Re: Fruits of Learning LO1520

pcapper@actrix.gen.nz
Tue, 6 Jun 1995 15:15:54 +1200

Replying to LO1510 --

I do not know about the United States, but down here in Australia and New
Zealand there is an emerging corpus of well documented cases on the
effects of organisational learning shifts, including some which contain
very good quantitative and qualitative data.

My business partner Dr. Roberta Hill (together with Martin Perry and Carl
Davidson) publish a book this month entitled "Reform at Work" (Longman
Paul, Auckland) which presents seven New Zealand case studies. In
Australia a book entitled, as I remember "Riding the Wave" (I'll confirm
that and post the details) deals similarly with a number of Australian
case studies.

Our team (led by Roberta Hill) has just finished the first of five case
studies looking specifically at the outcomes of organisational learning
type workplace transformations. Last week I visited two major Australian
examples which are currently being written up by Australian researchers.

>From amongst these cases we can discern common patterns of improvement,
particularly in cycle time, back orders, inventories, scrap, inadvertant
environmental discharges of pollutants, staff absenteeism, staff turnover,
market share, export market development and occupational health and
safety.

As an aside, in the 25 or so successful cases contained in the studies I
have cited we nowhere find successful indicators emerging from
organisations which have downsized.

In general highly successful cases typically show staff increases of
50-70%, output increases of 200-250%, and unit cost decreases of 35-65%
between the immediate pre-change performance and performance 8 years out
from the start of the change process.

An interesting point is that many of these successful cases experienced
significant performance declines for the first 2-3 years. The best time
for manifesting gains amongst these studies was 16 months. Many failed
cases have relegated organisational learning to the fad basket and moved
on to something else long before the benefits can be expected to show.

--
Phillip Capper
Centre for Research on Work, Education and Business,
PO Box 2855
Wellington
New Zealand

Ph: 64+ 4 4998140 Fx: 64+ 4 4733087