In 2009, the first, exploratory, survey-based study was conducted by Learning Ministries. It was based on a questionnaire also utilized in following surveys; the aim of the study was to provide the team with the possibility of making comparisons in time. It was the first study of learning processes in Polish central administration. Four Ministries took part – Ministry of Economy, Ministry of Regional Development, Ministry of the Environment and Ministry of Infrastructure. The study showed a pretty pessimistic view of the state of organizational learning processes in Polish ministries. It highlighted above all:
- Weakly defined goals of public organizations, and, consequently a lack of understanding about knowledge assets needed for goals achieving deficiencies;
- Atomization of organizational structures which leads to tension, competition and lack of synergy of knowledge possessed by employees;
- Weakness of the learning processes on the level of the whole organization and limitation of improvement processes to pure reactions (fire extinguishing);
In connection to relative inertia of Polish central administration, the study report recommends the implementation of incremental improvement changes (instead of a broad systemic reform), based on activities of the best learning organizations within the ministries i.e. line units. These changes should focus on four main deficit areas:
- Designation of goals of activities
- Introduction of auto reflexivity tools
- Equip supervisors with “change promotion” functions
- IT investment
From the 2009 MUS study arises an image of organizations characterized by relatively good, although strongly fragmented assets on the level of staff and teams, and very weak learning processes, limited chiefly to operational usage of knowledge i.e. to the correction of small operational issues that are the responsibilities of specialists.
The results presented in the study report allowed for the recommendation of some methodological postulates, involving the possibility of analysis of causal dependencies, issues connected to the context of organizational activity, the necessity of employment of dynamic analysis, the need to find a way of measuring the effectiveness of organizational action, and, on that basis, the construction of some concrete remedies. These postulates are reflected in the updated methodology of the present Learning Ministries project
You can read the report at: http://www.ewaluacja.gov.pl/Wyniki/Documents/Raport_MUS_4_ministerstwa_2010_05_13FIN.pdf
Below you can find the first of the set of publications from the MUS series. This one deals with the project methodology, its theoretical foundations and gives an overview of the results from the 2011 diagnosis, showing how does the Learning Mechanism look like in 4 polish ministries (the book available in polish language only)
