Organisaation osaamisen strateginen hallinta

Abstract

Koska tulevaisuuden ennustaminen on mahdotonta, tulee yrityksen strategian perustua osaamiseen, jota voidaan hyödyntää joustavasti kilpailu- ja markkinatilanteiden muuttuessa. Tämän lisäksi organisaatiolla on oltava se osaaminen, jota tarvitaan nykyisessä kilpailutilanteessa. Tutkimuksen kohteena oli yksi case-organisaatio, joka on voimakkaassa globaalissa laajentumisvaiheessa.

Tutkimus perustuu yritysstrategiaa työstäviin asiantuntijahaastatteluihin, joiden tuloksena saatiin kartoitettua yrityksen strategiset kyvykkyysalueet. Toisin sanoen, menetelmän avulla yritys tuli tietoiseksi siitä, millaiseen osaamiseen sen tulevaisuus perustuu, ja miten tätä osaamista voidaan kehittää ja hyödyntää. Tämän lisäksi käytettiin tilastollisia menetelmiä, joiden avulla paneuduttiin tarkemmin osaamisalueisiin liittyviin tekijöihin.

Tutkimus osoitti, että teknologisen ja tuotanto-osaamisen siirto ja arviointi on suhteellisen suoraviivaista toimintaa. Huomattavasti vaikeampaa on arvioida osaamista, joka ei ole "konkreettista" (esim. tuotanto, myynti), vaan enemmänkin "näkemyksellistä" (esim. sopeutuminen toimialan muutoksiin tai uusiin yrityskulttuureihin).

Tulokset vahvistavat myös sen, että osaaminen ilmenee organisaatiossa vallitsevina yhteisinä käsityksinä tai ajatusmalleina. Toisaalta kävi ilmeiseski, että tulevaisuuden osaamisvaatimuksia vastaavat yhteiset ajatusmallit eivät ole yhtä voimakkaita kuin nykyisiä osaamisvoimavaroja vastaavat ajatusmallit.

Yritykselle keskeisen osaamisen kehittyminen on perustunut pitkän ajanjakson aikana tapahtuneeseen toimintaan, ja sisäisellä koulutuksella on ollut lähinnä marginaalinen merkitys osaamisen kehittymisessä. Sen sijaan keskeisen tärkeitä ovat olleet erilaiset työjärjestelyt ja toimintaperiaatteet, joka on mahdollistanut sisäisen liikkuvuuden, asijantuntijuuden kehittymisen ja tiedon kulun. Suhteet ulkoisiin tietämyslähteisiin korostuvat mielenkiintoisella tavalla sellaisen osaamisen rakentamisen kohdalla, joka kohdistuu vasta tavoiteltavana olevaan kyvykkyyteen.

Tutkimus luo teoreettista pohjaa osaamisen strategiselle johtamiselle ja henkisen pääoman kehittämiselle. Osamista voidaan johtaa strategisesti, ja osaamisen kehittäminen voidaan toteuttaa kustannustehokkaasti ensisijaisesti työelämän toimintakäytäntöjä kehittämällä.

Concept "strategic" connected with organisational competence means identification of those capabilities that have central importance for organisation's future. Because predicting future is impossible, organisation's strategy must be based on competence that can be used flexibly in changing competition and markets. In addition to this, organisation must have competencies that are needed in the present competition.

In order to identify and model the most important organisational competence areas it is necessary to focus on the issue both from resource and industry structure point of view. Only after this it is possible to proceed into strategic management of organisational competence. Competencies are managed by so called 'managerial cognition', and thus, modelling of this research is based on cognitive science based approach. In addition to this, this research is connected to ideas presented in CBM-theory (Competence based management).

The study aimed at describing case organisation's strategic competence areas and shared meaning structures linked to them. After this, the target was to identify the factors that explain the strength of the meaning structures. Finally, the dynamics of strategic competence management was studied from competence building, maintaining and leveraging perspectives.

By interviewing the experts strategic competence areas of case organisation were defined. These were competence resources, competence demands or competence challenges. Feedback from the representatives of the organisation confirmed that the method and definitions of competence areas were very successful. After this, experts of the organisation evaluated factors related to competence areas. It was studied if the experts could evaluate these similarly. Behind this study question was a supposition of shared meaning structures connected to every competence area. If this was the case, the members of the organisation should have approximately equal view of the factors related to competence area. In some competence areas these evaluations were so equal that the similarity of evaluations (N=341) were statistically significant. In some competence areas, however, evaluations were not equal enough. This led into the next study question about the factors that would explain the strength or weakness of the shared meaning structures.

By quantifying the qualitative data new variables were founded. First, variables describing resource, demand or challenge intensivity were studied. Especially the variable signifying resource intensivity of a competence area was found to be statistically significant in explaining strength of a meaning structure. This might refer to strong meaning structure of a competence area that is an existing resource, but for competence that is only a targeted one there is not a strong meaning structure. These findings confirm some theoretical presuppositions of the research. After this, the capability type and knowledge type of competence areas were studied from concrete-abstract continuum point of view. Again, results confirmed that there is a strong shared meaning structure related to concrete and operative competence area, whereas there is a weaker meaning structure related to abstract and non-concrete competence area.

In general, experts of the case organisation succeeded in evaluation of operative, concrete and existing competence areas better than in evaluation of competencies that the organisation does not have, but what it needs. This should lead into practices for strengthening more abstract competencies by defining and communicating these actively.

The dynamics of strategic competence management was studied next. The management task is not only to monitor market and competition status of the industry, but also to make decisions on the competencies that can be and should be developed, and find out where those competencies can be obtained from. The central mechanism in competence building is to be networked with different knowledge sources, but in competence maintaining internal mechanisms of the organisation are most important ones. In competence leveraging, transferring technological and operative competencies is quite straightforward activity. Changes in contents of competence will take place primarily in cultural aspects. In general, the dynamics of competence management varies according com-petence areas, but a common feature is 'learning by doing' in competence building and maintaining. Organisational learning can be enhanced by different kinds of job and organisation related arrangements. Thus, organisation developers should be concentrated on development of working practices and culture, in order that learning would take place as a part of work itself. Because of this, management of competence should be focused not only on "hard production skills", but also on management and development of "soft skills". These two together form strategic capabilities that will help organisation to succeed in the future as well.