Transition between organizations: Unstructured competence transfer between regular and temporary staff in project organized business

Author(s):

Gunnar Augustsson(presenting / submitting)Maria Rasmusson(presenting)

Conference:

ECER 2015

Network:

32. Organizational Education

Format:

Paper

Session Information

32 SES 07, Transition between Organizations (Companies, Universities and Social Service Organizations)

Paper Session

Time:

2015-09-09

17:15-18:45

Room:

3004. [Main]

Chair:

Maria Grazia Riva

Contribution

This proposal deals with regular and temporary staff’s (temps’) meaning making in terms of interaction, knowledge, and motivations. The aim is to study whether regular and temp personnel in a project organization differ in their perceptions and if there are some qualitative aspects that can be considered as particularly significant.

A special form of learning is associated with the concept of competence. Competence refers to “an individual’s potential to act in relation to a certain task, situation or context,” that is, “to successfully... do a job, including the ability to identify, exploit, and, if possible, extend the space of interpretation, action and measurement that the work tasks offer” (Ellström, 1992, p. 21). Based on the concept of competence, it is valuable to study the nature of learning preconditions that may be associated with temps. Such a study may partly contribute to research on learning in project organizations and partly illustrate the learning in terms of competence transfer between the regular staff and temps.

Here is competence transfer equated with the “process through which organizational actors—teams, units, or organizations—exchange, receive, and are influenced by the experience and knowledge” (van Wijk, Jansen, & Lyle, 2008, p. 832). This type of knowledge transfer is considered here to be partly synonymous with competence transfer and partly important for the organization as a whole and for the cooperation between regular and temp personnel.

Research on improving management efficiency of knowledge and expertise within organizations often assumes that competence transfer is desirable (Bartsch, Eber, & Maurer, 2013; Carlsson, 2003; Ragab & Arisha, 2013). Other research shows that the project owner has a clear responsibility for knowledge transfer between project and parent organization (Bakker, Cambre, Korlaar, & Raab, 2011, p. 502). One objective of this proposal is to show that this is not always true. Further, research on project organizations reported tensions between project and parent organization (Scarbrough et al., 2004), social aspects (Bartsch et al., 2013), gender (Cartwright & Gale, 1995; Lindgren & Packendorff, 2006) and inter-project learning (Prencipe & Tell, 2001). The analysis level of our study covers competence transfer between regulars and temps within an interorganizational project organization.

Theoretically, aspects of organizational culture and dimensions of learning are combined. We will build on Martin’s three versions of organization, integration, differentiation, and fragmentation, but not use her concept of “organizational culture”. Instead, we will consider the organization as a background that can be referred to when invoking various manifestations of participation that indicate preconditions for learning.

There are three key dimensions of learning that may be related to the abovementioned organizational backgrounds (Illeris, 2009): Social Interaction, which refers to action, communication, and collaboration; Content, which is characterized by knowledge, understanding, and skills; and Incentive, associated with motivation, emotion, and will.

We consider learning a meaning-making process in terms of Weick’s (1995) unit of analysis that involves an empirical indication of preconditions for learning (cue) that is set against its (relationship) background (frame). The logic is that manifestations in terms of Social Interaction, Content, and Incentive give rise to a particular type of mental associations (interpretations) when they are related to a particular organizational background, and it is this process of meaning making that is analyzed.

Method

This proposal is about a case study of an organization that holds a number of business areas (Yin, 1994). The data collection is based on both quantitative and qualitative data collected via an online questionnaire and individual interviews. The questionnaire was sent to all staff groups that in various ways linked to the Swedish Transport Administration (STA): regular employees, agency workers, and temporary self-employed workers. In total, the survey was distributed to 2,135 people, and the response rate was 51.3%. There were a total of 1,095 respondents, and 1,044 answered the question whether they were regulars or temps. The collected survey data were statistically processed in SPSS. The analysis was preceded by the construction of indices, and the reliability of these indices was estimated. Thereafter, t-tests (independent sample t-test) were made of average comparisons between different groups. The survey questions dealt with background information (e.g., age, education, and sex) as well as a number of areas such as working conditions, career development, and the perceived social climate of the workplace. Collected qualitative data were based on a sample from the same population (STA staff) as the quantitative, but the interviews were conducted from an organizational (contextual) perspective and in a more unconstrained and flexible manner than in the questionnaire. The primary purpose of the interviews was to study the regulars’ and temps’ ideas of the preconditions for learning in terms of competence and competence transfer. During the analysis of qualitative data, a reference was repeated in the interviewees’ utterances that revealed a more complex organization than we originally expected. This complexity is reported in terms of Integrated, Differentiated, and Fragmented organizational backgrounds, and is the qualitative data’s unique contribution to the study in comparison with the quantitative data. The qualitative data in this proposal are based on a total of 75 utterances, of which 30 (40%) came from women. The analysis has been carried out in four steps. The first step was an unbiased reading of the transcribed interviews, regardless of the conceptual dimensions of Table 4. Thereafter, a systematic coding of the interviews was made based on the conceptual dimensions. After that, selected observations were sorted in different patterns, and during that sorting, the organizational qualities were discovered, which in a fourth stage were dimensionalized in terms of Integration, Differentiation, and Fragmentation. It is the results of these four analytical steps that will be reported in the study.

Expected Outcomes

Quantitative data expected to show that temps give attention to preconditions for learning in the workplace to a greater degree than the regular personnel. Qualitative data may suggest a need for a more effective organization of Social Interaction between regulars and temps. Analyses of quantitative data are expected to show that temps are demanding preconditions for learning to a greater extent than regulars. Analyses are also expected to show that regular women pay attention to preconditions for learning to a higher degree than temp women. The results for temp men could be explained by the fact that, compared to male regulars, they have been linked to the STA for a shorter time. The same probably applies to regular women, who are likely to compare themselves with temporary self-employed workers and male regulars. Thus, both the temp men and the regular women therefore are expected to be particularly motivated to pay attention to preconditions for learning. The analysis of qualitative data is expected to show regulars’ interest in developing a professional environment that is characterized by context-bound competences and of an organization-wide consensus. This should be compared with temps, who probably mainly have their own interests, their specific tasks, and their specific assignment to complete. The results are also expected to show that there are beliefs that emphasize the importance of certain competences that are stationed within the parent organization and that these competences also are filled with experiences from temps. The competences that probably are especially expressed are overall societal perspective and internal tasks such as accounting and orders.

References

Bakker, R. M., Cambré, B., Korlaar, L., & Raab, J. (2011). Managing the project learning paradox: A set-theoretic approach toward project knowledge transfer. International Journal of Project Management, 29(5), 494–503. Bartsch, V., Ebers, M., & Maurer, I. (2013). Learning in project-based organizations: The role of project teams’ social capital for overcoming barriers to learning. International Journal of Project Management, 31(2), 239–251. Carlsson, S. A. (2003). Knowledge managing and knowledge management systems in inter-organizational networks. Knowledge and Process Management, 10(3). Cartwright, S., & Gale, A. (1995). Project management: different gender , different culture? Leadership & Organization Development Journal, 16(4), 12–16. Ellström, P.-E. (1992). Kompetens, utbildning och lärande i arbetslivet: problem, begrepp och teoretiska perspektiv (1. uppl.). Stockholm: Publica: Allmänna förl. distributör. Illeris, K. (2009). Competence, learning and education: how can competences be learned, and how can they be developed in formal education? In K. Illeris (Ed.), International perspectives on competence development: developing skills and capabilities (pp. 83–98). London; New York: Routledge. Lindgren, M., & Packendorff, J. (2006). What’s New in New Forms of Organizing? On the Construction of Gender in Project-Based Work. Journal of Management Studies, 43(4), 841–866. Martin, J. (2002). Organizational culture. Mapping the terrain. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE. Prencipe, A., & Tell, F. (2001). Inter-project learning: processes and outcomes of knowledge codification in project-based firms. Research Policy, 30(9), 1373–1394. Ragab, M. A. F., & Arisha, A. (2013). Knowledge management and measurement: a critical review. Journal of Knowledge Management, 17(6), 873–901. Scarbrough, H., Swan, J., Laurent, S., Bresnen, M., Edelman, L., & Newell, S. (2004). Project-Based Learning and the Role of Learning Boundaries. Organization Studies, 25(9), 1579–1600. doi:10.1177/0170840604048001 Van Wijk, R., Jansen, J. J. P., & Lyles, M. A. (2008). Inter- and Intra-Organizational Knowledge Transfer: A Meta-Analytic Review and Assessment of its Antecedents and Consequences. Journal of Management Studies, 45(4), 830–853. Retrieved from 10.1111/j.1467-6486.2008.00771.x Weick, K. E. (1995). Sensemaking in Organizations. (D. Whetten, Ed.)Foundation for Organizational Science. SAGE Publications. Yin, R. K. (1994). Case study research: design and methods. Applied social research methods series, 5 (2. ed., p. xi, 171 s.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.

Author Information

Gunnar Augustsson (presenting / submitting)

Mid Sweden University

Härnösand

Maria Rasmusson (presenting)

Mid Sweden University

Department of Education