Local government organisation on its journey to becoming a learning organisation

Abstract

Purpose – This study aims to make an assessment of the status of various management practices/cultural attributes in local government and investigates their relationship with organisational performance. The local government organisation concerned is going through the process of cultural change in an effort to becoming a learning organisation. Design/methodology/approach – The results of this study are based on employees' perceptions of management practices and organisational performance collected using a survey approach. The Denison Organisational Culture Survey (DOCS) was used for collecting the data. Findings – Of the various management practices considered, the study found that team orientation has received top emphasis followed by dissemination of the core values and organisational capability development. In terms of performance measures, the offering of new services to their clients ranks number one followed by brainstorming practices in problems solving. Employee empowerment has not received much emphasis from the management despite being associated with various measures of performance such as client satisfaction, job satisfaction, quality of services, revenue growth, improved skills of employees in evaluating organisational success or failures, and successful implementation of organisational programs. Although creating change, organisational learning, and team orientation indicate positive correlations with the majority of performance measures considered in this study; there is no evidence of their relationship with financial measure of performance like revenue growth. Originality/value – The organisational managers may find the outcomes of such investigations helpful as they provide useful information on the organisation's cultural strengths and weaknesses. Such studies would also assist managers to systematically assess their change initiatives and develop a better strategy for successful implementation of managements' tactics and business processes.