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Module 4Group 1 - Outi Aitio (SF), Adelina Garcia (E), Anne Mariën (B), Liesbet Wouters (B) Group 2 - Anke Engling (D), Noe Blanco (E), Inger Osterlund-Oller (SF), Cathy Camertijn (B) Group 3 - Esther Booltink (NL), Veerle Dupont (B), Tom Jansseune (B), Miia Lehtonen (SF) Group 4 - Karen Dereymaeker (B), Peter De Temmerman (B), Paula Kari (SF), Jutta Laukart (D) Group 5 - Carme Anguera Iglesias (E) , Kalle Mäkinen (SF), Karen Soeteman (NL), Kristel Janssen (B), Lilianne Hercules (NL) Group 6 - Imke Abma (NL), Enric Perez (E), Anne Berg (SF), Liselotte Courtens (B) Group 7 - Marita Pylvanainen (SF), (SF), Els Vancluysen (B), Katrijn Vanduffel (B) Group 8 - Pirjo Töllinen (SF), Emma Causa (E), Miet Vanhilderson (B), Karen Wouters (B) Group 9 - Anna Palva (SF), Bart Ketelslegers (B), Melissa Verkley (NL), Mira Van Olmen (B)
PAPER FOR THE MODULE ON ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT OUTI AITIO 1. Introduction The description of a chosen organisation is the first topic we deal with. This organisation is the case study we use to explain some concepts received during this module. Secondly, the picture derived from the questionnaire VOKIPO is clarified and commented. In the third place we link these ideas with the forces mentioned by Mintzberg. Finally, we point on changes for the future in relation with the concept of the learning organisation.
2. Case study For our case study we‘ve chosen the national airport of Belgium: Sabena in Brussels. Even more specified the Department Sabena Catering. This organisation used to be financed by the government, but almost ten years ago this organisation became a profit one. Therefore the emphasis on making gains and improvement of the quality increased. Sabena consists of several departments with a growing degree of autonomy. Each department has its own budget, often its own training manager and specific defined goals. Some of these departments are Ground Handling, Technics, Security, Cargo, Flight Operations, Catering, Commercial, a central department of Human Relations and Resources. In the following part of the paper, we only deal with the situation within the department of Sabena Catering. This department is responsible for the food production served during the flights of about 40 companies. To deal with this task the Catering employs about a thousand people. Several sections are set up namely Finance and cost control, Personnel Management Catering, Quality, Sales, In-flight equipment and maybe the most important the Catering Operations. The majority of employees are working in this last section. The food production itself, the tray setting, the delivery of the products to the plains by the drivers, the dishwashing of used Catering material, storing of Bars and Duty Free products, ... are the most important task exercised in this division. All the sections within the Catering department are lead by a Manager at the top. There is a much-elaborated division of functions around different tasks and within these tasks.
3. The questionnaire VOKIPO and Sabena Catering The picture formed by the answers on the Vokipo questionnaire, which gives an idea of the organisational climate, showed a few remarkable features.
Before we invest this result more in-depth, we can make some remarks:
Maybe some employees of the organisation would not be so happy with the emerged picture, because they like to call it a learning organisation. In this, kind of organisation elements as innovation, flexibility, horizontal structure, open communication, teamwork often around specific projects,… are important features. However, most of these persons would belong to the top of the organisation. They could react and point on the changes planned for the future. Innovations are foreseen but these are not the results of a two-sided communication. Decisions are made at the top and have to be implemented at the bottom. This top-down approach is in contradiction with the principle of the horizontal structure. Not everybody has an equal say. Flexibility asked from the employees when plane-schedules are changed or a colleague wants to exchange working hours. Indeed this last remark is true. When people are invited for an intake this is one of the aspects that is really stressed. On the other hand, the strong division of tasks makes it almost unnecessary or impossible to act flexible in the execution of them. The personnel works in teams and there is a moderate to high degree of loyalty between them, but this is only for employees belonging to the same level within the organisation. The hierarchical structure is much elaborated and communication between different levels is not an aspect of daily life. That is the reason we said the association between people from different levels in the organisation is almost never congenial. To become e learning organisation there is more needed than an open workplace and stress on the improvement of the quality of the delivered products. First of all the horizontal structure should be put into practice. To realise this the management top have to start by changing their attitudes and acting as an example. As long as the hierarchical structure exists and different functions are closely linked with different wages change can hardly be obtained. Therefore, we think it is not right to call the Catering learning Organisation. However, is it possible for the organisation to become a learning organisation or should it become one? In current organisational approaches, this concept is thought of as the ideal one. However, is this true for all kind of organisations? Here we can point to the organisation of the field visit. A little software company could be seen as a learning organisation. Employees, almost all of them highly qualified, had to follow up all changes in the field of high technology, all the gains were equally divided over the employees, the mission is defined in collaboration with all the employees and the clients, the book-keeping is open to every employee. Therefore, it is not impossible to realise a learning organisation in general, but this software company differs on several aspects from the Sabena Catering. The catering employs especially moderates to low qualified people i.e. people with a secondary high school degree. The tasks are subjects to change in the world of technology, but within the Catering tasks mostly have the feature of repetition in itself. The work fields in both organisations strongly differ from each other. An third element we can mention in this regard is the size of the organisation. This software company gave work to 50 people. This makes a great difference with the 1000 people working in the Catering.
4. Forces of Mintzberg and Sabena Catering The concept of the learning organisation can be recognised in the force of adhocracy of Mintzberg. He divides 7 forces to define an organisation. Our case study has mainly features of a machine bureaucracy. We will explain this a bit further.
We said a lot until now and most of the features of the organisation showed the force of the machine bureaucracy are the most dominant one. Efficiency is very important because of a continually time pressure, the planes have to leave on time and the food has to be delivered as scheduled. 5. The changes for the future and the learning organisation We already mentioned the fact the Catering wants to become a learning organisation. But we had some questions about this ideal. Is it possible in such a large company? Is it necessary in an organisation with minor changes in the contents of the tasks? Is the ideal of a learning organisation favourable for an organisation as Sabena catering? These are just a few questions we were dealing with. We made a difference between the content and the way they are working within the company.
Group 2 :Anke Engling, Noe Blanco, Inger Osterlund-Oller, Cathy Camertijn MODULE 4: ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT
For this paper our group is going to analyse a real case about one Spanish organisation. This one is "Esplai El Piolet", a youth association that works with children from 5 to 16 years old in the free-time. We will explain a little bit how is it composed to have an overview. There are at that moment 16 educators that are called "monitors". This is, as a team, the main organism, because the decisions have to be taken by them in a consensual way, but not the most important. There are also the children who are organised by age groups. In total 6 groups with two or tree monitors in each one depending on the number of children or the needs of the group. The work with them is done on Saturday evenings, but also in weekend excursions or popular and cultural activities in the city life. And, at that moment, the parents have formed a support group or commission. The structure inside the monitor’s team is a little bit more complicated. There are some tasks that have to be done by one person (co-ordinator, director, secretary, financier?, material responsible, etc). Those responsibilities have to be taken for different persons every year, and for example, the director has just the legal responsibility of the organisation, but he has any power or leadership. That’s why it is separated the co-ordinator and the director figures. But there are also some projects and tasks that take a lot of time to be programmed and prepared, so there are some commissions working on it. Is possible to people from out of the organisation, but interested to help in some tasks, to collaborate, but the conditions are clear, because they can’t have the responsibility, so neither of the decisions are right. To program the activities there is one meeting at the beginning of the course where are distributed the tasks and written the common goals and strategies. But also every two weeks there is a meeting to do the following and continuous evaluation. Then at the end of the course there is an evaluative meeting as a whole overview and new proposals. This organisation has economic support from the municipal government (two kinds: subvention and contract) and from the Catalan government (for the people with disabilities). Then there is a little part that has to be paid by the families and some specific activities to earn money for specifics projects (as the interchange with children from Bosnia). That association is included in a federation that pertains to a social movement called "laďc and progressist". Problems Volunteer-work: + Assembly: the work in assembly is a good way for members to participate and to take responsibilities. But this kind of structure takes a lot of time to take decisions and that’s why it has been introduced to the commission work. + The engagement on the emotional level is high because you want to do this kind of action. + Everybody knows a little about everything and can take part of almost everything. + On the other hand there is a constantly change process going on because of the new members or monitors who are entering the organisation with new ideas and older members are growing out from the organisation. + If you always are in the same group you do not learn to know new people and then you are not developing the organisation so this is a strength in volunteer work.
2. The theory of learning styles Referring to our lectures about learning styles we will mention Kolb's learning style profile. The process of thinking and doing is important in this case and organisation but also the emotional level. It is therefore in PIOLET a mixture of convergent and accommodating styles that are present.
3. Main forces influencing In our opinion the main forces that are influencing this organisation are the ‘co-operation’ and the ‘innovation’. That’s why we can see some similarities with the adhocracy style of organisation and the ideological one. If we look for some kind of the adhocracy characteristics we will see the following examples :
This is important because of the ideology but also because the ideology but also because it is a volunteer organisation (for everybody, not only for the monitors) and if it doesn't work, people don’t stay, people expect an achieve participation ??????? 2)Key means of organisation : support staff with operating core is the main force of this organisation. It has to have relation with the community and the collaboration with other organisations and government. Here are also staff organisation as the work commissions (pedagogical commission, external projects, common activities, parent commission,…) 3) Specialisation of job : There is an horizontal specialisation because there is not ……. And the tasks have to be done every course by different persons. 4) training and indoctrination : There is no indoctrination; there is specific training to be monitor and educate in free time with children and also to be a director. But there are some specialisation courses for different subjects in relation with those themes, too. 5) formalisation of behaviour-bureaucratic organism : there is an little formalisation of behaviour, but the are also some basic attitudes that are required to deal with children. 6) grouping : the form is just functional. It depends on the number of volunteers and children in each group and also on the needs of the groups and the context. 7) planning and control systems : that point is not clearly related with adhocracy because in that organisation the planning is important, but also the control if we understand it as an evaluative and appreciative process. 8) decentralisation : There is a selective decentralisation. The information has to be passed to everybody (put it in common) but the activities and responsibilities of each one is taken by every group working. 9) Age and size: it’s a young organisation namely 8 years. 10) technical system: in that case also the organisation has not the adhocracy characteristic because it’s not very complex. It’s a little organisation. 11) environment :it’s complex because there are a lot of factors influencing it and also dynamic because it’s taking relation with persons and community and this context is always changing. 12) power : we can say that the control is in the experts (monitors) because at least the main decisions are taken by this organism. We said that the co-operation force is important, too, and we did a relation with the ideological organisation. We did this affirmation because the ideology is one of the most important bases of this association, but not just this step, but also the acting to change the society to achieve that ‘utopia’. (include the analysis we did) To make analysis of the seven metaphors we need more time to reflect on the organisation and the change. The adhocracy style of organisation is typical for young entrepreneurs that we can see in many new organisations nowadays. We refer to Mr. Alain Foręt’s visit from "Centre de Jeune Enterprise" who explained the French system.
4. The role of the Adult Educator In an organisation the approach of an adult educator is more like a consultant. The consultant can use adult education as an instrument (tool) or a resource and there is on one hand a risk for the organisation to build up a structure, with using people as an instrument. Then the members of the organisation are giving "responsibilities" and "tasks" that are seemed to be independent, but in fact a manipulation of having people to do tasks in only one direction, perhaps by purpose, is done. In this situation human resources are used to achieve a goal or an interest of different stakeholders and the effects on the person are for instance destroying the health of the person. For this reason it is important to be aware of the effects of one-sided directions and what the results of a consult are in fact. The manipulating factor should be considered and identified as soon as possible and the organisation can build up a new healthy ground. Teamwork is built up on confidence and engagement in same goal (Katzenbach, 1992) and learning organisations are mainly built up with different kinds of teams. In the other hand if the organisations are using adult education as an instrument to achieve one or different ideologies that are shared by the members of the organisation, the result could be an engagement of the members on a high level. Now it could also be a learning organisation, when people from different areas
Adult educator as a consultant *In a technical level: -The task would be help to do more effective the time using, for example in the meetings. -Also help to use new technologies to get more free time, expend less time in aspects as secretary, financial control, etc. (by taking into account the participant qualifications). *Procedural level: -He must give some tools to facilitate the improvement of the evaluation process; the information and communication process (for example between commissions), and we were thinking also in the structure. For example the structure to work with parents is a commission, and they have voice but not vote, they don't participate in the decision-making process. It would have to be analysed to know what form would be better. *Collaborative level: -The collaborative feeling is in this team; but there is a need to improve the communication and feed-back forms, because it is usual to have misunderstandings. -But it is also important to build better relationships with other organisations (for example other youth organisation with that the organisation has a common project for youngsters). To put all those things in practise there are some strategies that the adult educator has to use to be successful: 1*Build relationships if he/she is an external agent, and take into account where is the energy, who really raises his/her voice, etc. 2*Clarify the objectives of that task to let out the resistance. If resistance occurs there is different approaches to handle the situation properly 3*Make a diagnose, buy building it up with the members, as taking the knowledge from inside, because this team is used to work by consensus and participate in the decisions, so it cant be felt as something imposed, because they wont agree. 4*Engage the participants in this action planning to be successful in this change, they have to want to change and do the effort. 5*Action and "go" with the energy (the resistance) 6*Evaluation of the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT-analyse). In many organisation the communications between the members can cause problem because of different opinions and ideologies. In this case the focus of evaluation could be put on communications to build up a better information-system. 7*Institutionalization is the new process that is built up on the evaluation that has been done by taking the opportunities of development into account. 6. CONCLUSIONS In the analysis that we did in class about this organisation we can see that the strongest points are the goal orientated and support. The innovation is in the average (10), and the lack is a little bit in the respect of rules. That's because of the volunteer work, sometimes the rules respect has to be flexible, because people is doing their best, and if they feel too much forced they would let the association. But also it is a work that has to be done that people feel responsible and see the importance of the norms. As a conclusion we want to say that this paper has been a very useful and practical work because this analysis can be transfer to the organisation and work really in it.
International Program Education February - May 1999 Université Paul Valéry Montpellier III INTERCULTURAL GROUP PAPER Managing changes and training in Organisations Week 29 March to 2 April 1999 - module 4 Intercultural group : 3 Esther Booltink (N)
INTRODUCTION This paper is the result of an intercultural group-work considering the fourth and fifth module of the program, respectively "Organisation and Management" and "Labour and In-company Training". The topics discussed in the following text are a selection we made. We will look back on the content (theory and practice) of this module that was treated in classical courses, group discussions and the field visits by means of a case-study. We agreed to take the case of a merge between two organisations for foster-parents in the Netherlands as the subject for further analysis. The recognition of the case for other sectors or countries, the complexity of the consequences of a merge, the amount of organisational aspects that are involved or influenced by a merge, are strong arguments for our choice of this real situation to work further on. All the named aspects would make this specific case interesting for applications and links with the field of adult education. Starting from a real case we worked out two imagined situations in answering two different questions: first of all: how can we, as adult educators, confronted with a merged organisation characterised by a negative sphere of frustration and tension, try to optimise the further development of this organisation? Secondly: how can we, as adult educators, imagining that the merge wasn't implemented yet, introduce the change in a constructive way with a long-term attention? In analysing the first reactive answer to a organisational change, we will focus on aspects of organisational development. The second pro-active answer to change, namely the introduction of a merge in both involved organisations, gives us room for planning in-company training as a tool for preparing the employees to change. Case-study In Holland there is a flow towards working with large scale organisations in the field of youth-care. As a consequence, many small organisations are obliged to merger to form larger organisations. The organisation we describe in this paper is an organisation resulting from such a merger; a middle large organisation for foster-care (MLO, about thirty people) merged with a small organisation for special foster-care (SO, about ten people), dealing with foster-families who take care of children who are on the edge of belonging into foster-care. The merger became a fact in September 1997. When we talk about the organisation for foster-care, we refer to the organisation after the merge, if not this will be mentioned. During our discussion we asked ourselves the question: "Can we even speak of an organisation after the merger in our example?" In an organisation people share meaning, but in our example there isn't so much shared meaning. There seems to be a shared goal on the organisational level (the obliged merge), but not on the individual level of the members of the organisation. After our discussion we agreed that we could speak about an organisation in strong development towards social cohesion and real shared meaning. Before giving a description of the organisation for foster-care, we want to make the following remark. The description of the organisation is given by one of us who worked in this organisation during her apprenticeship. The place was provided by the former MLO. We are aware of the fact that her story is not totally objective, because she was part of the organisation for ten months and thereby involved in the process. PART 1 RETRO-ACTIVE ANSWER PREFACE ... 1 Organisation for foster-care
The goal of the organisation for foster-care is to mediate between foster families and foster children to provide a safe and loving home for children who cannot live with their parents because of all kinds of problems. The organisational structure of the organisation for foster-care is giving in the following scheme: FIGURE with number of people After the merger the former president of the MLO became general president of the organisation. The former president of the SO for special foster-care became head of staff. The staff consisted of the head of the staff, two team- co-ordinators (one of the co-ordinators guided two teams), a behavioural scientist, a psychologist (from the former SO) and a (family)system scientist. Three forms of foster-care can be distinguished; foster-care in crisis situations, foster-care in networks of extended family and friends and long-term foster-care. For each form of foster-care there was a team formed in the organisation. Each team was composed out of: - the co-ordinator of the team (also staff-member) - family researchers - matchers, responsible for matching foster-children with foster-families - social workers who visit foster-families - a behaviour scientist or family-system scientist The workers of the former SO were divided over the three teams. The way of working in the organisation after the merger was based almost completely on the way of working in the MLO. Their way of working was precisely described and criteria for quality of the work were developed. The workers from the former SO had to adopt this (for them) new way of working. Because of the small size of their former organisation, their way of working had been less explicitly described. They were used to talk about their cases thoroughly with their colleagues and being able to consult a child-psychiatrist and a psychologist whenever they felt like it. Adopting the new way of working meant for them, that they only knew about the cases of their colleagues by means of paper reports. There was a lot of resistance against the "obliged" merger from the part of the workers of the former SO. The child-psychiatrist was fired because he was totally not willing to co-operate. Without the child-psychiatrist and their own way of working, the workers of the former SO felt unarmed. This resulted in a lot of stress and tension and people staying home from work. Co-operation and partnership in the period after the merger became impossible. The workers of the former SO felt as if they totally lost their own identity and felt that decisions were being made for them. They wanted to form a fourth team in the organisation for foster-care, but forces in the field of youth-care made this way of organising impossible. The organisation was divided in two groups and people talked about "we and them". To understand the case-study better, we will give the characteristics of the MLO and the SO before the merger. Note that after the merge the way of working of the MLO was more or less taken over for the entire organisation.
Questionaire TABLE CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MLO
CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SO
2 What forces are there in this organisation? After this description of the organisation, we want to analyse the situation a little more to understand the situation better. We do this by means of the idea of different kinds of organisations. Why? Seven different kinds of organisations can be distinguished; simple structure, machine bureaucracy, professional bureaucracy; divisionalized form; adhocracy, missionary organisations and political organisations. We see our organisation as a mix of the professional bureaucracy and the adhocracy. We will give some examples to illustrate this idea using the organisational design of Mintzberg that was discussed during classes.
The matrix organisation of an adhocracy can be recognised in the organisational structure of the organisation in our case. The three different forms of foster-care (crisis, network and long-term) can be seen as different markets. Staff (a), family research (b), matching (c), social work (d) and behaviour science (e) can be seen as the different functional groups within each of these three different markets in the organisation. The key means of co-ordination in our case are at the one hand mutual adjustment because the work is co-ordinated in the teams composed of people with different expertise. On the other hand also standardisation of skills is a mean of co-ordination; all different expertise/functional groups are specialised in foster-care and in the organisation there is a strong emphasis on developing the field of foster-care. As we focus on unit size, we see that in our case the organisational structure is wide at bottom (the teams) and narrow elsewhere (there are only two authority figures; general president of the organisation and the head of staff). The organisation in our case was meant to be an horizontal organisation where everybody had the same voice. Looking at the ideological force within the organisation, we see that the MLO and the SO didn't have the same ideology; their mean philosophy(s) differed. The former MLO was based on the attachment theory, the former SO was based on behaviour theory. We also think that the definitions of for instance teamwork and communication probably differed between the two organisations. The former organisations also differed in the power structure they used. We have the idea that in the former SO the child-psychiatrist had much authority, whereas in the former MLO the authority was more equally divided.
3 Analysis of the changing process In the following text, we will make an analysis of the organisational learning process of our case-study. To make the analysis, we use the organisational learning cycle (Poell; Tijmensen & Van der Krogt, 1997) because we think the merger can be seen as a learning-process on the part of the two former organisations. When there is a change, people have to react on the new situation; a new environment needs new behaviour, new attitudes etc. We think a merger brings about a change and results in a lot of learning-possibilities. It depends on the person and its environment what the person does with these possibilities to learn; that is what his/her learning-result will be. Learning-results are closely linked with learning-experiences which influences later learning-processes. That's why we think those learning-results are very important for consultants when making training-plans. In the organisational learning cycle four steps can be distinguished. The last step in the organisational learning cycle generates more information which restarts the cycle. We will link these steps to the characteristics of learning potential in contexts. Which learning do you want to promote? FIGURE In the following text, we will mention the main elements for each step in the organisational learning cycle, afterwards we analyse our case-study in the light of the step mentioned. Before starting we want to remark that involvement on the part of the workers and support for the workers are crucial in all the steps of the learning cycle.
1. Widespread generation and information The first step in the learning cycle is giving (two-sided) information. Why is the merger necessary? What are the reasons to merger? What will be the concrete changes? What are the consequences of the merger for the workers and their way of working from before the merger? And, how did the workers of both organisations perceive the merger. The goal of this providing and giving of information is to achieve involvement of the part of the workers. In our case-study the merger was forced because of the flow in the overall youth-care system to large scale organisations. We are not sure if the workers of both former organisations understood what the philosophy behind the flow to large scale organisations was. Understanding and acceptance of the reason for the merger seems very important to feel involved in it. Analysing the case-study we got the idea that there may have been a misunderstanding in the communication about the concrete changes the merger would bring about. There seemed to be different understandings of the concept teamwork and of the new structure of the organisation between the two former organisations. That is why we want to stress the importance of cognitive clarity here in learning-processes of organisations like a merger. Also two sided and open information seems very important; the staff of the organisation has to inform the workers of the merger, the workers on the other hand have to have the opportunity to give feedback to the staff before ideas to change an organisation are a given fact. So, timing of providing information and opportunities for communication are essential.
2. Integration of new/local information into the organisational context To integrate new information into the organisational context, confrontation of differences, open communication and appreciation of diversity (safety to say things) are of vital importance. It seems that in our case-study there was no open communication on the concreet level about the diversity of working between the two former organisations before the merger. The real confrontation of differences was in working together in daily life after the merger. The feelings of resistance of the workers can be a indication of no appreciation of diversity, but they can also have caused no appreciation of diversity.
3. Collective interpretation of information In our group there was a little confusion about the difference between step 2 and step 3 of the organisational learning cycle. The two steps are closely linked. As we see it, step 2 results in step 3. It is very important that the workers in our organisation develop a collective way of interpretation, but within that collective interpretation every worker still is an individual with his or her own characteristics. So appreciation of diversity within the collective interpretation is also very important.
4. Having authority to take responsible action based on the interpreted meaning. Authority figures have to listen to the voices of the workers of their organisation in two ways. First they have to be sensible to problems existing for workers and use this as information to develop ideas for organisational changes. On the other hand workers must have the opportunity to give feedback on proposed organisational changes. In our case-study it seems that the people from the former SO thought it was no use to give feedback; they seem to feel that everything was being decided for them. They seem to experience no sounding-board! Looking at the overall process of the merger, the process went too fast in our opinion. We want to stress here the importance of timing in organisational changing processes.
4 How to improve the existing situation? Two pasts to analyse the situation Starting from the situation described above, what can we do to improve the situation in our case-study? To change things in our case-study, we believe that somebody from outside is needed. An objective person who is not part of the fight. This person can provide the organisation for foster-care "knowledge from outside" that exists next to the knowledge from inside. An adult educator can play the role of consultant (the role we practised in the simulation assignment). One of the main tasks is to create an open and safe communication climate.
To structure the process of improving the situation in the organisation for foster-care, an adult educator (in the role of consultant) can make use of the sequence for initiating and managing change developed by Kolb and Frohman (1970). It is a seven-stage process. For each stage, we will mention some elements we think are very important in that stage. Whenever possible we will refer to our case-study.
Stage 1 Scouting In this stage of orientation in the organisation, a consultant has to orient himself in order to get grip on the situation at hand. We recognise this stage in the description of the case-study we gave earlier in this paper.
Stage 2 Entry When the consultant really enters the organisation, it is very important that there is a clear "psychological contract" between the organisation and the consultant. It should be clear what the role of the consultant will be during the process of change in the organisation; what will the consultant do and what will he not do? We think a consultant has to be a facilitator, a person who helps the workers so that they can advice themselves in the future. The attitude of the consultant has to be one of objectivity and acceptance. The appreciative approach is according to us the best way to establish a positive relationship between the people of the organisation and the consultant and thereby to motivate the people for change.
In our case-study, the consultant should make perfectly clear that he will not choose sides, otherwise the people of the former SO could see him as an instrument to fulfil their needs. He should also emphasise that it is not only the product but also the process of the change that is important in forming good relationships and social cohesion between the workers. The consultant should be very supportive and involved in the situation to create acceptance and motivation from the side of the workers, but he should leave enough distance to have a objective view on the situation; "It must be possible to find ways to combing in an open relationship the support and the confrontational aspect (Bouwen, 1995, p. 10)". By emphasising the existing competencies (and recognising the difficulties), a good relationship between the workers and the consultant can be established.
Stage 3 Diagnosis In the stage of making a diagnosis, we want to stress the importance of shared ownership of the change. "The question is: how can we frame change so that each voice from different and unequal positions can be heard in an assembly with equivalent seats (Bouwen, 1995, p.11). Every worker in the organisation for foster-care should have the opportunity to tell the consultant (and the other workers in the organisation) what he or she experiences as the main problems (What caused their irritation?) and (for the stage of planning and action) how these problems according to them can be solved best. There should be multivoiceness and an appreciation of different perspectives. The consultant should use this knowledge from inside together with his knowledge from outside to formulate a diagnosis and to make plans for action.
The diagnosis has to be made on three different levels; technological, structural and relational level. "It is only when the relational process get stuck that adaptation is in danger and that change becomes a difficult task (Bouwen; 1998, p. 304). Looking from outside now, we think the main problem in the organisation for foster-care is situated at the relational level. Although we think this level should be the main focus of action, the workers of the organisation have to find out for themselves what they think the main focus of the process of change should be. The consultant can help them by asking them about their experiences. An analysis of the past can provide the consultant information that is useful in the stage of formulating a diagnosis (but also in the stage of planning and action). In our case-study two pasts can be distinguished: (a) the period before the merger (= the different past) and (b) the period after the merger (= the common past). Both pasts contain a lot of useful information for the consultant, and therefore need the consultants attention.
The period after the merger can also be called "the first change process" whereas the period after the entry of the consultant can be seen as "the second change process". The irritations of the first change process that especially the workers of the former SO showed, seem to be utterances of resistance. Resistance can be seen as a source of energy (people do care!), that when transformed can become a drive in the second change process. In the diagnosis we should also focus on the capacities (of the workers) of the organisation after the merger. Although a lot of problems, many workers handled the situation after the merger. Which strategies did they use? Can these strengths be used in changing the organisation? So the consultant has to work from the existing capacities. Here we can recognise the idea of "Empowerment".
Stage 4,5 Planning & Action Also in this stage of planning it is crucial that the workers feel that there is "shared ownership of change"; what things do they want to change and how? After analysing this, a common goal for the organisation has to be formulated. One of the short-term goals in the second change process of the organisation for foster-care could be changing the image of the common past. The workers have to learn to see this period as a learning experience for themselves and for the organisation as a whole. In the stage of planning and action, it is important to recognise the differences between workers in main learning-styles, learning experiences and learning-pace. In line with this, each worker needs individualised feedback and support. When planning actions to change, the consultant has to keep in mind that an organisation is a system; when he changes one part of the system, this has consequences for other parts of the system and for the system as a whole.
Stage 6 Evaluation Stage 7 Institutionalisation
The consultants' task is to stimulate, open up communication between the workers of the two former organisations and to give information, feedback and guidance in the process of change. One of his goals has to be that the organisation is able to go through the seven stages of organisational change without his help. That is why we think it is so important that the consultant works on the strengths of the organisation. FINAL REFLECTION ON THE RETRO-ACTIVE ANSWER ...
Module: Organization and management. Group 5 Carme Anguera Iglesias (Spain) Kalle Makinen (Finland) Kristel Janssen (Belgium) Lilianne Hercules (Netherlands) 0.- INTRODUCTION Within society organizational field forms "a species" on its own. You can find all sorts and conditions of organizations, and also diferent kinds of classifications: One way to classify them, maybe the best known? Is to divide them into profit or non-profit organizations. But what they all have in common to a certain degree is the fact that they are confronted with the everchanging society where they exist in, and by coping (from within the organization) with this changing (outside) context, organizations maintain and contribute to this process of change. Today organizations have to survive in the so called postmodern society that is characterized by processes of reflexive modernization (individualization and globalization), where human capital, knowledge and learning is emphasized and where the market-ideology is one of the dominant organizing principles. In this context adult education has a place: Whether we look to adult education that takes place in an organizational context or to adult education in a specific role of change-agent in an organization, the adult educator is always confronted with a dynamic and diverse context. There are not only different kinds of organizations with their own specific misions, goals, cultures, structures, strategies, and so on; but within each of those organizations there are also a lot of different actors involved with their personal learning needs, goals, expectations, interests, lifeworld, learningstyles and so on. Adult education/educator is operating in a grey zone, a kind of midfield between society and organization or between organization and the individual participants. Within this position adult education/educator has to deal or to cope with a lot of different, conflicting and opposite interests. So decisionmaking will be a crucial but complex task. There are books full of theories, perspectives and frameworks about all aspects of organizations that give meaning and structure to this complex reality of organizations and can facilitate the decisionmaking process. But because of the diversity, criteria has to be looked for in each specific situation (but how is this possible if the situation is constantly changing?). Therefore in planning, organizing any adult education programme or intervention the only basic guiding-principle can be to re-activate or stimulate a relational process, betweeen all different actors involved, where negotiation is the central issue to deal with the pressure of change processes from the outside and the inside.
1- CASE STUDY 1.1.-Situation The organization that we choosed is a local radio station from a small village where one of our members was taking part in. The radio station is paid by the city council so it is a non profit organization. What we are going to develop is a plan to improve their "organizational development". We will act like a group of four consultants: Before we entered the radio station we already had information about their structure, way of working, social contacts and timetables, because one of us was involved in the company, in this case the radio-station. So we had some ideas about the problems we could expect when we intervene in the case. When we entered in the company the first problem we saw came from the communication and interrelation between the collaborators (the volunteers). The situation is as following. The radio station is composed by a group of 15 collaborators, all of them are students at the university, which are working on a voluntary basis. They don’t have much time to spend on it because they have to study or they have to work in other places as the main profession. The students had no strong relation with each other, in other words, they didn’t spend so much time together, even some of them didn’t know each other. So, the social contact was on a low level. The feeling of responsability was not very high because they didn’t feel like a group and the majority of them didn’t have feelings of solidarity within the group. Therefore there is a need of compromise from the individual to the group. We recognized a lot of strong points that could be useful to improve their situation. The collaborators had a lot of connecting points. All of them were studying at the same university so they were members in a same community. They were working as volunteers because they liked the job, so the starting motivation was very strong. The majority of them came from the same area and they had some common feelings of territorial belonging. The age was similar, they were active and they wanted to improve the social situation of the radio station but they didn’t know why it wasn’t working in the old manner and what the problem was. All these characteristics made it easier to solve the problem because it showed that there was only a need of organization and that it could be improved by an intervention plan from our side, working together with the same collaborators.
1.2.-Intervention First of all we will set up our general and specific goals. The general goals are: first improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the radio station and second to adjust the individual and the radio station like an organization. The specific goals are to: a) increase the relations between the collaborators (inside and outside the radiostation). b) introduce the workgroup like a way of cooperative work. c) construct a common culture in the organization. d) increase the feeling of belonging to the group. e) make their jobs more dynamics. f) help the collaborators to identify their own skills.
The way to reach the goals will be focused on the collaborators like members of a group with individual needs and interests, because we think that starting by solving them the organization will also work better. The way of coming into the organization was easier because one of us was already involved in it. So, the difficulty of the new group coming into an organization was lower. A strong planning was made before the first visit to be used during the intervention in a flexible way, taking care of the individual needs and interests. The first thing to do was a reunion to inform the people that we would be around there and we would do some interviews to them. The intention of the reunion was to make them aware of our staying. We didn’t tell them that we were consultants because it could create feelings of pressure, so we said that we were students doing observations on the work floor. The reactions, as we already expected, were negative because the majority of the volunteers didn’t come to the reunion. The reason was that they were not used to this kind of acts in the radio station. We started to collect some information, by going there and observing the way they work, the relations between them, the climate of the association, the culture they had, and so on. We gathered the information also with the use of the member from our group (direct information) and from some interviews that we did with the volunteers, director and sub director. We have to say that at the beginning there was some resistance from their side but it was solved soon by themselves. The intention of the interviews was to find out some aspects that we needed to know before we could start with the plan. What we were trying to know was the level of relations in the organization, if there were established some groups between the collaborators, if they had predisposition to have some changes and innovations to know some of the institutional aspects, if they agreed with our observations about their feelings of belonging to the group and if they do or did some activities together etc. We had an analysis of the interviews and we found that there were some differencies between the collaborators, and also with the director and sub-director. They had different opinions related to the place of work and the time that they had been working there. But the feelings about the communication and relationships between them were generalised. All of them felt that there was a need to establish and vitalize relationships between them and they were ready to do something about that. By the other side, all the collaborators were satisfied with their own jobs and that facilitated our task, because they really wanted to give their collaborations to the radio and they wanted to do something to improve their situation. The next thing we did was organizing a drink for everyone, because after the interviews we saw that individually all of them realised that there was this problem of communication, but nobody talked about it in a group discussion. Our intention was to connect people with each other and to help them to realise how important the communication and the group ideology was for the effectiveness of the people as an individual, group member and member of the association (as they already noticed). After this they started to see the common characteristics between them and they were ready to hear our proposals, so it was the time that we choosed to tell them that we were doing an observation of their "organizational development" and that we were there to work together with them to improve their situation. We started by giving them some feedback about their existing positive points to make their relationship towards their labour better. The practical things that we decided to introduce in their organization were as follows, but it was always stressed these as voluntary activities never in a compulsory way: - Short byt interacting reunions, to give the opportunity to express their feelings about their job and to change opinions about the work and practicies with each other (it could be twice a month, and the possibility of exceptional reunions when there is the need of it). In this reunions they can talk about new ideas, innovations, the clarification of tasks that they have to do, may be some work in comissions (party, excursion, newspaper, for instance), the relation within the other programs and the new structure of work and so on. - The proposal of an informal newspaper where everybody can write his/her own ideas, remarks etc. Also the birthdays, weddings and cultural events. In the newspaper there has to be a summary of the reunions and other activities for people that are not able to join in these. - A board to hang up some interesting things, some remarks, events and even greetings. - A shelving, with one part for each, where they will have small pieces of paper that they will fill up every day when they record a program. In one side there will be the proposal of the following program and in the other side there will be the result of the program after they have recorded it. So, they compare what they had in mind before they do the program and what they really did. In that way, everybody can go there and read about the other programs and know what is going on in the other days. That can be a good way to keep them informed about it and to make them aware about their collegue’s tasks. That can also help them to find what other programs they are interested in and may increase their co-operation and peer support within the group. We choosed these practical actions because they were easy to apply and they didn’t take so much time, otherwise they could have been more resistence to do them. We couldn’t follow all the processes of the planned change because it takes a long time until the change is established but we were always introducing some group dynamics to their way of work, that they can keep using after our intervention. Some of them were: Phillips 6.6 to promote the integration of the members of a group, the participation of them and the communication within a group; the Nominal Group, to promote the integration and participation; Brainstorming, to make them find out their creativity and some new ideas that could be useful to innovate some aspects of the radiostation and also to facilitate their work sometimes; the Interchange of experiences, to see different opinions and have contrast viewpoints about the same question and also to make them more critical about their work. Our intervention was always to take care about the relationship between the collaborators and us. We were all the time trying to understand the reason of their resistances, and also motivating them by telling the positive things about themselves. Our role was totally defined by ourselves and also identified by the collaborators. We tried to work energeticly to increase their feelings of activation and partisipation. After our intervention we have to say that we were satisfied to our job and that we felt that a planned change has to be done so carefully because there are a lot of aspects to take care of and that the main thing to respect and work on are the persons, as individuals and as group members.
1.3.- Dialogue with theories. - The first thing we realised was that the planned change had to have a really good work behind the intervention, otherwise it wouldn’t work. So, we refer to French and Bell, about that there has to be a strong planning to make possible the change in an organization. We recognize the different parts of the process of a planned change in our case study: Scouting, Entry, Diagnosis, Planning, Action, Evaluation and Institutionalization. Our planning was really useful because we could link some theories that we were studying before and introduce them in a real case. The evaluation was done from two sides of the case, the first one immediately after the intervention and second two months after. We also introduced the idea of an evaluation by themselves like a continuous feedback in a group discussion, by themselves, to receive positive and also negative evaluation, because we think that not only the positive feedback help them to improve their work, but also the negative. - The resistance of changing was also observed at the beginning of our intervention. This resistance came from their scare towards a new way of working and breaking their own way of doing. - With the practical actions mentioned before we wanted to introduce some of the characteristics of the learning potential that we saw during our intervention: the open communication, refering to the reunions, groupworks, newspaper, and so on; the confrontation of differences by using the reunions and discussion groups; feedback possibilities were facilitated with using all these changes; make the results visible for everybody, to keep them well informated. - About the images of organization we saw it like a mixture between ideological, adhocracy and professional. There were some aspects about cooperativism and competivity together when we first observed their way of working, because they were doing their work individually and in a competitive way because they weren’t working like a group, but at the same time, all of them were working without receiving no money for that and only for their own satisfaction and for the radio’s benefit, so it was a kind of cooperativism at the same time. Some principles of innovation were showed at the same time, by the way that they were motivated to change ways of working and to introduce new ideas in the company. - At the beginning before we entered into the organization, our way of working and thinking was more related to the expert model because we saw ourselves like profesionals with knowledge and also with some power. The process that we were planning was much rational and planned, we had everything structured and planned. But then again, when we started our intervention directly with the collaborators, we saw that we couldn’t be that much rational and structured, otherwise the collaborators wouldn’t answer properly to our propositions. So, we changed our way of acting to a more confrontation model, where we were more facilitators than professionals, trying to make organization members themselves work on it and discuss about their differences, make them critical about it and work like consultants and helpers of the change.
1.4.- Importance of adult education in this real case: The consultants as adult educators play the role of facilitators or conflict solvers. Therefore the A.E. have a really important role on it because it works as an instrument for the improvement of the organization and its situation. How crucial point the consultant have for the development of the organization? It is obvious that the labour habits and the organization customs would have propably stayed the same if the consultants wouldn’t have been intervened to the organization. Or maybe very visible problem in the organizational labour structure would have opened the eyes of the workers to react somehow against the conflict by asking outside consultancy help for example. Was the change really needed in this case if the organization was getting on anyway? What is then the role of the adult education in general? In this case the field of adult education is to be seen from limited sector since it takes a specific methodological viewpoint as a science; it is not value free in that sense since it is being just one operationalisation of the many interests of adult education. The individual and organization are seen from the development point of view which means that in the case itself the role of the adult education was to be the instrument (as mentioned) for empowering and development of the individual and the organization; the organization became more empowered thru the individuals’ greater understanding about the organizational facts. 1.5.- Conclusions: We will set up the conclusions like an evaluation of the evolution process by the two sides of the planned change: the collaborators and the consultants. By the first side, the participants started being strange and a little bit close to the proposals, becoming more colaborators of the change and feeling helped and greatfull about the proposition of change, being really active and finishing ready to change their structure. On the other hand the consultants had like two different kind of feelings, before and after being acted in the real case. Before intervening to the radio station they were scared about it because it seemed really a big change with a lot of dificulties to solve and problems to find. That could be because they already had some expectations and the biggest goal for them was to solve things as if there has to be problem. The other feeling, after entering into the company, was totally different because they saw it more relaxed and flexible than before. So, they started feeling frustrated about the feeling of resistance which they first found, but it ended quickly to evolve to a more affective feeling to the collaborators when they were ready to change and collaborators and consultants were working together to improve the situation, the consultants felt efficient and useful, and they cared about their job and principally about the collaborators’ feelings, needs and interests.
2.- REFLECTIONS Making an intervention in to organization is a complex issue where many components have to be taken into consideration. The case itself shows one inside view into an intervention process, the methodology and filosophy behind the praxis is broad and sometimes blurry, therefore some remarks about intervention, organizational change, organizational culture and experiential learning should be made: The Kolb’s model which was used in our exercise is afterall all about experiential learning, therefore it is peculiar why this topic was left out from deeper discussion? Where does these models come from and what is the background and contradictions of Kolb’s model for instance? When talking about development the question of "our" and "their" development should be asked: Who defines the development (on this case the change)? Is it the outsider consultant or the insiders, the employees, itself? Can the consultant really define from outside what is the situation in the organization? Obviously the answer is no, therefore the voice of the employees must always be heard, but there lies many risks: Do the employees really have the capabilities, recources and tools to evaluate what are the problems in the organization or what would be the optimal strategy to better productivity for example? One major risk is between the individual and collective: Let us use here some ideas from Habermas, his the distinction between lifeworld and systemworld. What can be said with these concepts is that the definition of the organization’s needs and proximal development zone is problematic since these two "world" may easily get mixed. That is that the employees may evaluate the situation of the organization or give the feedback to consult from their lifeworld’s point of view when the actual systemic view to the organization itself is neglected. As Habermas writes the lifeworld refers to the viewpoint of the individual from his/her personal needs. The systemworld could be interpreted here as the objectives, culture and customs of the system/organization. In other words the risk is in the mixturing of these two aspects; is the individual’s opinion relevant to the systemic aspect, is his/hers opinion about himself/herself objectives or about the organization’s objectives? What is the common organizational culture and what is the common and individual experiences about the consultant’s proposals? How can the consult build the bridge of understanding between the employees and his/her objectives? Therefore to take into account the perspective of the employees is evident and it is relevant to ask how can the employees be motivated to take part into the development projects and how can the consultant show them what is the best for the organization? The intervention and change process in organization should always be made together with the real participants, which in this case are the employees of the radio station. What about the relation between conflict/problem, need and action? While talking about organizational development during the week, the central question of what comes first is essential: Does the organization first have to have a visible problem or contradiction which leads to development/intervention need and afterwards to action to solve the problem? Or is the consult the denominator of the problems? figure A
During this module’s lectures the organizational development was seen more from action perspective, more weight was put on the concrete intervention action of the consultant instead of asking wether we first need a problem and after that a need to intervention and action? The triangle represents these three components which the intervention process has, their relations are the central questions of the organizational development: Should the need to development come from outside? Where does the problems arise and does the organization itself have the means to diagnose or evens notice the problems? How can adult education help to solve the problems between different collective and individual needs and actions? CHAPTER 4 : ORGANISATION AND MANAGEMENT. Group 6:
Starting from an evaluation of the consequences of cultural differences, we ended up with discussing the implementation of ‘good practices’ from other companies (of other cultures) into the own companies. Benchmarking from companies from Eastern Asia, for example, resulted in a greater attention for group-aspects and social issues within companies. Taking the results of Hofstedes theory into account, we don’t think we can just take over the differences. It’s good to take this perspective to look to organisations, but we don’t think you can use this research as an argument for big changes within organisations, without taking other aspects into account. We believe inter-organisational differences within countries are as important as differences between cultures. Specially taking processes of globalisation and world spread knowledge into account. Stating that comparison of different cultures has brought some social issues on the agenda, we want to point out some questions about the use of persons as human resources. In the current society, we notice an environment that is in continues and high speed change. Organisations have to deal with this ever-changing market. The environment is a market that is one of competition and growing pressure from outside. Businesses refer, as we saw in the field visit, continuously to sports to describe this world (note here that it is mostly forgotten that sports take only a short time, but that businesses are working on long-term). Continuously handling new situations is the main concern of businesses. Question then is, what do you change to adapt? There are two levels you can work on. First perspective is about focussing on people, dealing with consequences of this evolution on an individual level. Here we want to note the attention within companies for the whole development of people. Programmes of stress-management, self-confidence training, … are results of these actions. On the other hand, you can work on changing the organisation too. Work situations have to be adapted to people. Change programmes for organisations are here the result. We note here that we realise these things are not evident, because of the external pressure. We think that policy within organisations has to try to integrate these two ways of thinking. Working on the individual as well as on the company level has to be integrated. This is not so evident. It’s a question that is related to the tension between solidarity and individualisation. A lot of issues now, are handled on an individual level, where they used to be of a common concern. Illustrative here is the diminishing power of trade unions, for example in the Netherlands and in Belgium (in Belgium a little bit less because of the services they offer as filling administration forms and payment). We look to the model of Kolb from pedagogical point of view. Learning implies going trough the four different faces. We conceive this model as an upward going spiral of repeat learning experiences. We think, as adult educators, there are different ways to apply this model. At first, when programming, it’s important to take the different steps in to accounts and completing the circle. Secondly, you have to take in to account the different learning styles of the participants. It’s important to adapt the learning environments to the dominants learning styles but also to offer a good mix in order to guarantee a divers program which everyone find methodologies adapted to his style. Finally we think the test to know your learning style can be a good instrument in didactical approach. You can use it as an introduction to make people aware of the fact that there are different learning styles. Although we want to make a critical note about this test, we want to avoid labelling people. In applying this in organisational contexts, this model can be used to analyse tasks to discover the appropriate learning style to fit a certain job. The confrontational model is really a good model to work when is necessary to do changes in a organisation. We know the advantages: involve a lot of people, there is a continuous feedback, imply communication process, internal commitment and "common sense", … But we think that the confrontation is a starting point. In this point the different actors start the work to innovate and defend their point of view. At the beginning of the discussion will be able possible big differences between the different actors. The sense of confrontation normally is a fight, and at the end, one actor wins because have more power. This sense implies negative behaviours for the communication. The feeling of having an uncertain future or insecurity result in self-defense reactions and by this disturbs open communication. Another argument is that confrontation has a static sense and not motivational. We hold that it is better to transform the initial confrontation into a "CHALLENGE". The arguments to defend this option are clear. Challenge have a positive sense, is a dynamic word, imply a process of change, mean a way to are better. The changes take a positive meaning. The continuous process of feedback and communication becomes a way to transform, using the dialog and the discussion, as a mix of point of view at the end. The internal commitment and the "common sense" are easier to made under a good perspective of change. The motivation for implication in the process is positive; your implication is not done for the anxiety to lose your position in the organisation. The challenge implies a good behaviour in front of change. In this way we propose the integration of the word "challenge" in the name of the model in the following way: "Learning challenge in a confrontational model". Starting from the discussion of indicators for cultural differences, we had a look how to overcome these differences. We first want to note that it is important to look from the different levels, as Schein described them, to try to get a picture of the organisation culture. It’s important to observe the different levels and we want to stress that we believe informal situations show this culture. We want to make the remark here that it is not easy to know how deeply culture is anchored. We want to note that culture is not always going as deep as you think it goes. This means that you have to have attention for cultural (we here see culture in a broad sense) differences, but you also have to overcome them, in searching a mean level of communication. Adult education can take part in this process by guiding people in searching this common communication level. We see this as a very important aspect, because we believe communication is a very important factor in implementing changes within organisations. We think language as a very important tool to reinforce changes within organisations, from a social constructionist point of view. Searching for and finding a same level of communication is building up relationship of mutual understanding. We consider this as a necessary condition to overcome differences and to accommodate to the environment. 4. Qualitative evaluation or appreciative enquiry? We notice a trend within adult education that is stressing on qualitative evaluation. We can understand this if we look to education as a tool to reinforce people. As mentioned above, people are looked at from a point of view that sees them as an investment. So education is asked for a visible output. We want to stress here that, when evaluating, it is important to make suggestions for improvement after pointing out the negative points. There is another possible point of view, which is very important when you want to imply changes within organisations. We then think of focussing on competencies when starting the change process. By searching the key-elements that lead to success together with the actors, we think people start reflecting on their actions, and are empowered to search for pathways to innovation for themselves. This means that people are focussing on the ‘good practices’ and by concentrating on this start asking questions about things that don’t work out. Is coming later. MODULE 4: LABOUR ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT Management And Organization Rene Bouwen Group 7: , Marita Pylvaninen, Els Vancluysen, Katrijn Vanduffel Introduction Our task in this module was to rewiev organizational change and learning in a context of some case study. We decided to take the University of Helsinki to be our case study, mainly because beeing a member of an university was mutual expeience for every one of us and Jxxxx had some experience of developmental work in the University of Helsinki. Jxxxxx has experience of working with "Study and Teaching Developmental Unit" to improve tutoring-system in the university and also developing the curriculum of adult education. We felt it very difficult to choose any case, because we didn’t have enough information of any organization without going to examine the organization more closely. So this Case Study is based upon experiece of only one member of our group and it can’t be as reliable study as we wanted it to be. Case study: University of Helsinki The University of Helsinki is among the oldest universities in the world. It was founded in 1640 in the town of Turku, and transferred to Helsinki in 1828. The University of Helsinki is an organization of over 40,000 people, counting all the researchers, teachers, non-academic staff and students. There is over 30,000 student, of whom 60% are women. Even though the university community is as big as a middle-sized Finnish town, there is still a feeling of unity among unniversity people. A special feature of the University of Helsinki is its bilingualism. There are about 100 teaching posts for which the language of instruction is Swedish; 27 of these are professorships. A university the size of the university of Helsinki naturally has many areas of emphasis. University has reached the top level of international research in many fields. The strongest areas of research at the University of Helsinki have been determened by national and international assessment. There is also the self-assassment committee in the University of Helsinki. The faculties have also estimated the most important areas of emphasis in their ongoing reasearch. University occupies dozens of different addresses in the city. In the future the various departments of the University will be concentrated on four major campuses: the city center, Kumpula, Viikki and Meilahti. The largest continuing education centre of the University of Helsinki is The Lahti Research and Training Centre. The Centre’s strenght is in the application of new teaching methods: multiform education, tele-teaching, distance education, the Open University and the Senior Citizens’ University. The University of Helsinki has also a large network of biological field stations. There are about ten other institutions of higher education in Helsinki, specializing in technical sciences, economics and various performing arts. Co-operation between the universities and other insitutions in both research and teaching is on the increase. Students at the University of Helsinki may incorporate studies from other institutions of higher education in their degrees. In recent years University of Helsinki has grown increasingly international. The international relations of the university are based on contacts between scientists and scholars,and on agreements between departments, faculties, universities and goverments. In order to promote new contacts and to support existing co-operation the university has concluded bilateral agreement on research projects and researcher or student exhange with 50 universities and other institutions os higher education all over the world. Out of the 200 doctoral dissertations published every year about 75% are written in English, and increasing number of courses are taught in English. There is wide range of student clubs and lively student life in the University of Helsinki. The Student Union of the University of Helsinki, establishes in 1868, is a large and and wealthy student organization steeped in tradition. The Union is independent towards the university. The Student Union provides its members with dining services, student housing, health services and cultural activities. System of forces in the University of Helsinki
direction/enterpreneurial
Cultural layers (Schein) in the University of Helsinki Characteristics of learning potential in Univeristy of Helsinki Facilitating change and learning in the University of Helsinki
Module 4: management and organization Pirjo Töllinen
Introduction In this paper we choose to make a case study of "Musica", the organization where one of our Belgian group member did her internship. We describe first of all the organization to easily understand the changes that has been in. The changing process is seen like a learning circle that illustrates the way they manage the innovation. We see this is an adhocracy organization with a lot of innovation. Therefore we also describe the innovation model of confrontation and orientation. To conclude we do the profile test and we describe the role that the consultant can play to improve the organization structure.
Musica an innovating organization This aspect we will describe later.
The forces and forms in the organization Minzberg distinguishes seven forces that are active in the organizations, and we think that the main active force in MUSICA is an adhocracy. The most remarkable in this kind of organizations is that they work in projects. As he says in his theory that kind of organization sees the key mean of coordination as a mutual adjustment. In MUSICA people are working in the same level; for one project there are different skills required. For example, the project of "Charles V" required: someone who organizes the adult program, another person needs to publish the scores and another one who has to keep in mind the financial aspect. They have to work together to realize the project. The key part in an adhocracy organization is a support staff, in this case we have four employees who are specialized in different fields to give every project coordinator support. For instance, the person who is responsible for the commercial aspect always looks for the distribution of the folders. In adhocracy there is also much horizontal specialization. They work in interdisciplinary teams, so everyone can attribute his owns skills to make one project. It is a typically young organization and a young member staff. The power in an adhocracy is the expert control, because the participants in the projects are high qualified. If they are not satisfied it means that the quality was too low.
The learning process The innovation is a strong force in an adhocracy organization as Musica. As we mention above it has changed its structure from a hierarchical one to a horizontal one. This process of change can be applied on the circle of Kolb, which describes the learning process in four steps. We will use it to describe the process of change in Musica because we see the changing process as a learning process. The step where we start from is the moment when Musica experienced concretely, due to new tendencies in society, the need for a change in the structure of the organization. They felt that working in different courses and separate themes were not very efficient because there was a lot of time wasted working separately in similar themes. Also there were people doing the same activities without knowing from each other. After this experience they fell into the following step of reflection and observing what was wrong in Musica: Given these problems they start thinking on a solution and they start on a renovation of the structure focused on a project way of working. It provokes a global change in the organization, so all levels are linked with each other: They decided to Therefore they made a policy plan to reorganize themselves completely and to create the projects for the coming years. They developed the pilot project "Charles V" to experience the new structure. With this project they could see the faults and make adaptations for the final structure. Innovation model of Bouwen and Fry Working in projects implicates a lot of changes in the organization, as we saw above. At the moment that the organization starts the process of change, the technical content, the procedural structural aspect and the relational also has to change. We can situate this process in one of the innovation models in organizations that Bouwen and Fry describe: the confrontational learning model. The main characteristic of this model is the complexity that covers all the aspects of the organization, such as the different projects that are taking place at the same time and the different roles that the employees have to play in the projects. To situate the organization in this model we put attention to the characteristics of the process, criterion for effectiveness, effect for learning in the organization and designative contingencies. The change process is facilitated by the confrontation of the two sides. To make the policy plan and the restructuration there were several meetings organized for the general counsel and the employees, to discuss the new projects of the coming years and the new structure of the organization. To be effective Musica finds important to reach a common sense concerning the new projects and the new structure of the organization. Therefore, the policy plan is made by every employee of the center, so that everyone feels involved with the new projects. Interdependency between employees is needed to reach the results. For instance, the financial employee has to collaborate with the publisher employee and the publisher employee has to collaborate with the project leader, etc. So, everyone takes part in the development of the project, which is different in every project. The profile test and the role of the consultant After we defined Musica as an adhocracy with innovation as an important characteristic and seeing that they cope with innovation in a confrontational learning way in which discussions are open and dynamic we can do the profile test. The result of the profile test is that there is a high result on innovation, as on support and goal oriented information flow. The respect for rules has a low result. What is the role of the consultant when we see the results on the profile test? First of all, the role of the consultant is to be aware of the needs of the organization, which in this case is little respect for rules and agreements. So, his action has to be focused on this aspect. There is a lack of control in the organization: the employees are working in interdisciplinary teams but they have no clearly idea of their rules in each project. In this aspect, the process of change has been too fast and they have forgotten to pay attention to the rules. With the changing roles of every employer it is needed to define clearly the rules. To communicate this towards the employees we think the consultant has to stress first on the good points. He has to stress the relational aspect where they reach a high level. They help each other when there is a problem, and support each other in their tasks. They also reach high points on the innovation aspect, which is quite clear, because they just reorganized the whole center. There is a high result in goal orientation because everyone knows very well his tasks. There is a good communication between them, so the control is done by everyone, in a autonomic way. But there is also control needed by making rules and agreements. After this diagnosis the consultant has to design a plan to improve the organization. The most important thing is a good relationship between the consultant and the group of participants, which are the active persons in the process of change. The consultant plays a role of facilitator and the employees have to realize on their own what are the needs. Group 9: Anna Palva, Bart Ketelslegers, Melissa Verkley and Mira Van Olmen Change, fusion or confusion In this paper we want to start from a particular case, namely Vredeseilanden-Coopibo, as an organization in change. In a first part we describe the organization and its situation. Secondly we take a look at some recent changes and dynamics in Vredeseilanden-Coopibo. The fusion of the two organizations, the divergent group of volunteers and the changing role of the animators are some important challenges they have to deal with. After that, we place these dynamics in a structural and a cultural framework. Based on this analysis, we try to make some suggestions for change.
Vredeseilanden-Coopibo is a Belgian non-governmental-organization for development. Before 1998 Vredeseilanden and Coopibo were separate organizations, but because of political decisions and because of strong similarities in their way of working on development, they fused into one organization. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has a working both in the South and in the North. In the South they work on structural developmental cooperation by supporting local partners in 11 countries in Africa and Latin-America. They really made the conscious choice not to set up projects by themselves, but to support initiatives of local groups or organizations. In Flanders Vredeseilanden-Coopibo tries to inform and to sensitize people for Third-World themes. Besides that, they also work on durable agriculture in Flanders. The organization, which forms a kind of a coordinating secretariat, is divided in three main teams. Between the teams there are some links to prevent that the teams would work too separately from the others. There are two leaders, one of every organization who does not at all have the role of the highest persons in a hierarchy, but who are more charismatic, inspiring persons. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has a horizontal structure with lateral communication. This means that decisions are not made by one or two persons, but by the teams. The North-Team, which consists on some professionals who work on the national level and six animators who work on a provincial level, has to take care of the information and sensitization of people in Flanders. They have to try to create feelings of solidarity with the South to be able to work on a just, multicultural society. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has a large group of volunteers, which supports the organization. They form the basis, the strength and the legitimization of Vredeseilanden-Coopibo. It is the task of the North-Team to inform these volunteers and to propose a clear vision and clear goals, so that volunteers can identify themselves with the organization and that they know what they are working for. The animators form a very important link between the national organization and the volunteers at the basis of the organization. The North-Team also has to offer possibilities for actions to the volunteers so that they can express their solidarity and help the organization in their own way. Volunteers for example can set up certain actions to earn money for the campaign, they can lead workshop for mondial education, and they can make educational trips to the countries in the South to visit the projects. They can help with practical problems, they might help to work out new ideas,... Vredeseilanden-Coopibo offers these volunteers for example a monthly magazine, educational trips to the South, information about evolutions in the projects, they organize meetings for volunteers and training days for people who want to lead workshops for mondial education in schools. Animators give more informal education to volunteers,... The South-Team consists of desk officers who take care of the accompaniment of the projects in the different countries in the South. There are also some members of the South-Team who are not responsible for the communication and support of the projects, but who work around certain themes like gender, culture, food safety, exchange between the South and the North,...Vredeseilanden-Coopibo tries to work on innovative ideas on development. A third team in Vredeseilanden-Coopibo is the Agricultural-Team-Flanders. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has set up 'Voedselteams' (food teams). These are groups of about 15 families who live in the same neighborhood and who have a direct contract with farmers to buy naturally produced vegetables, meat and dairy-products at a fair price. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo supports and coordinates the Voedstelteams and help to start up new teams in new regions. These three teams are supported by the financial service, the secretary and the personnel service.
2. Some important dynamics in Vredeseilanden-Coopibo Vredeseilanden-Coopibo is not a stable non-changing organization. They have to deal with changes in society, new perspectives, decisions of the government, opinions of people, new problems, and so on. People working in Vredeseilanden-Coopibo have to construct their own way of acting and dealing with new challenges. Starting from the vision of the organization and the personal vision of all the professionals they have to take decisions and to define their own direction. But they do not live on an island. Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has to take in account actual changes and they have to legitimate themselves towards the broader society and the large group of volunteers. Their decisions have consequences, not only for the professionals, but also for the volunteers in Flanders, the partner organizations in Africa and Latin-America, other NGO's and so on. We will now look to some recent challenges Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has to deal with and afterwards we will try to connect them with the theory of Mintzberg and we will try to find out what kind of culture there exists in the organization.
2.1 The fusion Because of the fusion in 1998, Vredeseilanden-Coopibo now feels some new problems and difficulties. For example: Some problems can be seen as 'starter problems' that will be solved almost automatically after a while, but other problems really need much attention. For example the defining and carrying out of clear, well described goals for the organization is still a problem and tends to become more and more important, certainly if the organization will not take care of it in the near future. But the professionals of Vredeseilanden-Coopibo are aware of this problem and try to work on it.
2.2 Volunteers The volunteers of Vredeseilanden-Coopibo form a very diverse group who takes up very different tasks in very different ways. Some of them only do practical work, others help to think on innovations. Some teams of volunteers organize the collecting of money during the campaign-weekend, other teams organize activities in their village during the whole year. Some people lead workshops in schools or make a trip to a Southern country to visit the projects. An organization prints freely all the magazines of Vredeseilanden-Coopibo. Etc. These differences form in the same time the strengths and the weaknesses of the organization. In this way, Vredeseilanden-Coopibo can count on a large group of people with of lot of different skills. But on the other hand, it's hard to manage such a divergent group. All these people also have different expectations towards Vredeseilanden-Coopibo: some of them want information about the projects in the South, some of them want more information about certain teams, some are interested in the internal decisions of the organization and want to have a voice in these decisions, some teams of volunteers would like to have direct contact with people in the South,... This development clearly asks for more goods and services made to measure, a big and difficult challenge for the organization. Another problem with group of volunteers, and more specific with the teams of volunteers who are responsible for the organization of the campaign in their own village, is the lack of cooperation and exchange between teams. More and more there comes a demand of the teams themselves to organize meetings to exchange ideas or to start cooperation between teams of volunteers. It's up to Vredeseilanden-Coopibo, and more specific to the animators, to take up this challenge.
2.3 The role of the animators A last rising problem we want to discuss is the role of the animators. Animators now have the function to support the volunteers with education, information, sensitization, moral support or practical things, to sensitize new people and to form a bridge between the volunteers and the professionals. But that 'bridgefunction', that mediation often is problematic: they are not only a bridge but also a filter of information. They often have their own interpretation of facts and decisions and tell this interpretation to the volunteers instead of the original information. Of course this is a human mistake - everyone makes his own interpretations of information - but we think there also can be recognized sometimes a lack of good communication between the professionals who work on the national level and the animators. If an organization wants to work on a professional way, differences in opinion have to be discussed inside and not outside the organization. Another problem is the fact that the tasks of the animators are not filled in in an efficient way. For example: they sometimes spend a lot of time to sensitize the pupils of a certain school by going from class to class to tell their story about the projects in the South. Or they spend a lot of time by distributing and counting the products that will be sold during the campaign. For Vredeseilanden-Coopibo, we think it is important to rethink this job of animator. 3. A framework for the changes 3.1 A structural theory
Now we want to place these dynamics in the frame developed by Mintzberg. Starting from that frame, we can recognize some dimensions and find directions for the future of the organization. When the two organizations were still separate, they both had a strong ideology. Coopibo was a strong professional organization, which supported projects in the South only when they were quite sure of the success of it. In Coopibo worked a lot of agricultural engineers who had the right skills and knowledge to support the agricultural projects. Vredeseilanden was more a missionary adhocracy with a strong ideology. The support of a broad basis of people was very important for them. Because of reasons of efficiency, the state decided that NGO's had to work on a larger scale. This was the main reason for the two organizations to merge. Now as a new organization, Vredeseilanden-Coopibo moves more into the direction of professionalization and innovation. They are aware that they really have to use all the potentials and competencies that are present in the organization to make good programs both in the South and in the North. As we earlier mentioned, Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has to deal with new problems and new challenges which need an innovative approach to build up a strong way of working. Finally, we think Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has to take in account the concentration aspect. They will have to define clearly their target groups, so that they can adapt their offers to these people.
3.2 A cultural point of view When we filled in the 'organizational climate index for profit organizations' we discovered that Vredeseilanden-Coopibo has a quite equal score for goal orientation, support and respect for rules (± 8). Only for innovation they had a higher score (± 15,5). This means that innovative processes are already important now and we think their importance will grow in the future. Because of the fusion and the new identity of the organization, we think they should focus more on goal orientation. They have to define clearly their strategy, goals and direction. This can form a good basis for supporting and orienting volunteers.
4. Some suggestions for the future We don't pretend to give the right answer to these challenges. We don't think there even exists one right answer. But we want to do some suggestions, based on our experiences and on the theoretical frameworks mentioned above. Maybe they can be a support for Vredeseilanden-Coopibo to find a certain direction.
A first suggestion we want to do is that a good path of change for Vredeseilanden-Coopibo might be the learning-confrontational model. Because of the high level of professionalization in the organization, and because of the horizontal structure, we think it is possible for them to learn from each other and to discuss on an equal level. These discussions can be based on cooperation instead of on competition. A condition for that is that people are open to change and that they are aware of the new challenges and problems. By working together and exchanging experiences, they can construct their own way of working and their own goals.
By making a diagnosis of the situation, we think it's important to focus on the positive aspects, the things in common and the strengths, more than on the problems and the differences. This diagnosis can form a good basis for defining clear goals, for finding energy to stay innovative and to use all the capacities of professionals and volunteers. In this way they probably can give a new and clear content to the merged organization.
We think the challenge to manage the group of volunteers and the problems with the role of the animators are linked to each other. If the organization really wants to make use of all the capacities of the volunteers, which might be very efficient, the animators have to know their volunteers and have to appreciate them for their work. Volunteers also ask for more services made at measure and if the animators want to offer it to them, they will have to redefine their tasks. Maybe they can spend more time for supporting and coordinating the teams of volunteers, the teachers in schools, … instead of working in the way they do it now. They should define explicitly their target groups, so that they can adapt their working towards them.
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