IDIA2009 Conference
Opportunities for Professional Development and Performance Improvement as Part of ICT Reflections on a Community of Practice Case Study in Hungary
Mary O'Flynn
Faculty of Business & Informatics, CQ University, Australia
Carolyne Stanforth
Centre for Development Informatics, University of Manchester, UK
Abstract
Public administration reform programmes will typically include ICTs as a core component of the performance improvement effort. However, simply buying in the hardware will not in itself bring about the development goals targeted within the respective organisational setting. Refinement of the human as well as the technological competencies of the organisation is needed. ‘Communities of Practice’ in which the individual members learn by participating in shared activity provide a useful approach to studying how the achievement of professional development goals may lead to performance improvement. This paper discusses the application of the theory of situated learning and ‘Communities of Practice’ with reference to a public administration reform case study in the transitional economy of Hungary in which both authors actively participated as management consultants. The paper reviews the original development project objectives as outlined by the international financing institution and the professional development and performance improvement goals incrementally achieved within the emerging ‘Community of Practice’ in the Project Management Unit of a social insurance administration reform project. It also examines the formation of a parallel ‘Community of Practice’ of individual managers from the two concerned organisations (the pensions and health insurance bodies) through their participation in the formal management training programmes. The means by which these two communities interacted and eventually integrated are traced, with reflections on the roles of the various boundary-spanning objects (human and non-human) in play in the project.
