Organisational change through management development: A case study of GW Power Utilities

This case outlines a study in which a blended learning process involving the development of managers was tightly coupled to organisational change and development objectives. It discusses how a research and consulting team came together to develop highly reflexive pedagogy to support the work of organisational change teams (termed ‘learning sets’). These learning sets had as their objective, to become catalysts of organisational change and performance improvement within a large organisation. In order to structure the discourse amongst learning set members, a range of constructs were provided to them. Central to these constructs was a form of process modelling (termed ‘models of teleological human process’), which were used and applied by the learning sets, and provided a ‘basis for a discourse’ about problematic organisational issues and how to change them. The learning sets were operationalised over a three-month period, supported by an e-learning technology infrastructure, and facilitated by learning set advisers. The process, methods and outcomes are outlined in this paper.