The findings of this study suggest that a wide range of contextual factors, in terms of both the organisation itself and the wider ‘productive system’ (Felstead et al (2009) in which it is located, are critical, in both enabling and inhibiting workplace learning and innovation. The comprehensive perspective of Felstead et al’s analytical framework, incorporating both horizontal ‘stages of
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production’ and vertical ‘structures of production’, is important for this study, because all aspects of context, whether formal or informal, macro or micro-level, contribute to the totality of the social and cultural situation; that is, are constituents of the ‘tacit pedagogy’ of a particular workplace. The ‘productive systems’ approach is explicitly concerned to provide a framework for identifying and understanding power relations operating within and between the different structures and stages, but Felstead and his colleagues, whose work is located firmly within the emergent paradigm, are careful to warn against over-determined interpretations of these relations:
‘we conceive power relationships as a (usually unequal) balance of forces, rather than one-
way pattern of subordination. We take it as axiomatic that power is not a ‘thing’ that is possessed by one party to a relationship and denied to another. Rather, power is a two-way attribute of social relationships. Power relations comprise a dynamic interchange between stronger and weaker parties, rather than a zero-sum game.’ (Felstead et al 2009, p31)
The complex and dynamic nature of two-way power relationships can therefore also be seen in practice as another example of the phenomenon of ‘entanglement’. I now apply the ‘Productive systems’ analysis (Felstead et al 2009) to TLZ R&D and WBC.
From the perspective of the horizontal ‘stages of production’ TLZ R&D is purposefully and explicitly concerned with technical research and innovation:
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The first stage of production establishes a medium and long term strategic context for the detailed project work of the organisation, and the second ensures that hardware, facilities and specialist expertise is available to enact the strategic priorities set by the first stage. The estimates of what resources of each type are required, and how much, represent an element of uncertainty, and the extent to which margins for contingencies are built in is an issue depending on the financial and political constraints on the organisation, both of which are functions of the higher levels of the productive system. The third stage represents the actual work of the project teams, which are generally defined in terms of a technical problem of engineering which needs to be solved, or the design of a new or improved product, or both. The fourth stage involves marketing and distribution of the results of the project work, following which they are available for consumption by clients and end-users.
Every stage of this sequence provides scope for discussion about possible alternatives, in terms of both potential outcomes and the practicalities of achieving them. New ideas are not just desirable but required, and are actively sought from all members of the organisation. We have seen that representations of the content and processes of the work are constantly being
crystallised, in varying degrees of formality. The generation of these is the reason why the
workplace needs features such as: (a) unstructured space and time within work schedules to allow these representations to be developed; (b) a social, informal, collegiate and interactive culture; (c) an ethos of sharing rather than hoarding ideas; and finally (d) personal commitment to a public benefit ethos (other motivational drivers, such as, for example, financial bonuses or prizes, might encourage individual competitiveness and thereby inhibit the culture of knowledge-sharing knowledge essential for effective working).
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In terms of its vertical ‘structures of production’, TLZ R&D is to a high degree autonomous, freer than most of its nearest peers from the disciplines of the market, with a global reputation
for the quality of its work and its commitment to a public service ethos. Within TLZ as a whole, the R&D division is a small element, and its highly specialist engineering work is unique within the main activities of the organisation as a whole. At the same time, due to its global reputation over many years and its unique position as part of a publicly-funded broadcasting organisation, it plays an influential role in the contexts of national and global broadcasting infrastructure, policy and research development, and within the global science and engineering communities of practice. Its small size also means that R&D management are relatively close to the research teams in personal and social terms: the management structure is flat rather than strongly hierarchical, and its culture
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is collegiate and social. Thus TLZ R&D effectively exercises a high level of autonomy within the larger TLZ, and research team leaders and practitioners within R&D are also highly autonomous within the R&D division itself. Innovation as a formal objective of the organisation demands a degree of autonomy within research teams: planned innovation is essentially a contradiction in terms (Burns and Stalker 1961, Galbraith 1982, Morgan 1997).
WBC primarily sees its business in terms of the provision of relatively standardised academic and vocational training programmes. These vary by subject or occupational sector, but all involve a combination of the elements of recruiting new students, initial assessment, a formal curriculum determined by a national government or industry agency, classroom teaching and learning, tutorial support, extracurricular activities
perhaps including work-placements, advice about suitable progression routes into employment, university, or higher level training, final summative assessment, and the award of a national qualification. The chart above is a simplified view of WBC’s horizontal ‘stages of production’: the way government funding is allocated to colleges, as well as the normative expectations of the
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inspection system, means that there is limited scope for varying the elements or the overall shape of this production process. Rather, in the context of fixed or diminishing resources, alternative ideas and models are valuable only if they help in achieving objectives more effectively, quickly or cheaply: if not they are likely to be seen as a potentially damaging distraction. This analysis is reinforced when we consider WBC’s vertical ‘structures of production’:
The key feature of the vertical ‘structures of production’ applying to WBC is the central chain of influence, leading up to government funding and regulatory agencies, and to industry awarding bodies. The government agencies preside over a complex system of tariffs through which the
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college is largely funded, and a quality assurance regime in which organisational performance is benchmarked and closely monitored at a national level. These two oversight systems are linked, as a proportion of funding is outcome-determined, and measurable outputs in the form of
qualifications gained is the key performance indicator of quality. The other two vertical chains through which the college at different levels is influenced are (a) the communities of practice of the various subject teachers, which depending on the subject, are more or less institutionalised, and (b) other local and regional organisations with links to the college, through contracts and partnerships, progression links to and from other educational providers including schools and universities, or to employers with whom college students can progress into employment, and other local and regional organisations such as the local authorities whose areas are served by the college. These two chains of influence, by comparison with the central one through which to a large degree the college’s activities are circumscribed, are weak, as they play a very small role in relation to regulation, quality assurance, and funding.
As a consequence of these vertical structures of production, the scope and opportunity for autonomous creation of alternative representations of work processes by practitioners or even senior managers in WBC, let alone the possibility of implementing them, is radically limited. As a result, WBC is strongly focussed on ‘single-loop thinking’ – managing their existing successful production processes as efficiently as possible: ‘double-loop thinking’ is neither encouraged in organisational culture nor facilitated in practice (Argyris 1977, Argyris and Schön 1978). The practical influence of the different vertical chains of the ‘productive system’ is reversed for TLZ R&D: ‘double-loop’ thinking is deeply embedded in its work processes and ‘tacit pedagogy ‘, and this contrast accounts for the major differences between the two case studies (Argyris 1977, Argyris and Schön 1978).
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In spite of these limitations, WBC does afford its specialist practitioner teams a sense of autonomy within the immediate scope of their work: teams propose their own outcome targets and once approved, are largely autonomous in pursuing them, and, due to the management’s skills and success in managing the college finances, they can sometimes respond positively to bids for funding for new equipment or for staff training. WBC’s staff understand that the college has limited scope for experimentation, creativity or even for incremental development, and they know their expertise is recognised by the autonomy, trust and discretion they are afforded within the constraints of the productive system.
Thus we can see that the extent to which the culture of leadership and authority is
expressed hierarchically, or alternatively is distributed within organisations, is a key aspect of the way its productive system is manifested as an element of the context for practitioners. Leadership, as an aspect of the environmental context for practice, is distributed to a greater degree within TLZ R&D than within WBC. It takes a more marked hierarchical form in WBC, although senior
management have been successful in delegating leadership, within their formally-defined domains of work, to curriculum team leaders, who have also developed a strongly collegiate and collective style of team leadership, focussed strongly on the quality of the work and on the production of public benefit: that is, on productive outcomes for students. Personal team leadership in WBC is very similar in style and procedures to that found in TLZ, and which, as in TLZ, expresses a clear recognition of the professional expertise of all team members. However, this manner of team- working requires significant time for formal and informal communication within the team, of which there is much less in the WBC context.
We have seen in this section how different features of the productive systems (Felstead et al 2009) of the two organisations provide a mechanism for explaining differences in the work
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processes of the two groups of practitioners: for the TLZ engineers, continually taking time to make representations of all aspects of their work, for both formal and informal purposes, is a routine stock-in-trade of their work, whereas for WBC teachers and curriculum managers this happens much more rarely and generally only at an individual and informal level, because for the most part, the making of such representations is seen as a redundant activity, unhelpful in terms of
compliance with externally determined regimes of funding and quality. This is a crucial difference in terms of learning and innovation, for both of which these representations are a key currency.