Case Indreby municipality

Description

Indreby municipality is a small urban municipality in the eastern region. The population is 12,000, and the economic base is a mixture of agriculture, industry and public activities. The number of employees in the municipal administration is just over 1,000, and the stability of the workforce is relatively high. Annually, between 30 and 40 employees retire, most as a result of retirement or moving out of the municipality. A new female councilor has recently been hired after the “old councilor” retired.

There have been few changes in the municipality in recent years. The “old councilor” has been a councilor for 17 years, and has been reluctant to think new. As the employees tend to say to each other, “the municipality is run as it has always been run, and no modern changes are needed here for the sake of change”. It must also be said that the political leadership has lagged behind in development.

The organization is characterized by clear boundaries between the agencies and between the jobs. It has been read and decided that one should not do something that can be perceived as interference in other people’s job performance, but rather stick to one’s own and solve the tasks as best as possible on one’s own. This has meant that there have been several unfortunate conflicts in the organization which, among other things, have intensified the media, and which have given the municipality a bad reputation. The municipality is perceived as very bureaucratic by most residents, and many are annoyed that even simple case processing usually takes a long time. “Solid case processing of cases will always take time” is echoed among the employees in the municipality.

It should also be mentioned that the municipality has lagged behind when it comes to inter-municipal cooperation. The neighboring municipalities have been far more active and developed collaborative projects and closer relationships.

There is little competence development in the municipal administration, first and foremost because the management and the “old councilor” have thought that they are good enough, and have made statements such as: “What are we going to do with expensive courses when we already have competent people?” On the technology side, the municipality is also far behind compared to the average of Norwegian municipalities.

The new councilor was aware of most of these conditions before she accepted the offer of the position, and had at the same time thought through several possible strategies. She is aware that these are big challenges, and it is important to seize the right things. One of the challenges will be to improve relations both internally and externally, and in this way influence the organization to primarily serve the citizens and their need for service, and envisions a slogan such as “Indreby municipality – we exist for the users”. She is concerned with tackling this holistically, and wants to take action that, among other things, affects both the structure, culture and management with greater emphasis on efficiency and results. She is also very concerned with creating good relationships and a good climate for interaction between employees and stakeholders both inside and outside the organization. At the same time, she is passionate about improving the learning environment and getting most people interested in developing, changing their job content, learning from each other and teaching to others.
She realizes that this is a very extensive job, and is dependent on external support in parts of the work.

TASK
You are the external consultant that the municipality chose to hire. Your specialty is the development of learning organizations, and you have experience from working with both private and public organizations and are known for having a good ability to transfer experiences between the private and public sector.
The councilor briefed you on his views and ambitions. Before she starts, she wants help to get a better basis for starting the process of developing a learning organization.

With this background, you will be commissioned to make an analysis of the situation, as you perceive the organization today, and prepare the basis and point out important conditions and success criteria for success in developing the municipality to become a learning organization, as well as to propose relevant and concrete measures that can be implemented.

The task is to make an analysis and interpret the situation based on the information in the description above, and prepare the following:

Analyze the case, and discuss the need for learning in this organization.
Research points to the characteristics of organizations that are better at learning than others, and points to features of the organization that focus on goals and strategy, structure, culture and power relations:
Discuss in what way organizational culture can be an important factor related to the case.
Discuss the importance of leadership in relation to ambitions to develop a learning organization.
If you were to give advice to the councilor, what specific measures would you recommend?