Digitalised solutions of organizational learning capability to enhance performances of public service organizations.

Abstract

Public organizations provide training to enhance their employee’s capabilities to provide better services. Public organizations should use different learning methods to enhance their employee’s skills and service offering. Therefore, public organizations are considering using different learning programs such as classroom training, coaching, mentoring, internship, visiting fellows and other new and innovative learning programs. For the organizations to be effective in providing the learning programs to their employees, there is a need to have an approach to support these efforts. This research suggests that Organizational Learning Capability (OLC) is the right approach to do that. The OLC is defined as the facilitation of a process to ensure that the organization is learning from its operations and experiences of different projects and initiatives. This learning process is influenced by certain factors that are directly related to the performance of both employees and service provision. The research starts by performing an extensive literature review of organisational learning capability and the enabling digital technologies. Based on the findings of the literature review, a semi-structured questionnaire was developed to capture the sector perspective by interviewing employees in public service organizations within United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, France, Poland, Spain, Norway, and Finland. This research proposes an OLC model consisting of the 3 key elements that represent the definition of OLC; the learning processes, enablers, and influential factors. The OLC model helps public service organizations to improve their learning activities and bridge the gap between investments in learning initiatives and improvement in service provision in public organizations. The OLC model helps to define all other learning programs where the coaching, Gemba-Walk and design thinking learning programs are presented in this thesis as OLC sub-models. These are new and innovative learning programs whose potentials are being explored in this research, for their ability to enhance employees and service provision within public service organizations. Moreover, two digitalised software demonstrators for the coaching and design thinking learning programs are presented in this research to reflect how digital enabling technologies could facilitate the implementation of learning programs in public services organizations. Furthermore, to validate the OLC model and sub-models, two case study validations (concerning the implementation of coaching and design thinking learning programs in a public service organization), as well as two experts’ evaluations are presented in this research. The key contribution to knowledge from this research is a comprehensive OLC model that helps public service organizations introduce and implement OLC in an effective manner using enabling technologies.