-in-progress for 1997): what do we know about this new paradigm, and how do we know it? The foregoing Abstract shows one attempt to contextualise these questions. The Abstract reveals that such workplace learning will involve the learning of other non-managerial staff - there is a new responsibility which management may have for that learning. We also note in the Abstract an awareness of the broader context of organisational change, and from this we can assume that workplace learning refers to institutionalised paid employment, that is, the undertaking by the workforce of an organisation's business. So managerial learning sits under the umbrella of organisational structures and changes, and amidst the workplace learning of all the staff. There are several significant aspects of managerial learning which flow from this: ¥ the umbrella concept is organisational learning (which some of the literature addresses in the term `learning organisation'); ¥ under that umbrella, daily work life is marked by dynamism, especially since decision-making goes on in rapidly-changing environments ¥ such dynamism engages the high uncertainty of decision-making ¥ yet this work life is knowledge-driven, in that `knowledge-workers' strive to advance their own and their organisation's learning. But there is more. We need to consider several significant aspects of research into these aspects of learning: ¥ there exists an `academic management literature' and a `business press', so there will be different readerships, and therefore different ways of presenting research; ¥ there is a paradigm of organisational learning based on a metaphor of the `organisation-as-brain', so scholarship in the cognitive sciences (applied psychology, neurophysiology, bio-technology and so on) may be prominent in managerial learning research; ¥ there is an alternative paradigm, based on a metaphor of the `organisation-as-culture', so scholarship in the social sciences (semiotics, post-structuralism, social theory and so on) may be emerging; ¥ `individual learning' can be winkled out using interviews which indicates that empirical field-work is built up from a constellation of self-ascribed perceptions of daily work experiences; ¥ yet the varying locations of the individuals interviewed - perhaps across work sites or in even nationally - shows an awareness of the context of those individuals' daily work experiences. We can now make two general statements about the topic: 1. Management workplace learning is a central element within organisational learning, with the special characteristic that it needs to grapple with the generation of a certain sort of knowledge under high pressure. Managers have to make decisions in the heat of the moment - and these have to be known to be, and shown to be (since there is a leadership element in all this), the right decisions. We can call this characteristic `epistemological contingency'. 2. Research into management workplace learning will try to get inside the manager's head - to ascertain the cognitive basis for `epistemological contingency' (on one paradigm) or to ascertain the social basis for it (on another paradigm). There may be other paradigms. Research under either paradigm will be contextually-sensitive - that is, will at the very least, give some priority to the significance of workplace cultures and managers' personal histories in framing answers to research questions. These answers may be presented in different ways to different readerships. We address these two general statements later after examing certain international amd national literature. Stage One of the literature surveyed five electronic data-bases, and produced ten periodical Abstracts (published between mid 1993 and mid 1996) which reveal substantial support for these statements. They deal in what we have called `epistemological contingency' in contextually-sensitive ways when they: ¥ report case studies, ¥ puzzle about `sense-making', ¥ introduce further developments in cognitive science or seek to expand a more socio-cultural explanatory paradigm, ¥ unpack managerial work practices and pedagogies, not just learning activities, ¥ outline inter-relational concerns across firms, nations, and disciplines. The first and last of these points reveal the same dilemma in all current research: how can specific research findings (in case studies, action learning, ethnography and the like) be generalised? To put the same point from the other perspective: how can general quantitatively-based findings (statistical surveys, perceptions, trends and the like) find purchase in local situations? The three middle points are also vexatious. In trying to understand managers' `sense-making', their cognitive operations, or their socio-cultural imperatives, as manifest in their (new) work practices and responsibilities (say, for `teaching' other staff), researchers bring their own understandings to the very formulation of the issues. Contextual sensitivity applies not just to the research on management learning, but also to the researcher. We have just identified two problems for research into management learning: first, how to justifiably move from either the specific case or experience to the general phenomenon, and vice versa; second, how to interpret `epistemological contingency' - the meaning and purposes of managers' practical activity at work - as an `outsider'. In both these problems, the issue is the nature of contextual sensitivity. Too much sensitivity leaves the researcher enmeshed in the particular; too little sensitivity leaves the researcher floating off the planet. Moving the enquiry on, one could conclude, based on Stage One literature that mastering the here-and-now - contending with the flux of work life, and learning from it - is all there is to managerial work. Not so! Organisations have purposes, and much literature insists, quite correctly, that managerial work, and the learning that grows out of it, however `contingently' experienced, is pragmatic, but ultimately strategic. This comes out clearly in the interest in managerial leadership, and on the power of corporate culture in shaping workplace learning. Yet this learning has to be focussed on strategic outcomes. Stage Two of the literature search looked closely at workplace learning and its relationship to managerial learning, and produced many Australian items. Attempts to pin down `epistemological contingency' in Stage Two showed up in: ¥ theorisations of, and fieldwork in, workplace learning as a general phenomenon ¥ empirical and conceptual examination of the psychology of pragmatic action as shown in competence and expertise ¥ similar research interest in the workplace learners' own experiences ¥ some interest in assessment and productivity To some extent these parallel the general themes identified after Stage One of the literaure survey , but without evidence of sensitivity to the interrogation of the context of workplace learning, as a research imperative. Stage Two literature is small-scale and fissiparous. Stage One literature was more mindful of its internationalism, and at the same time, of the strengths and limitations of the `case study' and specific `industry' approach. But what is most significant in Stage Two is the paucity of research activity centred on management learning as such. Conclusions from the Research Literature 1. If we return to the idea of the construction of a research agenda, we must conclude that there is almost no evidence for a contextually-sensitive focus on the very experiences at work which the Karpin Report (1995) advocates: managers' understanding of work roles and work relationships. 2. Now there is to be sure a good deal of interest in the nature of managerial work as such - the `managerial competencies' debates - and this is underpinned by research into cognitive processes. 3. Similarly, there is a a good deal of emphasis in Karpin, based on Chapter Three of the Research Report, for the individual responsibility managers have for their own career development. This fits with the self-directed learning ethos, and there is a large literature on that (outside the scope of this survey). 4. But in an important respect, Karpin squibs the force inherent in the Report's identification of `the need for enhanced ÒpeopleÓ skills' (p1431) by discussing these as `soft' skills. If these abilities in negotiation, consultation, communication, and the like are so worthy, and so necessary, and research (across the social sciences) indicates these arise to a significant extent in the experiences of women, then one would expect to read that Karpin would `address gender issues' (p1435) with those abilities to the forefront. They are invisible. And they are almost invisible in the meagre research literature listed above. How these are reflected in managerial competency regimes is also a vital question, seemingly unasked, much less answered. 5. Another concern is the paucity of research on learning assessment. A current literature survey is about all there is: yet enterprises are investing large budgets and high hopes in their management learning. If managers' work is marked by the pragmatic in pursuit of the strategic, there must be research activity centred on the achievement of strategic goals in the workplace - not merely in the Annual Report. 6. In the light of the above, these questions for research are suggested: ¥ How do individual managers' career development plans contribute to enterprise strategy? ¥ Is it important that these do contribute? ¥ What compromises, if any, need to be made to self-directed learning when leadership re-shapes corporate culture such that strategic goals now rule some personal learning marginal, and other personal learning, centre-stage? ¥ And what has happened in that process to the grafting of self-directed `lifelong learning' onto a `continuous improvement' enterprise ethos? 7. A larger question provoked by 6. is: Is there any organisational need to develop management systematically? Karpin suggests that that need exists, but not without careful hedging around `competence' and `appraisal' schemes There is little evidence, Karpin concludes, that generic competence standards would be effective, because specific industry and organisation needs may be ignored. In our analysis, this priority for the particular context can be regarded as a reflection of the power of workplace culture, and the mysteries of effective leadership. Karpin worries that `objectivity' is at stake: `Criteria are often vaguely defined, or even defined by the sole person conducting the evaluation' (1401). Quite so - and the implications of that are profound. 8. Implications for unsystematic (localised, non-standardised) managerial development include: Trading in the pursuit of `lifelong' self-directed learning in favour of whatever `learning' incidentally and/or informally appears in and through workplace experience. Workplace learning assessment, then, could suffer a return to the ad hoc and superficial. Workplace learning itself then disintegrates into nothing other than the unreflective undergoing of experiences. 9. One single but telling point can be made of all this, and should be ensured against in all subsequent research: In the ideologically up-beat world of organisationally-based managerial learning, there is no recognition of the function of research as a critique of outcomes which may be pathological. 10. In other words, in Stage Two of the research literature survey, what we do not have is any rigorous Australian research agenda for management learning. There is not enough literature in any case, and what there is, is not framed by broad and critical interrogation. 11. Similarly, drawing on Stage One, ten relevant current research articles in international periodicals do not amount to a rigorous research agenda, although as we noted, there is more evidence of grappling with contextual sensitivity: paradigms are disputed and attempts are made to `shift' to new ones - but, again, there is little literature to go on, only a few glimmerings of interrogation of the given. 12. The most obvious general omission, apart from the lack of a critical stance (cf point 9), but growing from that lack, is any attempt either in Australia or abroad to deal with the more participative, post-Fordist workplace as a challenge for new holistically - focussed managers. This is not just about sensitivity to cultural diversity (where `culture' means `ethnicity' or `gender') but is much wider than that. On educational grounds alone, workplace learning and organisational learning both need to address the purposes of learning. It is not enough that research advances what this paper has labelled `epistemological contingency' - the pragmatic in pursuit of the strategic - but that this learning, arising in and through the work of managers and leaders, be a participative construction. This would demonstrate a much more sophisticated contextual sensitivity than anything we have come across in the research on managers' learning so far! Research on cognitive and social paradigms, and attempts to get at the `sense-making' of work practice, needs to start with the social construction of workplace knowledge. Competency regimes, mentoring programs, instructional designs, appraisal schemes, developmental plans and so on are artefacts, or tools, which should serve educational purposes. We can make the same point about several classroom-based technologies, such as neuro-linguistic programming and Myers-Briggs-type inventories of learning styles. These technologies are presented as part of the repertoire of `best-practice' human resource professionals, and rightly so. But as part of managerial work responsibilities, both to oneself as a manager, or to other staff in one's bailliwick, they present as technicised and intimidating systems conducive to scepticism about workplace learning, and cynicism about innovation and change. Our intention here is to emphasise the importance of thinking of educational telos , since it is clearly lacking in literature on workplace learning. Almost no mention of educational purpose occurs in the literature as surveyed, yet, if the truth be known, much learning at work is maladaptive, repetitive, frustrating and perhaps demeaning. Much workplace learning is, to be blunt, miseducative. If this statement is not true, a rigorous research agenda would reveal it to be so. The same rigor would reveal whether it was true! 13. Thus, we can identify one large research gap and many smaller gaps between, and amidst other, inter-related, phenomena, principally the literature on workplace learning on the one hand and organisational learning, on the other. There is some evidence of cogent Australian and international research attention in the middle of these two literatures. This research attention seeks to understand the experiential dimensions of managers' learning, as these show up in cognitive and social characterisations of the way the work is done. This starts to answer the research question: What are managers doing? 14. But there are two other questions: How might they be able to do it better? How can this be assessed? On the more rigorous reading of these questions, that is to say, on the critical and educational reading, despite the glossy and evangelical nature of much of the literature as it presents for the readership of practitioners, almost everything remains to be done. C. Selected References from Survey Proper: (Work-In-Progress for 1997 Publication) Main Reference: `Karpin' Report. (1995)Enterprising Nation: Renewing Australia's Managers to Meet the Challenges of the Asia-Pacific Century. Report of the Industry Task Force on Leadership and Management Skills (Mr David Karpin, Chair). Canberra: AGPS. In addition: `Karpin' Research Report, Volumes 1 and 2 as above. Other Literature: Barrett,M, (1994) Re-Engineering as a Management Practice. Management, April pp 5-11 Beckett, David (1992) Straining Training: The Epistemology of Workplace Learning. Studies in Continuing Education 14:2 pp130-142 Beckett, David (1994) Workplace Learning: Managing Cultural Change, in The Workplace in Education: Australian Perspectives. eds. F. Crowther, B. Caldwell, J. Chapman, G. Lakomski, D. Ogilvie; Edward Arnold, Sydney (for the Australian Council for Educational Administration):pp276-285 Beckett, David (1996) Critical Judgement and Professional Practice. Educational Theory (pub. University of Illinois). 46: 2 Bigelow, John (1994) International Skills for Managers: Integrating International and Managerial Skill Learning. Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources. 32:1 pp1-12 Biggs, John (1994) Learning Outcomes: Competence or Expertise?Australian and New Zealand Journal of Vocational Education Research. 2:1 pp1-18 Billett, Stephen (1995) Workplace Learning: its Potential and Limitations. Education and Training 37:5 20-27 (also see Billett in Stevenson below) Blunden, Ralph (1995) Practical Intelligence and the Metaphysics of Competence. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Vocational Education Research. 3:2 pp1-20 Caldwell, B and Carter E. (eds) (1993) The Return of the Mentor: Strategies for Workplace Learning, Falmer Press Bristol. In particular see chapter by McMahon, F., `From Cop to Coach: The Shop-Floor Supervisor of the 1990s'. Champy, J. and Hammer, M. (1993) Re-Engineering the Corporation: A Manifesto for Business Revolution. 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