Organisational change and the process of knowing: the role of communities of practice within the context of a merger in the UK brewing sector

This dissertation presents the findings from a study focusing on the emergence of communities of practice in the context of organisational change. In doing so, it tries to examine how informal learning might be influenced by change - which in several cases implies alterations in practice/work - and it explores the possibilities for organisations to "manage" communities of practice to improve performance. Research took place in a merging organisation in the UK brewing sector. The author gained access in two settings: the finance department of the organisation's Northern Irish subsidiary based in Belfast and the telesales department of the Scottish subsidiary based in Glasgow. Overall, 60 semi-structured interviews were conducted with participants from both settings while the author also had the opportunity to employ non-participant observation and document analysis, The study examines the way in which informal learning and knowledge sharing unfolded in the two settings, following the merger, while also exploring the outcomes of those processes through a perspective that favours "knowing" as part of action. The findings show that in Belfast, where the nature of change resembled past experiences and the historically constituted workplace context favoured similar efforts, knowledge sharing was characterised by a relative lack of conflict. In contrast, change in Glasgow was seen as more radical in its nature as it affected key elements of the work/practice of the telesales employees and it was linked to further changes in the sectoral context in which the organisation operated. Consequently, knowledge sharing lacked coherence and it was influenced by workplace politics and the existence of divergent understandings of what successful practice was in the setting. Accordingly, the challenges for those responsible for operationalising change were different in the two settings. The findings also reveal that the nature of work/practice within the two settings differentiated the outcomes of the process of informal knowledge sharing and application as well. Therefore, in Belfast informal collaboration among the local practitioners led to a standardisation of working procedures. In contrast, given the important role that the telesales department had in realising the new company's strategy, knowledge sharing in Glasgow led to an improvisation in working procedures, something that allowed local practitioners to remain innovative in the course of their jobs. The study concludes that a better understanding of the ways in which learning and knowledge sharing develop in communities of practice can be achieved by locating those processes in their meaningful contexts, paying attention at the same time to the role of power differences. This task, in combination with an adoption of a dynamic view of knowledge, can also help us explore more critically the implications that those informal processes of learning have for managerial action

Worlds within worlds: the relationship between context and pedagogy in the workplace.

This paper explores the different ways in which people engage in teaching and learning in the workplace. There is now much more awareness of the symbiotic relationship between workplace learning, the organisation of work, level of employee involvement, and organisational performance, and the broader economic, regulatory, and social context, within which organisations have to operate. The paper argues that we have to identify and take serious account of the contextual factors (external and internal) which affect all organisations as these are central to developing our understanding of the nature of pedagogical practice within any workplace setting. By closely examining the nature and impact of these contextual factors, we can gain greater insight into the mystery of why organisations adopt different practices and why they create such different learning environments. The paper draws on our tentative initial findings from the Learning as Work project and includes vignettes from both the public and private sectors to highlight the issues raised

Learning, knowing and controlling “the stock”: the changing nature of employee discretion in a supermarket chain

Ordering and managing stock is a key function to organisational performance in the retail sector in general and in food retail in particular. The advent of such technologies as EDI (electronic data interchange) and EPOS (electronic point of sale scanners) has allowed retail companies to synchronize sales with ordering and inventory replenishment. Subsequently, stock management has been centralised with the head office being responsible for the overall co-ordination of the process while the role of individual stores is merely viewed as the transmittal of customer demands through the supply chain. Reporting data from a case study of a British supermarket chain, this paper explores the nature of the relationship between head office and stores; how it is mediated by the range of technological tools available for managing the stock and also what its implications are for employee learning at store level. The evidence illustrates the dual role of artefacts in making possible long distance control from head office, on the one hand, but also opening up spaces for local discretion and intervention, on the other. Accordingly, the paper also shows how the relation between organisational centre and peripheries gives rise to different types of skills and expertise, providing the basis for a potentially expansive learning environment in the individual stores

"What’s the vision for this profession?” Learning environments of health visitors in an English city

This paper discusses the attempts by a group of health visitors in a provincial English city to reform their working practices in order to work more collaboratively and, hence, create a more expansive learning environment. The health visitors self-consciously sought to create a ‘community of practice’, a term they felt captured their ambition to move away from the historical conception of health visitors as professionals working largely on their own but under the direction of others. The paper shows that the outcomes of the health visitors’ attempts to engineer changes to their work organisation were shaped by the constraints and opportunities offered by their relationships with a diverse and fragmented network of fellow professionals, including other health visitors, doctors, managers and personnel from other social care agencies. Our analysis contextualises the uncertain development of discretion and trust in the work organization of health visitors within the broader horizontal and vertical relationships of the productive system in which they are embedded. The paper argues that, whilst much was achieved and considerable learning took place, the group’s vision was ultimately unsustainable due to the characteristics of the wider productive system

Constructing learning: adversarial and collaborative working in the British construction industry

This paper examines two competing systems of organising the construction process and their consequences for learning. Under the adversarial system, contractors compete solely on price, risks are shifted onto those next in line and disputes are institutionalised through complicated, but inevitably incomplete, contracts. However, under collaborative working the costs and risks of the project are shared and the parties involved communicate openly and freely, often in the absence of tightly specified contracts. The move from the former to the latter – prompted and encouraged by government enquiries, large public sector clients and building regulations – represents a shift towards a climate in which problems are shared and solved regardless of where they occur in the productive system (a process conceptualised as ‘knotworking’ in the literature). The paper argues that such learning theories and policy pressures from above fail to take adequately into account the heavy hand of history and the importance of understanding the nature of the productive systems in which ‘knotworking’ is expected to occur. Both are important in understanding the fragility of collaborative working across the stages and structures of the construction production process which place limits on making ‘knotworking’ an habitual and commonplace activity

Exploring the dangers and benefits of the UK’s permissive competence-based approach: the use of vocational qualifications as learning artefacts and tools for measurement in the automotive sector

This paper presents evidence to show how vocational qualifications act as boundary objects in the stimulation of learning at work and how they, in turn, become the catalyst for the creation of artefacts that have a purpose and existence beyond the life cycle of an accreditation process. The context for the paper is the UK’s automotive manufacturing industry, a sector that has undergone considerable change over the past thirty or so years and has been under intense pressure to improve standards. The paper presents evidence from case studies of two companies that produce parts for global car manufacturers. These companies have introduced competence-based approaches in order to audit and assess the skills of their workforces in response to demands from the companies they supply that they can prove their employees are working to the required international quality standards. The competence-based approach, which is contested in the academic literature, has enabled employees to gain National Vocational Qualifications (NVQs), which, in turn, are still controversial some twenty years after they were first introduced. The paper argues that a competence-based approach can be beneficial to both organisations and individuals, but the ambiguities inherent in the NVQ model of competence create tensions and opportunities for restrictive as well as expansive forms implementation

"The prawn sandwich will live forever”: learning to innovate in commercial sandwich production

This paper examines processes of innovation in one of Britain’s fastest growing industries, commercial sandwich manufacturing. It is argued that the industry is characterized by two different productive systems, which we designate Retailer Label and Manufacturer Label. New product development (NPD) in the former is skewed towards high-volume, lowprice products that match existing market trends. However, strategies of profit maximization in the latter facilitate the emergence of ‘new to the market’, premium priced products. The paper argues that these strategies reflect the contrasting balance of power between retailers and manufacturers in the two productive systems. This, in turn, shapes the learning environments and learning affordances available to NPD workers