Coakes E, Sugden G,

[Westminster Business School]

Learning organisations, according to Senge 1992, are those organisations in which people can continually expand their ability to create positive organisational outcomes, where innovation is nurtured, and where learning is a continuous, collaborative, supportive and supported process.

It is our contention that since universities are organisations that are dedicated to the imparting of knowledge and the teaching of the art of learning, they should, in themselves, be learning organisations that manage their knowledge to the benefit of the organisation. We are interested to pursue the questions of whether organisations can learn, or whether they simply repeat the mistakes they make. If organisations do learn, does this affect structure and involve the creation of the right environment and culture? What therefore, does this mean for universities and the way they structure themselves?

In the authors' experiences this contention that universities are learning organisations, seems not to be put into practice in very many cases. It would seem that universities are good at teaching the practice but less good at effecting the theory.

The study described in this research in progress paper, aims to discover whether the authors' experiences are general and a valid supposition that holds true across national boundaries and varied university paradigms.

This research forms part of a larger research programme into Knowledge Management and the Learning Organisation which began in the autumn of 1998.

The research programme covers a number of areas of concern in relationship to organisational learning and knowledge management in the organisation:

Preliminary thoughts on the research project were presented at BIT98 (Coakes and Sugden 1998). The reception to this paper encouraged us to concentrate one prong of our research on the university sector as it would seem that there might be specific issues relating to knowledge management and dissemination in such an area. It is also our perception that the majority of universities are insufficiently funded to fully explore the newer technologies that might be used to disseminate and support knowledge management in an organisation - such as a fully implemented Groupware product, knowledge forums and discussion groups..

One of the major areas of our research is concerned with Outsourcing. Since the 1980's management gurus and consultants have been advising organisations to 'concentrate on the core business'. This has led many organisations to divest themselves of functional departments not perceived as part of their core business. Thus a wide variety of functions from transport, catering, cleaning, security to payroll, and IS/IT being outsourced. This trend has now been extended to many public bodies. The danger of such moves is that knowledge vital to the organisation can be lost.

Our survey sets out to discover what were the driving forces behind organisation's outsourcing. Were the drivers and influencing factors primarily economic or were other factors coming into play such as concern for the 'core business'? Or, was there concern for the knowledge that the department might contribute?

Another section of the survey seeks to determine whether groupware tools are used across organisations, and if so whether methods of working and decision-making, and sharing of knowledge, have both changed and been perceived to have changed. Where these tools are used extensively we hope to discover whether the employees in these companies become more autonomous and have developed a concept of self-organisation.

Considering learning organisations and the management of knowledge means looking at an organisation from a cognitive perspective, with the organisation seen as a knowing sentient organism and using its resources, both human and technological, to make sense of its environment. We are interested in the knowledge-based view of the firm, emphasising the collection, storage, dissemination, and use of knowledge and information, as opposed to a cognitive perspective based around that of managerial sense-making. (Laudon & Laudon 1998)

We are concerned to see whether results from our survey indicate that, where members of an organisation see themselves as working in a learning environment with the ability to manage knowledge, they also see themselves working in situations where strategies emerge as a result of the knowledge gained on a regular basis. This will mean that these organisations are able to translate signals received from their environment and thus change their behaviour. The divisions between their environment and the organisation itself will disappear. ( Bahlmann 1990)

We hope that at the end of the research study we are able to provide some measures of an organisation’s information capability through its knowledge management systems, and enable some classifications of organisations according to learning capability, including identification of an organisation’s understanding of its own learning capacity.

Senge PM the 5^th Discipline: The Art and Practise of the Learning Organisation Random House Sydney 1992

Coakes E and Merchant K 'Expert Systems in UK organisations: an empirical analysis' in WCES3 Conference Proceedings Feb Seoul S Korea 1996

Coakes E and Sugden G The Learning Organisation and Knowledge Management BIT conference 4/5^th November 1998 Manchester

Laudon K& Laudon J Management Information Systems 5th ed Prentice-Hall 1998

Bahlmann T The Learning Organisation in a Turbulent Environment in Human Systems Management Vol 9 pp249-256 1990

Contact details:

Elayne Coakes Westminster Business School coakese@wmin.ac.uk

0171 911 5000 x3338

Gill Sugden Westminster Business School gill@wmin.ac.uk

0171 911 5000 x3011

EC/GS