Management development and co-production: myths and realities

Abstract

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to address the relationship between public sector practitioners and academic providers in the design and delivery of management development programmes. What is the added value of HEI involvement in management development and does this intervention generate knowledge that could not be produced by the organisation alone? This paper offers a critical discussion of the concept of mutual co-production, arguing that management development programmes may address the organisational needs of clients, or those of providers, without necessarily representing creative and consensual co-creation. Design/methodology/approach - Discussion is drawn from qualitative interviews in Scotland and England with academics providing management development programmes, together with managers from two public sector organisations. Initial interviews carried out in 2011 were supplemented by additional interviews with academic providers in 2012. Findings - Management development programmes may serve primarily to address the internal objectives of client organisations and academic providers alike. True co-creation requires timescales and relationships of trust that need to be built over time. Practical implications - Critical insight into the commercial relationship between providers and public organisations enables greater clarity about what the provider is selling and what the organisation is buying. This contributes to conceptual understanding of the management development relationship, and, moreover, to open and effective practice. Originality/value - The paper critically addresses the management development relationship between client and provider and informs future practice and further research.

Introduction

When academics from higher education institutions (HEIs) are commissioned to provide consultancy and management development for external organisations in the public sector, a number of skills are deployed which differ, perhaps greatly, from those associated with classroom teaching. The contract may need to be won competitively before a demanding audience. The academics' delivery performance may be "auditioned". There is likely to be instant evaluation, with little room to compensate for getting it wrong. These are practical and challenging issues relating to skills and experience. The present paper considers the challenges of knowledge, learning and co-production within the management development relationship. These include issues of both theory and practice. Public sector practitioners are highly skilled people, likely to possess practical knowledge and experience which exceeds that of the HE staff commissioned to work for them. Therefore academics may not be offering an immediate input to practice. Yet there is little scope for providing a contribution to theory as this is quite probably the last thing on the minds of commissioning organisations. Practitioners seek something of utility, justifying the considerable costs of HEI input. This paper considers exactly what is being offered by HEIs that organisations cannot provide for themselves. Do organisations know what they are buying, and do HEI providers know what they are selling? To explore these questions, interviews were conducted (see Note on Methodology) with managers in two public sector organisations and with management educators in two HEIs to gain a closer understanding of these underlying processes.

The organisation-higher education relationship

There are many ways of conceiving of the relationship between HE and the business community (e.g. [21] Muff, 2012) and of the relationship between theory and practice in management research (e.g. [22] Reed, 2009). The precise relationship between external organisation and HEI provider can vary widely and some forms of provision - for instance management courses delivered in HE that are required to follow an externally determined curriculum for a professional awarding body - are properly considered part of education and training rather than management development. However, we would suggest that all management development relationships fall within the following continuum.

We are interested in the mid-point, i.e. co-production (or co-creation). Within this, a number of significant questions arise: is co-production wanted by the organisation or the HEI, or do the parties involved feel more comfortable with pre-defined organisational or academic products? Do external organisations and HEI contractors want the same things, as equal partners within the process? "Co-production" implies shared interests and a discourse of consensual joint work. Yet co-production may serve to mask prior organisational objectives, for instance in driving through organisational goals which the organisation cannot or does not wish to drive through itself. Positively, within this relationship, the HEI can generate much valued income and the client organisation can benefit from the expertise provided. Negatively, for HEIs there are challenges around the potential misreading of participation as legitimation, essentially borrowing the HEI's involvement as a means of validating objectives that the organisation cannot address alone. Co-production may not always be the dialogical undertaking that the term implies.

Co-production at best denotes knowledge generation and knowledge exchange. [15] Knight and Pettigrew (2007, p. 2) note the "considerable and growing interest in the subject of academic researchers and practising managers jointly generating knowledge" yet they find precious little empirical data to support this. They go on to identify the range of more conceptual contributions to the co-production field around definitions and practices of co-production.

Co-production is a concept that has been used in a number of academic contexts. [20] Mesny and Mailhot (2012) have considered co-production of knowledge in management research, arguing that it is predicated on a sharing of complementary knowledge between practitioners and academics which would embrace all stages of research: design, data analysis and results. The concept of co-production has also been widely used in social and public policy to describe the relationship between service users and service providers (e.g. [2] Bovaird, 2007; [10] Gillard et al. , 2010).

It is our proposition that the reality of co-production in management development is based upon open long-term relationships between client and provider which are not easy, or cheap, to establish. In contrast, the myths of co-production may serve to bolster the aims of those in the organisation who seek to implement their own agendas for change, or the organisational need of academic providers to achieve their own internal goals, such as financial targets. The instrumental objectives of each party may thus be addressed through a rhetorical discourse of co-production.

Key themes

The findings of this paper are derived from semi-structured interviews with a number of practitioners involved in management development and with management educators from HEIs. The latter group largely had previous experience as practitioners. The sample is detailed more fully in the Note on Methodology. The approach is qualitative and interpretive ([3] Bryman and Bell, 2011), organised under certain themes which sought to draw out interviewees' feelings and perceptions about co-production. Our perspective is broadly constructionist ([7] Easterby-Smith et al. , 2012), presenting interviewees' accounts and constructions of the management development process. The authors explicitly identify themselves here as insiders rather than detached observers, using their own experience of the public sector and of management development and HE to offer an interpretation of the emergent findings. The intention is to present critical insights into the management development process beyond the formal rhetoric of client-provider relationships.

What kind of knowledge is generated?

In exploring this question, a senior HR manager suggested that a major current programme gets participants "out of their everyday scenario" and "into the 'big wide world'", providing "exposure" for people who have worked in the organisation for a long time. It also provides an opportunity to apply skills, preventing participants from getting "stale" in what they do. As this programme is offered on a university campus, it also provides a different "environment", a "confidential forum". The interesting feature of this answer is that the emphasis is not on the provision of additional knowledge - importance is placed instead on the different setting, something out of the everyday working routine. This emphasis on location is supported by existing studies of how spaces for learning can be co-created in sometimes challenging physical conditions ([6] Desmond and Jowitt, 2012).

Explicitly, the interviewee suggested that the required "answer" is normally "already there": it is a matter of "drawing it out". In other words, participants already have the answers, and the HEI programme is a catalyst for their realisation. This answer points to the facilitative role of the HE provider, an important factor echoed by other respondents. A management educator in an HE institution similarly placed the emphasis upon facilitation rather than teaching, referring further to the "legitimacy" conferred by the HE provider's involvement - even if the academic knowledge and skills of the academics involved are not directly used. The HEI thus becomes a proxy for legitimation of the process, and perhaps for validation of the organisation's agenda.

While specific knowledge may of course be part of what is offered in a management development programme, the practitioner comments above suggest that HE does not necessarily provide new knowledge. Perhaps something equally important but less tangible is being sought and provided. This may be a new way of seeing problems, interpreting and giving meaning ([25] Schwartz-Shea and Yanow, 2012). Consistent with this, a senior management development officer in a client organisation suggested that the intangible "credibility rating" of the university facilitator helps to increase the impact of such an intervention, even when the knowledge of the HE provider is no greater than that of the organisation's own staff.

A different kind of intangible benefit was referred to when it was suggested that the university's high-quality teaching facilities were "equal" to the (senior) people taking part, a reference to the perceived status of the participants and the physical fabric of the training suite: essentially, a co-production of the setting and milieu in which management development is to take place.

An academic involved in the delivery of management development to external organisations, and previously occupying a commissioning role for such programmes in both private and public sectors, suggested that within "external intervention" the organisation may be looking for specific expertise to "fix" something that needs fixing. This interviewee placed particular emphasis on the initial diagnostic stage of the intervention. It was felt to be crucial that instead of a standard product, there was an intervention tailored to individuals: something very much in the centre of the continuum depicted in Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.].

A more concrete strength of the programme mentioned by this interviewee was the accreditation offered to participants: the prospect of parallel registration for a postgraduate qualification which provides a portable award for the individual, an important symbolic statement of the organisation's commitment to its staff and, again, offering a perceived credibility for the programme. Although accreditation might limit co-production if it imposes constraints on what is delivered and how it is assessed, HE providers who have access to "fast-track" accreditation (as this one does) can leave the provider and client relatively free to co-produce the programme.

Words such as credibility, legitimacy and status emerge as important elements of what is being sought and apparently being provided when the organisation turns to a provider from HE. These are powerful words but are intriguing because they are intangible, unlikely to feature explicitly in the specification provided by the organisation or the "offer" provided by the HE provider. The contractual relationship between provider and organisation is only part of the picture. There is a more subtle relationship, based on shared understandings of what the other party wants and whether it is being met. Yet these powerful words are also fragile. Reputation and credibility are capable of rapid erosion if the commercial relationship is not successful.

An academic interviewee felt that organisations were essentially looking for three things from the management development relationship: overall "good practice" in management and leadership; expertise in the "developmental process", hence reducing the problem of "transfer" for the organisation through an input already geared towards their practice needs; and the opportunity to "benchmark" the organisation against other organisations. This third element - benchmarking - can also be considered from the provider point of view. Intervention not only allows the organisation to benchmark its position, it permits the provider to benchmark its intervention against other universities and consultants. In this sense, management development enhances the provider's capacity for further work elsewhere. It provides market intelligence and experience. The organisation "gives" this to the provider, knowingly or otherwise.

A further element was added by a member of HE staff with prior experience of private consultancy work, who felt that those commissioning the programme could be doing so in order to pursue their "battle for internal credibility" within their organisation. Specifically, this interviewee referred to the role of central human resources in the organisation, building a cumulative narrative that everything had to be "sourced externally". In the respondent's experience this was emphatically not the kind of "conversation" associated with co-production, but was closer (Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]) to a producer defined product, bought by the organisation. This has interesting implications. First, as this respondent suggested, it adds to the internal credibility of those in the organisation selecting the relevant programme. Second, as the same interviewee would later point out, it transfers responsibility for outcomes to the external provider and removes it from those commissioning intervention. Third, to address our central concerns, it is manifestly not co-production which above all demands a sharing of responsibility between parties. This suggests that the internal dynamics and relationships of an organisation may point decisively away from co-production, not towards it.

Adding value and promoting change

An academic provider thought it important to distinguish mode 1 and mode 2 research. Mode 1 generates knowledge which is primarily beneficial to the academic community which created it, while mode 2 is characterised by practicality and immediate application (see [11] Gray et al. , 2011). Clearly, public organisations require academic providers who are willing to engage with mode 2 ways of working. Co-production would imply, at its best, a provider rooted in rigorous academic research but committed to effective mode 2 operation. [11] Gray et al. (2011) examined this overall "theory/practice" distinction, in their case relating to human resource development. As they say, these debates are not confined to HRD and may be characterised more generally as the "rigour/relevance" issue ([11] Gray et al. , 2011, p. 248). Mode 2 usually has a client "actively involved in the co-production of knowledge" ([11] Gray et al. , 2011, p. 251).

But if the specific contribution of the HE provider is not necessarily mode 1 expertise, in what ways can the provider be said to add value to the organisation? A senior HR manager commented that the external facilitator does not necessarily need a full understanding of the business: their value is that they are "neutral". As a new person, they will be listened to as they provide a "fresh" approach based on independence. They will have some necessary knowledge, but also presentational skills, capable of developing a relationship of trust. There are two important elements to be drawn out from this. The first is the emphasis on the independence and neutrality of the external facilitator, placing "added value" in the very fact of the facilitator's separation from it. The second is a perception of what may then follow: trust, listening, learning.

A management development academic felt that the added value of HEI involvement had several aspects: objectivity (consistent with the emphasis of another interviewee on independence); an established track record (conferring an element of proven worth); and, in particular, an ability to challenge - which insiders could not do. The external academic thus takes on the role of "stirrer" who can "galvanise" participants "into different ways of thinking". Added value is here located in the outsider status of the academic, asking the questions an insider could not ask. This, however, poses further questions, for it presupposes a confident organisation, perhaps dealing with significant change, seeking to "stir" the old accepted ways of doing things. This gives the HE provider a licence not afforded to insiders. Within the familiar model of [16] Lewin (1951), the HE provider is engaged in unfreezing existing ways of working. Reference was also made to the "ability to challenge existing practice in a 'safe environment' that would not be so easy if the management development was delivered internally". Here, HE involvement appears to offer a form of quarantine for challenging practice, outwith the organisation itself.

From the interviews carried out, there was a clear link between organisational change and management development intervention. As an HR manager pointed out, there is a "huge agenda of change" in the (named) organisation at present, involving reorganisation and change of ownership. The programme facilitates change by providing a "fresh pair of eyes", drawing "what's there already" from the participants. This gives an "external push" to the change process. The programme allows participants to "step back" from their usual environment. In this instance, it is being suggested that the HE provider assists the actual process of organisational change. The external status of the HE provider again seems to be the important factor in selling such change to staff. Using different words, an academic commented that HE involvement can "provide cover" for the organisation. A senior management development officer from a public organisation also emphasised the importance of the internal change agenda, suggesting that without HEI involvement it would not have happened: they are the catalyst for successful change.

Costs and benefits

Referring to a contractual relationship with a major public body, an HE provider suggested that the significant cost (i.e. the price) of the intervention was matched many times over by the savings that the programme was required to generate for the client. In this case, the cost and (assumed) benefit is explicit. At other times, cost-benefit relationships are less clear. A management development officer suggested that the benefits of any programme are not known until the end. There is a need for continuous evaluation, and it is only possible over the longer term to identify ultimate success. However, in the current programme with an HEI, it was suggested that behaviours are already changing: managers are doing things they would not have done before - because of the programme.

Many years ago [14] Kirkpatrick (1977) devised a model of evaluation comprising four stages (see [12] Kaufman and Keller, 1994; [27] Stokking, 1996). Kirkpatrick's approach remains influential (e.g. [24] Schmidt, 2009). The first stage - reaction - considers how participants feel about the programme, recording basic levels of satisfaction, for instance in the standard "evaluation forms" routinely distributed at the close of a training session. The second stage - learning - starts to dig a little deeper by identifying the degree to which participants have learned information and skills, and changed their attitudes as a result. The third stage - behaviour - assesses the extent to which activity at work has actually changed as a result of the programme. The final stage - results - records the impact of the programme on the organisation's performance, including return on investment. This simple model has proven durable because it potentially offers organisations a range of tools at different levels of complexity. The model also permits (from stage two) a focus on participants' reflective self-evaluation, perhaps itself one of the aims of a management development programme.

It has been pointed out (e.g. [4] Cheng and Hampson, 2008) that stages three and four are not usually attempted. Organisations simply find it easier to concentrate on the first two stages. Taken seriously, level four would require a high level of confidence about the demonstrable impact of a programme. Within available methodologies this is hard, perhaps impossible, to separate from the effect of other variables.

An HE interviewee noted that, in their previous local authority role, evaluation had been based on the Kirkpatrick levels of assessment and confirmed that the final level - "results" or impact - is rarely achieved. The first three levels were addressed in the local authority concerned but it was suggested that organisations generally "struggle" with level four. Evaluation may not go beyond the initial level of "happy sheets" to record immediate satisfaction. Consistent with the comments of others, this interviewee suggested that the programme should set out at the outset what the measures of success are to be, for instance by adopting the CIRO approach. The CIRO methodology of evaluation - Context, Input, Reaction and Outcome - takes measurements prior to the intervention as well as afterwards (see [8] Elliott et al. , 2009). This should permit a "before" and "after" evaluation of programme impact. In the case of a major management development programme offered in partnership with a university provider, this interviewee's former local authority sought to do this by measuring newly acquired "competencies" amongst participants. [18] McGurk (2010) has drawn attention to ill-defined assumptions about the relationship between "competency" and leadership in management development, but whatever view is taken of competency the key is to use meaningful measures, with a clear conception from the very beginning of what the organisation requires of the programme. Qualitative insight into the impact of management development programmes can also be gained by the use of diaries where participants record their own insights (e.g. [26] Smith, 1993).

There is a general sense in which work-related training has a positive effect on morale ([19] Malloch, 2012). This also applies to the management development interventions under discussion. Looking more closely at how HE providers see the likely cost/benefit to the organisation of engaging external providers, one such provider felt that "this is a difficult one to assess. Often we help the organisation to define their 'anticipated benefits' because they do not always know how to articulate what they expect at the beginning [...] Increasingly, as they have to demonstrate value for money, tangible measures of impact are required". Such impact measures may even be built into the fee structure for management development interventions: impact has to be demonstrated before payment in full is made. It throws into direct relief the need of providers to generate income, and the need of organisations to demonstrate return on investment.

In part, cost/benefit is seen here as the process of legitimation already referred to. The very separateness of the provision in partnership with a university - "not seen as an internal training course" - is bound up in the benefit it is perceived as having. Writers such as [5] Chochard and Davoine (2011) and [8] Elliott et al. (2009) have considered return on investment on management programmes in some detail. However, it is not a process of return on investment alone. As one respondent pointed out, it is also a return on expectations.

Positive and negative experiences

From the perspective of a senior public sector manager, negative experience with a previous provider arose where the programme was essentially a series of pre-designed sessions with no follow-up. Its lack of impact is reflected in the fact that the interviewee could remember little about it. On our continuum of co-production (Figure 1 [Figure omitted. See Article Image.]) this example would be "wholly academic-defined". In contrast, it was suggested that a major current programme is a positive example, characterised by its:

- long-term nature;

- the offer of an integral accredited qualification for those who want it for their personal CV as well as for their current role in the organisation; and

- demonstration of the organisation's commitment - not least through the cost it is incurring.

In response to the follow-up question of whether this final point also demonstrates something about the organisation's values, there was emphatic agreement, the interviewee adding that the current programme demonstrates the "psychological contract" - the shared commitment - between the organisation and its people.

Negative experiences were identified in a programme commissioned by a previous organisation. The central problem had been in not knowing the audience. Any trainer or facilitator has got to "connect". An additional point about cost was made by this interviewee: in current and previous experience (in the public and private sectors) the organisation does not necessarily want cheapness. It wants the problem solved. It is recognised this will have a cost, a need undiminished by the current environment of austerity. Poor practice was also identified from earlier experience with a FE/HE provider which had been characterised by:

- poor preparation;

- not "contextualising" the information to the organisation in question; and

- "telling" rather than offering two-way communication.

In contrast, positive experience was to be found in providers with specific expertise who offered the prospect of accreditation, and in individual presenters who engage with participants as individuals. It was noted that a successfully running programme can be undermined if specific facilitators drop away and are replaced by less effective communicators. In previous experience within a local authority, in addition to the normal processes of agreeing a contract with the provider, individual presenters were in effect auditioned for their role.

One HE provider discussed a major commissioning programme with a national public organisation, regarded positively in that "we helped some individuals develop their own confidence and competencies and make sense of a changing landscape", but negatively "as the goal posts moved part way through and it was difficult for us to help [...] organisations in turmoil". The negative elements appear to be located in the turbulence and "turmoil" of the organisation itself rather than in poor practice or unrealistic expectations. However, this respondent added that "[...] long-term relationships have allowed us to make more sense of the transition and its challenges so we can recommend interventions to support employees during this time".

Co-production: greater than the sum of its parts?

An underlying theme of our discussion is the question of whether the organisation and the HEI provider together produce something that neither could produce alone. Where the management development intervention is neither wholly organisation-defined, nor wholly academic-defined, it is within the realm of co-production where the whole has the potential to be greater than the sum of its parts.

One HE provider made reference to a current public sector collaboration which "is being co produced in that we started with an initial request for help without the organisation really knowing what great commissioning looks like although the leader and the staff had lots of ideas. Through discussion and some secondary research we have begun to create a product which essentially we will continue to co create with the pilot group". This stands in contrast to another example of work with the public sector where "I wish we did have the opportunity to co-create in that the [named organisation] context is quite different from many other organizations [...] we missed this at the start of the programme because we could not get sufficient access to what was really going on". This reference to accessing "what was really going on" denotes an essential and continuing challenge for management development.

A senior manager found virtue in a current major programme being "tailored" to the organisation's specific needs, arising from a period of initial diagnostic research carried out by the university. The integral "follow-up", programmed into the sessions, maintains the momentum. From the perspective of this senior actor in the process it was "brave" of the organisation to commit to this. One management development academic with a range of experience in different academic institutions noted that the client can define clear boundaries within which the intervention takes place. Organisations, as paying clients, can be quite assertive about what they do not want.

Potentially such debates open up the broad area of organisational learning. This has been the subject of extensive previous research (e.g. [17] Lundberg, 1995; [1] Beeby and Booth, 2000; [9] Fenwick and McMillan, 2005; [23] Senge, 2006; [13] Kennedy, 2010). Within management development interventions it is not simply that learning is taking place: there is, ideally, a demonstration that a "learning organization" is actively working with its HE provider in a co-production process. A learning organisation is systematically attuned to the learning needs of its members, oriented to learning as a continuing process rather than simply providing discrete training sessions to impart isolated pieces of knowledge. To frame this in terms of our discussion, true co-production implies that the organisation is indeed a learning organisation.

Additionally, within these debates there remains the neglected question of what academics themselves gain from involvement with management development programmes: the question of their learning, as alluded to by a university management educator within our study. While HE educators and external organisations are linked by an essentially commercial relationship, for individual academics there may be non-commercial gains from co-production. Lessons from practitioners' experience can be taken back into the classroom, enhancing learning and teaching amongst other student groups as well as informing the next business opportunity. True co-production involves learning benefits for the provider as well as the organisation.

Further research, based on a larger sample of respondents in a greater range of organisations, may yield more conclusive findings about the critical issues explored in this paper. Our initial study suggests that future research could productively consider: the extent to which the organisation is able (or willing) to define its expectations of the management development process at the outset; the extent to which the content and the evaluation regime of a particular intervention can be seen as characteristic of true co-production; and the longer term follow-up of organisations to assess the lasting impact of intervention. Perhaps the key question for future research is: how will we know co-production when we see it? It is hoped that the present discussion has assisted with the first steps towards such a wider understanding.

Conclusions

Research is a reflective activity. The initial question prompting this discussion was derived directly from our experience in management development: do HEI providers add something to the management development intervention that could not be achieved by the organisation alone and, if so, what is it? Our starting proposition was that the answers could be found within an exploration of the complexities of "co-production", its rhetoric, myths and realities.

Co-production does exist. Academics and practitioners alike can evidence successful examples of jointly produced creative management development, positively approached and successfully delivered. It is not the intention of this paper to suggest otherwise. However, we do suggest that the components of "value" added by HE involvement in management development for client organisations are more complex, and less tangible, than tender specifications may imply. Specific subject-based expertise is not necessarily high on the list of what was sought by the organisation concerned. A number of more powerful factors are involved, including the facilitation skills of the HE provider, the mutual learning experienced by both client and contractors, and the legitimacy and authority accorded to the process by the involvement of an external HE provider. This may provide considerable assistance to the managers of an organisation seeking to drive through processes of internal change, perhaps in the face of resistance or indifference within the organisation. Furthermore, when formal accreditation of the programme is provided by the HE institution, for instance towards a postgraduate qualification, a concrete "badge" of legitimacy is conferred. Similarly, the organisational needs of the HE provider may also be met within such relationships, including the need to generate income through commercial activity and the need to compete effectively against other HE providers. These rich and interesting processes may have nothing to do with "co-production" or knowledge exchange, but may have everything to do with meeting individual organisational needs on both sides of the relationship.

Within management development interventions, learning is going on and it is a two-way process. HEI staff learn from organisations, as well as vice versa. In terms of knowledge, and even of facilitative skills, the organisation may be as well equipped as HE to provide a programme. The fact that an external provider is engaged points to other factors, essentially to the validation that HEI leadership of the intervention may bring. This element of credibility may be very important for the organisation.

A darker side of the relationship between HEIs and commissioning organisations arises when organisational production is disguised as co-production. This may occur when HEIs are used quite instrumentally in the pursuit of organisational objectives that remain hidden until considerably later in the process of intervention. The appearance of co-production is used managerially for purposes of organisational control and power relations.

More positively, the specific elements that lie within co-production can include the advantages (for both parties) of long-term working relationships; the stability offered by a regular HEI team who know the organisation well; the alignment of individual and organisation needs within a programme; the offer of a portable incentive such as a university qualification as concrete evidence of organisational commitment; and meaningful evaluation based on but not confined to the established models.

Perhaps the key element of co-production resides in the outsider status of the HEI educator. Therein lies their strength in the eyes of the organisation. They can say what the insider, through the limitations of authority relationships, cannot say. They can facilitate and lend credibility. They can be "stirrers", brought in by management for this reason. The processes within co-production go far deeper than a simple client-contractor relationship and the formal structures of programme design and delivery.

It has become clear that, as one of our HE interviewees suggested, organisations often could carry out the required programme or intervention themselves. But they "can't be bothered": it is simpler to invite an external provider to do it. Behind this throwaway comment lies an important point. The use of external providers adds to what this interviewee called a "broader outsourcing dynamic". It also transfers the responsibility for negative outcomes to the external provider. It is far from being co-production, but it may be organisationally effective.

The existence or otherwise of effective co-production is also linked to the structural location, within the organisation, of where it was commissioned. It may be that senior management have a relatively free remit to co-produce and that relatively junior organisational development/training staff are much more constrained. As we have discussed, it may also be that certain departments within the organisation use the process to enhance their own standing and carve out an ostensibly necessary role for themselves. This has little to do with co-production, and more to do with internal power relationships.

There remain inherent constraints upon the process of co-production. As one respondent suggested, it may simply not be commercially viable. True co-production implies long lead-in times, an initial diagnostic stage accompanied by significant costs, a level of trust, and a high tolerance of ambiguity. Providers and organisations alike may not actually want this, nor be able to afford it.

Ideally, as pointed out by one of our providers, co-production is about "learning-to-learn", linked to an "agreed negotiated outcome". Co-production is not, this interviewee made clear, about knowledge in the sense of content, although it is about utilising knowledge of the learning and development process. The insights we are gaining about the nature of the relationship between public organisation and academic provider suggest that co-production can and does exist in specific instances. However, despite the rhetoric, it is not always sought by the organisation, nor indeed by the provider, who may be motivated by much more immediate priorities derived from their own agendas. The language of co-production provides a suitable vocabulary for both parties but it may be convenient for both that it is rarely achieved.

Note on methodology

Primary information collected for this paper derives from a series of interviews in 2011 and 2012 using a semi-structured schedule of questions and prompts. The respondents were:

(1)] a senior service manager in a public sector organisation;

(2)] a management educator in a university;

(3)] a management development practitioner in a public sector organisation;

(4)] a management educator in a university, previously an organisational development manager in a local authority;

(5)] a management educator in a university, previously employed in the private sector;

(6)] a management educator in a university; and

(7)] a management educator in a university, previously in private sector consultancy.

The management educators were not all drawn from the same university. The public organisation and the local authority referred to are not the same. The authors of this paper place themselves within this research as "insiders" not dispassionate observers. Consistent with the theoretical perspective - based on involvement and interpretation, not detachment - they are also management educators, employed as academics but also involved in external management development work with a range of public and private organisations, and teaching part-time students from public and private organisations.

References

1. Beeby, M. and Booth, C. (2000), "Networks and inter-organizational learning: a critical review", The Learning Organization, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 75-88.

2. Bovaird, T. (2007), "Beyond engagement and participation: user and community coproduction of public services", Public Administration Review September/October, Vol. 67 No. 5, pp. 846-860.

3. Bryman, A. and Bell, E. (2011), Business Research Methods, 3rd ed., University Press, Oxford.

4. Cheng, E.W.L. and Hampson, I. (2008), "Transfer of training: a review and new insights", International Journal of Management Reviews, Vol. 10 No. 4, pp. 327-341.

5. Chochard, Y. and Davoine, E. (2011), "Variables influencing the return on investment in management training programs: a utility analysis of 10 Swiss cases", International Journal of Training and Development, Vol. 15 No. 3, pp. 225-243.

6. Desmond, B. and Jowitt, A. (2012), "Stepping into the unknown: dialogical experiential learning", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 31 No. 3, pp. 221-230.

7. Easterby-Smith, M., Thorpe, R. and Jackson, P. (2012), Management Research, 4th ed., Sage, London.

8. Elliott, M., Dawson, R. and Edwards, J. (2009), "Providing demonstrable return-on-investment for organisational learning and training", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 33 No. 7, pp. 657-670.

9. Fenwick, J. and McMillan, J. (2005), "Organisational learning and public sector management: an alternative view", Public Policy and Administration, Vol. 20 No. 3, pp. 42-55.

10. Gillard, S., Turner, K., Lovell, K., Norton, K., Clarke, T., Addicott, R., McGivern, G. and Ferlie, E. (2010), "'Staying native': coproduction in mental health services research", International Journal of Public Sector Management, Vol. 23 No. 6, pp. 567-577.

11. Gray, D.E., Iles, P. and Watson, S. (2011), "Spanning the HRD academic-practitioner divide: bridging the gap through mode 2 research", Journal of European Industrial Training, Vol. 35 No. 3, pp. 247-263.

12. Kaufman, R. and Keller, J.M. (1994), "Levels of evaluation: beyond Kirkpatrick", Human Resource Development Quarterly, Vol. 5 No. 4, pp. 371-380.

13. Kennedy, M. (2010), Workplace Learning and Organisational Knowledge in the Public Sector, Verlag Dr Muller, Saarbrucken.

14. Kirkpatrick, D.L. (1977), "Evaluating training programs: evidence vs proof", Training and Development Journal, Vol. 31 No. 11, pp. 9-12.

15. Knight, K. and Pettigrew, A. (2007), "Explaining process and performance in the co-production of knowledge: a comparative analysis of collaborative research projects", paper to Organization Studies Third Summer Workshop, 7-9 June, Crete.

16. Lewin, K. (1951), Field Theory in Social Science, Harper and Row, New York, NY.

17. Lundberg, C. (1995), "Learning in and by organisations: three conceptual issues", International Journal of Organisational Analysis, Vol. 3 No. 1, pp. 10-23.

18. McGurk, P. (2010), "Outcomes of management and leadership development", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 29 No. 5, pp. 457-470.

19. Malloch, M. (2012), "Boundaries and intersections: a reflection on barriers and gateways to learning in the workplace", International Journal of Human Resources Development and Management, Vol. 12 Nos 1/2, pp. 31-44.

20. Mesny, A. and Mailhot, C. (2012), "Control and traceability of research impact on practice: reframing the 'relevance gap' debate in management", M@n@gement, Vol. 15 No. 2, pp. 180-207.

21. Muff, K. (2012), "Are business schools doing their job?", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 31 No. 7, pp. 648-662.

22. Reed, M. (2009), "The theory/practice gap: a problem for research in business schools?", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 28 No. 8, pp. 685-693.

23. Senge, P. (2006), The Fifth Discipline: he Art and Practice of the Learning Organization, 2nd ed., Random House, London.

24. Schmidt, S.W. (2009), "Employee demographics and job training satisfaction: the relationship between dimensions of diversity and satisfaction with job training", Human Resource Development International, Vol. 12 No. 3, pp. 297-312.

25. Schwartz-Shea, P. and Yanow, D. (2012), Interpretive Research Design: Concepts and Processes, Routledge, New York, NY and Abingdon.

26. Smith, A. (1993), "Management development evaluation and effectiveness", Journal of Management Development, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 20-32.

27. Stokking, K.M. (1996), "Levels of evaluation: Kirkpatrick, Kaufman and Keller, and beyond", Human Resource Development Quarterly, Vol. 7 No. 2, pp. 179-183.

Appendix

About the authors

John Fenwick is a Professor of Leadership and Public Management in the Newcastle Business School at the Northumbria University, the UK. He has long-established research interests in local governance and public participation, and public policy reforms in the era beyond New Public Management. He is also active in public service and management development with public sector organisations. Professor John Fenwick is the corresponding author and can be contacted at: [email protected]

Dr Janice McMillan is a Senior Lecturer in Public Management and Human Resource Development in the Business School at the Edinburgh Napier University, the UK, and is similarly engaged in continuing developmental work with practitioners. Together the authors have an established record of joint research in public policy and management, and are currently writing a critical text on organisational behaviour in the public sector.

  

Illustration

Figure 1: The co-production continuum