عمل یادگیری برای توسعه بیشتر شایستگی های مدیریت پروژه : یک مطالعه موردی از شرکت مهندسی خدمات مشاوره

Competence development of the employees is a core element when it comes to successful implementation of planned change. In this article, findings from an in-depth empirical study in an engineering consultancy are presented. The consultancy wanted to further develop the organization due to changed market conditions. Among other initiatives, top management established a competence development programme for the project managers. Action learning was used as a developmental method in one of the projects in the programme. The research showed that certain preconditions needed to exist in order for the project managers to benefit from participating in action learning, e.g. a proper and respected selection process for participants, proper training of the facilitators, sufficient time spent together in each action learning session, and sufficient follow-up.

Planned changes in companies typically involve a people side (Kotter, 2007 and Schifalacqua et al., 2009). Therefore, competence development of the employees is a core element when it comes to successfully inducing changes to an organization. Reflective thinking, i.e. persons involved in a given activity reflecting on what they did, is acknowledged as an efficient way to facilitate leadership development (Parkes, 1998). However, research has shown that “reflection does not come naturally or even easily to most managers” and “explicit attempts to encourage adoption of learning and reflective practices through either logical explanations or development sessions have been largely unsuccessful” (Smith, 2001, p. 33). Action learning may be a promising way of facilitating leadership development as it involves reflective thinking (Smith, 2001). Even though a lot has been written about action learning, unfortunately, it is not really clear from the existing literature how to support action learning. The author of this article has done an in-depth case study in which action learning was used as a method to enhance the competencies of the project managers. The outcomes of the action learning activities were mixed. Some of the project managers did benefit a lot from the action learning activities, while others did not. The research revealed that the context, content, and process related to the action learning sessions differed considerably in the successful action learning sets compared to the less successful ones. Based on the case study, the aim of this article is to discuss conditions necessary to enhance competence development among project managers by action learning. The structure of the article is as follows: The next section presents relevant concepts drawn from the existing literature. Hereafter, the research methodology underlying the research is described, and findings from an in-depth case study are offered. The findings are related to existing literature in Section 5, and propositions on preconditions needed to benefit from participating in the action learning are presented. Further, challenges related to various roles associated with the action learning are discussed. The article is finalized by Section 6.

The purpose of this article was to contribute to the understanding of challenges related to further develop project management competencies in a company by involving project managers in action learning in a competence development programme. The case study showed that action learning might be a viable way to enhance competence development. However, the research identified a number of elements that influences the success of the action learning set, e.g. a proper and respected set member selection process, proper training of facilitators, sufficient time spent on each action learning session, and sufficient follow-up. Further, the findings contribute to existing theory by giving evidence for the challenges for the change type “further developing” (assuring appropriate resources and top management commitment) stated in Gareis (2010). In addition, the research adds to the understanding of this change type by pointing to more challenges, i.e. to select the right persons as action learning set members and as facilitators; to assure commitment from middle managers when they take on the role as action learning set member recruiters; and to align expectations of the programme members. Finally, Section 5 showed that the concepts Social Confidence, Perceived Credibility, and Perceived Trustworthiness proposed by Andrews and Delahaye (2000) can help understand the micro-processes within action learning sets. Three limitations of the study can be identified: first of all, it was not possible to quantify the benefits from neither the competence development programme nor the action learning sets. Secondly, all projects in the competence programme were not finished when the data collection took place. Therefore, it was not possible to determine the long-term effects. Thirdly, the case study took place in Denmark. The results may not be representative for organizations world wide.