Macur, Mirna

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Introducing New Knowledge in a Public OrganizationMirna MacurUniversity of PrimorskaSloveniaOur society invests a lot in new knowledge, but in Slovenia thereturn of this investment is not as high as we would expect. Pri-vate sector is traditionally more successful in implementing newknowledge than public sector. We believe that it is necessary to in-vest in knowledge although it is characterised by high levels of un-certainty. It is also extremely important to combine new knowl-edge with practice. The paper presents the case of a big public ten-der for science projects for the SlovenianMinistry of Defence. Theusefulness of new knowledge depends on selected projects and onorganizational culture as well as on process aspects of conductingprojects and implementing its results. The aim of this paper is topresent the process of building a learning organization, which iswilling and able to implement new knowledge.introductionThe 21st century is a century of big investments in knowledge. Individ-uals strive to gain new knowledge and competences through educationand training, organisations in diVerent sectors invest in research and de-velopment, and they organise all sorts of trainings for their employees.Developed societies invest a lot in schools at a primary and secondarylevel, higher education as well as science and technology are becomingmore and more important. Learning is a way of living, for us, individu-als and for organisations. Why?• Because we want superior performance. This seems to be the essenceof management that wants to gain competitive advantage by build-ing a high-performance organisation. Management used to put for-ward ideas about performance and placed them into the hands ofpeople at the bottom. This of course is not a prevailing idea anymore; bottom up approaches are also important in a variety ofways. Total quality management, self managing working teams, em-powered organisations, improving innovation and productivity ofan organisation, finding core competences, building a learning or-ganisation (Senge et al. 1995) are diVerent concepts that stress not153Mirna Macuronly the economic performance but also an individual and organi-sational development.• To improve quality. Quality is an important driving force that en-ables us to learn more about our work, to become responsive tocustomers’ (internal and external) expectations, to develop and im-plement new ideas, to change the environment we live and work in,to perform better. Organisations committed to total quality man-agement or Common Assessment Framework (caf) performed bythe Slovenian public sector are learning organisations.• For customers. Private sector can only survive in a market place ifit oVers customers what they need. Customers’ needs and expec-tations are a strong driving force that gives to an organisation theneeded impulse for change and self development.• For competitive advantage. In the long run, the only sustainablesource of competitive advantage is the organisation’s ability to learnfaster than its competition. Learning and generating new ideasshould be an ongoing process, and should not be done only fromtime to time. It is important to incorporate new ideas in a dailywork, and to continue this process.• To manage change.We live in a changing environment and we oftenhave to change our daily practice and redefine it. Organisations thatinvest in new knowledge manage change easier than others (Sengeet al. 1995).Why is learning so important for us, individuals? We could expect agreat variety of answers, but the most important would be because wewant it. Living in a routine is boring for those people who want to getmore out of life and make a change.knowledge management in the public sectorChange is a driving force of our time. The most successful societies andorganisations are the ones who promote change and development, thosewho cannot keep up with others are less fortunate. This is mainly truefor the private sector, the public sector being more rigid and less flexi-ble mostly because of the lack of market mechanisms that stimulate thedevelopment of organisations. Instead, it needs to install other mecha-nisms of feedback such as: reporting, monitoring, and evaluation. Thatdoes not mean that it can resist the pressure from the external environ-ment, namely customers, citizens, international associations (e. g. Euro-154Introducing New Knowledge in a Public Organizationpean Union and nato), diVerent types of inspections, legislation etc.Public organisations of today have to conform to norms and standards,their customers and partners, as well as to their environment. The easiestway to achieve that is to invest in knowledge and development.However, the public sector often finds another solution to the neededchanges. It implements public reforms, which are popular worldwide.But reforms often fail for many diVerent reasons: they require a longperiod until they take root, there is a lack of public support, of top man-agement support, the involvement of middle management is not highenough, there is partial or no cooperation between employees, there aretoo many reforms (a reform after non completed reform), a lack of mon-itoring a change, the organisation of a reform is not central enough etc.The approach to the reform is the one that matters, yet much more at-tention is given to the content of a reform than to the way it is conducted(Polidano 2001). This experience reassures us to invest in knowledge anddevelopment which result in a constant development of the system. Thisstrategy however is complex: it involves capacities to share information,build knowledge and create innovations, in other words, to learn. Thesuccess of knowledge management depends on how flexibly the organ-isation is able to react to unpredictable changes. Organisations that arebased on rigid structures and inert minds are not able to succeed andgrow.Public organisations, which are inclined to be rigid, have an importantmission in the 21st century. They should develop a new, less hierarchicalstructure, become more flexible, more responsive to the demands andexpectations of the environment, take the initiative for their own devel-opment etc.There are of course many diVerent interrelated strategies to achievethat. In this article we will explore one of them – the introduction ofnew knowledge into a public organisation through projects with externalexperts.how to create and transfer knowledgeinto a public organisationThis paper presents the case of a big public tender for the Ministry ofDefence of the Republic of Slovenia, which brought a new set of activi-ties for the Ministry and for experts in Slovenia. The budged for the re-search and development increased drastically in 2004 compared to previ-ous years – some needed projects could see ‘the light of the day’ although155Mirna Macurnew challenges, questions, and obstacles appeared. A public tender is ofcourse only one activity, a lot of supporting processes and structures wereneeded to enable it.The Ministry that was established in 1991 had no oYcial institute ordepartment for research and development. There were several develop-ment centres, dispersed in the system with more than 7000 employees,namely informatics, equipment, doctrine and strategies etc. The activ-ity was dispersed and used to depend upon individuals with knowledge,ambition and abilities of the organisational unit to support their train-ing and development programmes for the organisation/ministry etc. Inshort, those organisational units who had resources benefited in com-parison with those who did not have resources. The development didnot always correlate with the needs of the ministry as a whole, becausefunds were not systematically allocated for this purpose.One bigger fund for research and development for the whole ministrychanged this practice. Needs (in terms of projects needed) were collectedin one place and communicated inside, a prioritization on the level ofthe whole ministry as well as a definition of new responsibilities wereneeded.There were many questions to be answered first. Our activity in theresearch and development area started with questions like:1. What is the shared vision of the ministry (or what do we think theshared vision should be)?2. What are the development priorities of an organisation? What op-erational goals we need to follow?3. What are the needs that reflect these priorities, how to prioritisethem?4. How much research and development is needed to achieve thestated goals and how many additional resources we need to allo-cate for infrastructure, training, equipment etc.In terms of processes we faced many challenges. The following wasneeded:1. Human resources to lead and support these activities.2. New rules about the proposals that were collected from the employ-ees of the Ministry (forms, signatures, collection of forms, feed-back on the proposals – additional information needed, clarifica-tions etc.).156Introducing New Knowledge in a Public Organization3. A new organisational structure that would support the research anddevelopment activity.4. A new decision making body that would decide about project pro-posals financed by the ministry.5. Forms of a public tender for diVerent types of research proposals.6. Ways of communicating and working together with experts and re-search organisations outside the ministry (e. g. industry).7. Rewarding employees for their eVort in running projects (which isin most cases their additional activity).It was not possible to answer all these questions in such a short timebut a lot of new eVort brought some important results. The first set ofquestions seemed easy because national strategies have already been de-signed and some major decisions have been taken. On the operationallevel midterm goals were not so easy to establish. Each decision has im-plications for the future budget, organisation and structure of the min-istry as a whole, not only for the research and development area. Projectproposals, collected in the ministry, reflected the needs of the organi-sational units and they did not all receive the needed consensus. Thoseneeds had to be elaborated further into research and development pro-posals, as well as proposals concerning infrastructure, human resourcesetc. Often we stimulated employees to write business plans especially fordeveloping new technologies. At first, the ideas were not so clear, but theyemerged in the process of writing business plan proposals, which helpedto clarify several issues like:1. Reasons for the project to be implemented.2. The list of advantages that the implemented project brings to ourministry and daily work.3. Alternative solutions to the detected problem: their advantages anddisadvantages.4. Assessment of resources needed.5. swot analysis.6. Risk analysis.7. Long-term consequences of implementing a good solution, an av-erage solution and a poor one.When the completed proposals arrived, the newly established boardof research and development of the ministry had to prioritise them. Re-sources are always limited and the implementation of project proposals157Mirna Macurwas crucial for those who suggested it. It was the first time that an in-tegrated list of project proposals of the ministry appeared and had tobe prioritised. These decisions raised all sorts of new questions aboutthe supporting structure, the consequences of decisions taken and moreimportantly about the vision and operational goals of the ministry as awhole. Organisational units, divided in separate decision making struc-tures and separate budgets started to talk about priorities of the ministryas a whole. Politeness among colleagues inside the board had to be re-placed with a frank discussion about concrete project proposals. We alllearned more about the needs of the system.A new budget for research and development led to the establishmentof a new department for research and development that coordinatedthose activities. There were many new tasks and a public sector did notrespond quickly enough to provide human resources needed to coordi-nate all the activities in this area. There were only two and a half peoplein the first year that handled all the needed activities and the interna-tional cooperation in the field of research and development. Apart frompaperwork a lot of time was spent on communicating a new filed of ac-tivities to the employees involved with new projects. Sometimes trainingwas provided to users of the project and people responsible for the co-operation with industry and the science arena.A new department for research and development coordinated new ac-tivities that were spread all across the ministry. We decided not to es-tablish our own research institute but to use diVerent forms of publictenders to engage diVerent profiles of researchers and diVerent brandsof Slovenian industry to work for the ministry. This concept broughtmany new dilemmas in the traditional, rigid and hierarchical structure.Research activities based on a network structure with the outside worldand with inside experts represented a new mode of operating which wasnecessary for the success of the public tender and for further activitiesbut was not always welcomed. We divided responsibilities within theministry: the newly established department for research and develop-ment prepared public tenders (in accordance with project proposals anddecisions of the board), coordinated organisational units and responsi-ble experts of the ministry with standards and forms, gave feedback toproject proposals, defined selection criteria for projects arrived to thepublic tender in accordance with the board initiatives, took care of theorganisation of activities concerning research and development in theministry, supported work of the board of research and technology, andmost importantly, took care of the accountable budget spending.158Introducing New Knowledge in a Public OrganizationOther activities connected with projects rested on employees, whowere responsible for the quality control of the projects. They providedcontractors with the needed information to conduct projects in time,controlled their work and suggested activities related to the projects(round table discussions, meeting with other experts, testing phase, con-ferences etc.). They confirmed payment of the project if the results weresatisfactory and acceptable.investment in knowledge: who benefits?This is a crucial question but it is too early to answer it. Around 70new projects for the Ministry started in 2004. They are applied researchprojects in diVerent fields of science or projects concerned with the de-velopment of equipment or technology. At the moment many employeesfind these activities as a set of new work and responsibilities that are notalways welcomed. The workload of particular experts in the ministry hasgot bigger, whereas a rewarding system for such an additional work hasnot been established yet.The reward for the contractors is evident. At this stage they are theones who benefit as it is our intention to introduce new knowledge intothe ministry. In the long run the ministry will benefit from the successof those projects or it will experience diYculties at diVerent stages ofa project and possibly a failure. The cooperation with contractors, theusefulness of the results of the project for the ministry, its successful im-plementation into the system – these are all factors that will influencefurther cooperation of the ministry with selected contractors.The most diYcult question is how to measure the success of theprojects. We are aware that up to now processes and outcome approachesto evaluating project eVects have been necessary. Outcome measures de-pend on project goals and anticipated results. They also depend on thereadiness of the ministry to implement its results. Sometimes bureau-cratic obstacles prevent the implementation of project results, in othercases this is due to human factors or changes in the organisation andenvironment.The process of conducting projects and their implementation are evenharder to evaluate. We have reached a consensus on how to monitor thework of contractors, but this system involves a lot of integration activi-ties inside the ministry. Employees responsible for quality control of theprojects need a support of their superiors, of the board of research anddevelopment, the department for research and development, of topman-agement. Contacts with contractors are usually intense and not always159Mirna Macurrecorded in memos. They can be an important inspiration in their work.The levels of expectations of the contractors and people responsible fromthe ministry often need to be clarified. We will need to create measuresfor process evaluation such as (Hellstrom and Jacob 2003, 59–60):• the number of interactions with academics, consultants and otheradvisors,• the number of ‘lessons learned ’ through cooperation with them,• the number of new ideas concerning their work, resulting from thiscooperation,• the number of new colleagues or partnerships spawned in the or-ganisation and outside it due to the project.For the ministry the following was also important:• quality of the relations with responsible organisational unit for re-search and development and the decision-making board,• quality of the relations with contractors,• support of the superiors and colleagues (inside the team) etc.We believe that measuring all the impacts associated with the creationand transfer of knowledge and the capability to grow is too impractical.However, we will need to find an answer to the question about how tofind an adequate way of conducting a project to meet the needs of con-tractors and responsible employees of the ministry as a whole.It is very hard to evaluate the overall activity and its impacts. It re-lates to the goals of the research and the development activity, which arenot always clearly stated. When evaluating outcomes of the creation andtransfer of new knowledge ‘we are trying to hit a moving target, becausewhen we advance, the goals change due to what is learned in the process –indeed if they do not change we may not be advancing at all’ (Hellstromand Jacob 2003, 57).referencesHellstorm, T., and M. Jacob. 2003. Knowledge without goals? Evaluationof knowledge management programmes. Evaluation 9 (1): 55–72.Polidano, C. 2001. Why civil service reforms fail. Public management Re-view 3 (3): 345–61.Senge, P. M., A. Kleiner, C. Roberts, R. B. Ross, and B. J. Smith. 1995. Thefifth discipline fieldbook. Strategies and tools for building a learning or-ganisation. London: Nicholas Breadley.160

Introducing new knowledge in a public organization

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Introducing new knowledge in a public organization

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