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Making work and learning more visibleby reflective practiceKati Tikkamäkia & Sanna Hildenb
a School of Information Sciences/CIRCMI, University of Tampere,Tampere, Finlandb Cost Management Centre, Tampere University of Technology,Tampere, FinlandPublished online: 07 Jul 2014.
To cite this article: Kati Tikkamäki & Sanna Hilden (2014) Making work and learning morevisible by reflective practice , Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 19:3, 287-301, DOI:10.1080/13596748.2014.920577
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Making work and learning more visible by reflective practice
Kati Tikkamäkia* and Sanna Hildenb
aSchool of Information Sciences/CIRCMI, University of Tampere, Tampere, Finland;bCost Management Centre, Tampere University of Technology, Tampere, Finland
(Received 15 August 2013; accepted 31 January 2014)
Several characteristics are necessary to have a flourishing workplace: one isorganisational learning. Modern workplaces call for individual responsibility,ability, and willingness to share expertise, as well as continuous learning. How-ever, critical elements of the process of organisational learning – participating,knowing, cooperating and reflecting – are only partly ‘visible’. We propose thatto cope with the pressure of renewal and to facilitate organisational learning,organisational structures and processes should be made more visible throughreflective practice. The concept of reflective practice is analysed via its elementsof reflective capacity, reflective dialogue, reflective experiment, and reflectivemanagement control systems. We investigate how reflection can be triggered andsupported in real-life organisations, as a part of everyday work. Reflection is notstudied as a hidden, mental process, but instead as a visible practice directed atpast, present, or future objects. Enabling reflective practice, thus making learningmore visible in the everyday agendas of the organisation, calls for genuine com-mitment and appreciation of reflective and dialogic ways of working. Reflectivepractice calls for a culture that values continuous discovery and experimentation.This appreciation is ultimately realised in reward systems, organisations’ officialvalues and shared norms, thus forming a language and a culture that embracereflection.
Keywords: reflective practice at work; reflective capacity; reflective dialogue;reflective experiment; reflective management control
Introduction
Contemporary workplaces face demanding challenges, such as expectations to becompetitive, efficient, and adept at using employee knowledge. Nowadays, businessdesign calls for decentralisation of management and flattening of hierarchies. Thisleads to potential growth in employee participation and development of capabilities,but also greater responsibility for, and involvement in, production and performance(Boud, Cressey, and Docherty 2006). Several virtues are required in order to have aflourishing workplace – for example, organisational learning. The challenge for man-agement is to use the vast learning potential of personnel to create value.
However, critical elements of organisational learning processes, such as partici-pating, knowing, and cooperating (Tikkamäki 2006), are only partly ‘visible’; inother words, they are only partly made explicit and socially shared. Moreover, theinformal organisation encases crucial invisible elements, such as values, beliefs,
*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected]
© 2014 Further Education Research Association
Research in Post-Compulsory Education, 2014Vol. 19, No. 3, 287–301, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/13596748.2014.920577
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emotions, and group processes. The importance of making the tacit explicit and theimplicit explicit (e.g. Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Crossan, Lane, and White 1999)has been recognised as a challenge for a long time in the field of organisationallearning and development. Organisations hold unknown amounts of unharnessedand unutilised potential. We propose that to cope with the pressure of renewal andto make invisible organisational structures and processes more visible, a reflectivepractice is needed in the workplace.
Changes in the context of work and production regimes have transformed the‘command and control structures’ into more flexible production systems emphasisingdecentralisation and multifunctional teams. The modern workplace calls for individ-ual responsibility, ability, and the willingness to share expertise, as well as continu-ous learning. Management emphasis is on facilitating and empowering rather thancontrolling (Cressey, Boud, and Docherty 2006). Managers should have knowledgeand competence to facilitate organisational learning processes. There is a broad con-sensus among learning theorists that reflection is at the core of adult learning andprofessional growth, transformation, and empowerment (Dewey 1938; Kolb 1984;Boud, Keogh, and Walker 1985; Kegan 2009; Mezirow 2009). In management andorganisational theory, reflectivity has also been discussed (Schön 1987; Reynolds1998; Elkjaer 2001; Raelin 2001; Vince 2002) and linked to change management(Eriksen 2008; Nicolini et al. 2011; Kuntz and Gomes 2012). When we place reflec-tion into a workplace context (Schön 1983; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Argyris andSchön 1996; Boud, Cressey, and Docherty 2006), it is seen as a powerful tool forproblem solving, changing tacit knowledge to explicit, examining practice and rou-tines, analysing the values of the organisation, as well as emancipating individuals asmembers of the organisation.
In this paper, the concept of reflective practice is analysed via its elements ofreflective capacity, reflective dialogue, reflective experiment, and reflective manage-ment control systems (Hilden et al. 2012). We investigate how reflection can be trig-gered and supported in real-life organisations, as a part of everyday work. Reflectionis not studied as a hidden, mental process, but instead as a visible practice directedat past, present, or future objects.
Reflection in a work context
Due to these changes in work life and organisational structures described above,learning is integrated more tightly into everyday work practice. Learning is workand work is learning. The emphasis on organisational learning and development ofemployees has transferred from training to reflection in work (Cressey, Boud, andDocherty 2006). Numerous definitions exist for reflection, depending on the onto-logical and epistemological premises of the definer. Often it is related to an individ-ual’s cognitive processes, such as becoming aware, evaluating, questioning,criticising experiences, assumptions, beliefs, and emotions (Mezirow 1981; Schön1983). Reflection has been seen as a process of returning to an experience andreevaluating it (Boud, Keogh, and Walker 1985). Reflection is characterised as anelement of deconstruction of self-evidence and transformative learning (Mezirow2000). Metaphors for the concept include framing (Raelin 2002), assumptionbreaking (Vince 2002), hunting, and challenging assumptions (Brookfield 1995).Reflection is often visualised as a bridge between experience and learning (Boud,Keogh, and Walker 1985). These definitions above represent the cognitive forms of
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reflection on a concrete experience (Jordi 2011), focusing strongly on the individualaspects of reflection.
It is obvious that in the name of organisational learning, individuals should havethe ability and opportunity to reflect on their experience at work. But, when we areexamining reflection in a work context, this is not enough. In addition to this indi-vidual reflection, it is essential to focus on how individuals engage in collectivereflection (Boud, Keogh, and Walker 1985; Raelin 2002). Reflection also needs tobe realised in processes of interaction, sharing opinions, asking for feedback, chal-lenging groupthink, and experimentation. In addition, organisational structures, pro-cesses, and practices should be evaluated from the point of view of reflection(Elkjaer 2001; Jordan 2010; Hilden et al. 2012). This, in turn, can and needs to besupported by suitable organisational structures and practices. A crucial question ishow reflection is organised and what kinds of practices support conscious reflectiveinquiry. Researchers (Gray 2007; Vince 2002) have provided ideas on how to knitreflectivity into everyday work. Another perspective that is less visible in theresearch of work-related learning deals with analysing the structural and systemicrealm of organisations – what management control system (MCS) is in place, includ-ing the complex ensemble of rules, roles, and routines. We see the value in inten-tionally organising reflection, but additionally, managers should evaluate how thebasic structure and culture enable and foster reflectivity.
These three essential levels of analysis – individual, collective, and organisa-tional – are broadly accepted in learning theory and management literature (Crossan,Lane, and White 1999; Hoyrup 2004). As Boud, Cressey, and Docherty (2006) haveverbalised, the dual goals of productivity and quality of working life appear incom-patible in the work environment. Values pertaining to human development andgrowth come face-to-face with hard economic values. Productive reflection is onesolution for this ‘battle’. In practice, it means that changes in work practices thatenhance productivity also enhance personal engagement and meaning in the work-place. It places learning and developing as a subject central to organisations. It isredesigning work in a way that enables reflectivity. In this paper, we use the termreflective practice at work, which is close to productive reflection. Reflective prac-tice is defined more precisely below.
The need for reflective practice at work – case examples
In the REFINNO research programme we investigate the potential of organisationalreflectivity in terms of business performance. We research and develop workpractices in three case organisations, which all represent different fields of operation.The companies have various needs and motives for developing their work practices,culture, and structures in a more reflective direction. However, a common factor inorganisations is that the growing turbulence and speed of change call for new waysof thinking and doing. These organisations were also willing to develop theirprocesses and to discover if the reflective practice would promote deeper learning.
Case 1 is a non-profit health-care organisation with 160 employees. The manage-ment team has noted that a dramatically different kind of competence developmentplan is needed. It has become obvious that the workforce’s technical expertise isgood, but essential challenges are related to issues such as multiprofessional cooper-ation, shared expertise between generations, and skills related to customer andpartner interface. Professional self-reflectivity is seen as a crucial skill.
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Case 2 is an affiliate of a large global pharmaceutical company. The company istrying to deal with the challenge of localising a new global strategy, including alarge cultural change. In this organisation, the idea for increasing reflectivity is intui-tively seen as a useful tool for tackling the complexity of the matrix organisationand frequent changes in the market.
Case 3 is a local outlet of a consumer retail chain. The case outlet is part of alarge parent company operating in construction, decoration, and gardening. The caseoutlet has approximately 50 employees. Case 3 has implemented an operationalchange that required sales personnel to spend significantly more time dealingdirectly with customers. This implies an identity change and requires new competen-cies and attitude. Top management is calling for a new kind of ‘shopkeeper iden-tity’.
In our interventions, we try to organise a reflective dialogue and observe whetherand how it reaches the level of open and influential interaction. In addition, we tryto identify and develop tools to share the grounds for our thinking, thus producingmore creative and multifaceted ideas.
Reflective practice making the invisible visible
According to the classical definition by Schein (1984), an organisation’s culture con-sists of three levels: (a) a visible but often not decipherable level consisting of visi-ble and audible behaviour patterns and artefacts; (b) a level demanding a greaterlevel of awareness, including values; and (c) the invisible ‘taken for granted’ – alevel consisting of basic assumptions, the nature of human activity, and relation-ships. Reflection most often refers to becoming aware of our own and others’ think-ing, the hidden (individual and collective) assumptions and mental models thatguide our actions. In this sense, the process of reflection, in fact, makes the thinkingand invisible dimension of organisation culture visible, thus allowing its develop-ment.
We propose that in making the invisible visible, reflectivity should be integratedinto everyday work practices (individual and collective), organisational learning pro-cesses, and management control systems as a reflective practice. Reflective practiceraises awareness of the actors and calls actors from passivity to action (Wellington1991). Reflective practice is used as an umbrella term covering the prerequisites forindividual, collective, and organisational reflection along the processes of learning.It is actually misleading to examine these dimensions of reflective practice at workindependently. In reality, the dimensions overlap in a complex way, and we need adeeper understanding of how these dimensions are interrelated.
Reflective capacity
It is argued that underlying effective self-development is the integrated operation ofthree metaskills – skills that are required for the development of other skills –relating to one’s ability to manage emotional reactions to feedback, to effectivelycarry out the practice of self-reflection, and to enact self-regulatory processes fordevelopment. The concept of self-development highlights the role of reflection(Nesbit 2012). The grounding premises for reflection to occur relate to individualreflective capability. Jordan (2010) describes the reflective practitioner by (1) theability, and (2) the willingness to question routinised ways of thinking and acting,
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either having acted or in the midst of acting. This requires metacognitive capabilities– self-awareness, or the ability to regulate cognitive and affective processes (e.g.Mezirow 2000; Hodgkinson and Healey 2011). Yanow and Willmott (1999) describethe attitude suitable for reflective practice as passionate humility, which allows oneto be surprised and to view a situation from diverse perspectives. Reflective capacitymakes visible the individual’s beliefs, thoughts, and experiences.
An individual using reflective capacity in solving problems in a work situationcan be called a reflective practitioner (Schön 1983). When reflection is taking place,the practitioner surfaces and criticises the tacit understandings related to the experi-ences of a specialised practice and also constructs new understandings of situationsand activities. New understandings can be tested by on-the-spot experiments. Reflec-tion may also focus on the tacit norms and appreciations that underlie a judgment oron the strategies, theories, and feelings implicit in a pattern of behaviour. Reflectingon a work situation may lead to surprising, puzzling, or confusing results, especiallyin uncertain and unique situations. But, when an individual becomes aware of his orher ‘framework’, he or she also becomes aware of the possibilities of alternativeways of ‘framing’ the reality of practice.
Management and, more specifically, Human Resource Development (HRD)research has shown increasing interest towards experiential and action learning,emotion research, and social cognitive theories of change. However, existingresearch on learning from experiences tends to focus on the nature of the experi-ences that stimulate learning rather than on a nuanced understanding of the specificreflective processes involved (Nesbit 2012).
Reflective dialogue
In a situation in which an individual notices that old patterns of thinking do not apply,he or she needs to test his or her emerging thinking and collectively develop it further.This collective form of reflection can also be called sense making (Weick, Sutcliffe,and Obstfeld 2005), where shared experiences and shared everyday practice are astarting point (Bjerlöv and Docherty 2006). The crucial prerequisite for this type ofcollective reflection is an individual’s ability to engage in dialogue. Open dialogueaims at exposing meaning constructions based on how the other thinks and acts, thuscreating a shared understanding. Dialogue is a process of discovering and interrogat-ing to achieve understanding or agreement (Isaacs 1999). It differs from conversationby emphasising listening and understanding (Bjerlöv and Docherty 2006).
Here, dialogue is seen as a tool for reflection. Reflection is a process involvinginternal and external dialogues. When carrying out an internal dialogue, one exam-ines one’s own articulations and listens to one’s own voice, aiming to understandone’s values, assumptions, and blind spots (Tsang 2007). When promoting reflectionby external dialogue, individuals together try to find something new, surprising, ortouching in open interaction. Various reflective tools can be used to facilitate areflective dialogue: storytelling, reflective and reflexive conversations, reflectivemetaphors, reflective journaling and critical incident analysis, repertory grids, andconcept mapping (Gray 2007).
Regarding the skills needed for reflective dialogue, Raelin (2001, 2002) hasdefined five reflective skills: being, speaking, disclosing, testing, and probing. Thefirst reflective skill, being, means to open up to the experience and to theinterpersonal environments around oneself (see also Isaacs 1999). Speaking refers to
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articulating the collective voice at a given time, for example, by suggesting groupnorms and/or bringing out uncertainties or unfounded assumptions. When disclos-ing, participants share their doubts or voice their passions. By disclosing, partici-pants unveil their feelings or tell stories to reveal their deep experiences. In testing,members try to promote the process of collective inquiry. Through probing,members of the group attempt to point out inconsistencies in members’ reasoningpatterns and uncover the assumptions behind the actions. Reflective dialogue aimsto develop and make visible a shared understanding that takes place through clarifi-cation, articulation, and dialogue.
Reflective experiment
Sense making and learning underlie the coexistence of thinking and acting. In addi-tion to the cognitive and analytical level of reflection, reflective practice takes theform of embodied reflection that widens the experience into the embodied level andre-embodies experiential knowledge and learning (Jordan 2010). The aim of theexperiment is to apply and explore the ideas and principles in practice, and thusacquire new experiences to be reflected. This means exploring new ideas and workpractices with a ‘reflective mentality’. The ideas and principles are applied andexplored in practice in the form of a reflective experiment. A reflective experimentmakes visible the embodied form of knowing organisational practices and culture.
However, we believe that if reflective practice is not automatic for the membersof the organisation or in the predominant culture, then reflective thinking and actingmight not happen simultaneously, referring to the classical distinction of espousedtheories and theories-in-use by Argyris and Schön (1996). There might be a needfor a reflective group session or internal dialogue, after which the ideas can beexperimented with and taken into action in daily work practices. Then these newexperiences are taken back again into group sessions, or an individual’s internal dia-logue can undergo a critical evaluation. In addition to exploration, it is useful toexploit what has already been discovered and learned. Recognising and managingthe tension between exploration and exploitation is actually at the heart of strategicrenewal (Crossan, Lane, and White 1999).
The relationship between reflection and action becomes apparent in the ideas ofreflection ex post, in the midst of, and before action. Reflection taking place before anaction is called anticipative reflection (Raelin 2001), reflection during an action iscalled reflection-in-action (Schön 1983), and reflection taking place after an action isreflection-on-action (Schön 1983). It has been claimed that reflection ‘in-the-moment’is undertheorized and lacks attention compared to reflection ‘after-the-moment’(Yanow and Tsoukas 2009; Jordan 2010). Indeed, the ability to ‘think on your feet’ iscrucial. However, one’s interpretations and knowledge are always tied to previousexperience and history, and consequently reflection-in-action builds on reflection-on-action. For reflectivity as a form of organisational capability, it is relevant to take intoaccount all these phases of reflection. In an ideal situation, possibilities for anticipa-tive reflection help to plan activities. A reflective experiment aims to make visible theroutines, habits, and tacit knowledge guiding the acts.
Reflective management control
Reflective practice in organisations also deals with how we do things around here,how we are organised to reach our goals (Vince 2002; Boud, Keogh, and Walker
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2006; Jordan 2010). There is always the context in which the reflective practitioneracts and reflective practices are taking place. What has been learned by individualsor groups is not automatically embedded as organisational knowledge. Based on thesituational and practice-based approaches, the organisational context and the workcontext create the frame of reference for practice and are changed through practice.Through a reflective control system (e.g., structures, processes, practices, and plans;see Malmi and Brown 2008), management makes visible the value, time, and spacefor creative thinking and reflective interaction. The management control system cre-ates the institutionalised context and embodies opportunity for investigating andreinterpreting information and experiences.
For example, Raelin (2002) proposes strategies that organisations might endorse toencourage the use of a reflective practice: supporting reflective actions (e.g., reflectivenote taking, debriefing episodes after meetings) on the individual and team levels.Building learning communities is for small-group sharing and testing ideas and knowl-edge, exchanging good practices, and/or giving feedback for each other. Feeding theculture of learning enables a reflective work behaviour to become a way of living inthe organisation. The ideal is to integrate reflective practices into the present strategyand work situations. However, learning theorists have not, in reality, been able to digmuch deeper into organisations’ management systems; thus, ideas for incorporatingreflectivity in corporate practice, unfortunately, remain largely unrealised.
We suggest that reflectivity and reflective practice should be visible in the man-agement control system (MCS), so the forms and use of control encourage individu-als and groups to reflect, build time and space for reflection, and follow the resultsof reflection. It also means that the MCS should be flexible so the new learning andinterpretation are allowed to change the style of control in use (Hilden et al. 2012),because existing controls are likely to strongly affect (Mouritsen, Hansen, andHansen 2009) how members of organisations interpret topical questions and issues.In this area, there is clearly a need for further work, as, for example, Tillmann andGoddard (2008, 83) note that there is very little research about how accountinginformation is used as organisational participants make sense of strategic situations.The same can be seen to apply to other forms of control (e.g., reward and planningsystems, administrative controls; see Malmi and Brown 2008), and their implicationsfor reflective practice.
The interventions of the REFINNO research programme are closely tied toselected forms of control, so we can analyse the role of management control in pro-moting a reflective practice, thus sense making and organisational renewal. As ananecdote, we could utilise the saying that you get what you measure. This highlightsthe significant role of the particular tools management chooses to use for control, notthe least of which are those used for performance measuring, accounting, and reward-ing. The management control system – as defined by Malmi and Brown (2008) –includes the processes, organisational structures, planning tools, financial and non-financial measures, reward systems, and the organisation’s official values and sharednorms. This package entails, ideally, the present state of knowledge and what has beenlearned. It represents the institutionalised organisational learning (Crossan, Lane, andWhite 1999). However, only rarely is this system flexible enough to adjust itselfaccording to all that is being learnt. This is an area being studied in managementaccounting literature and the sociological theories of structuration (e.g., Giddens1984). In order to be flexible and sensitive to the changes caused by learning,management control systems also ought to have an inbuilt reflectiveness.
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In addition, not only the informal needs to become visible for development andimprovement efforts. For developing the whole MCS into a learning-facilitatingdirection, the interpretation and meanings of how the formal control is viewed byorganisational members are worth recognising and investigating in a reflective man-ner. Reflection reveals the thoughts and feelings related to how things are organised,managed, and measured. Only through reflection can we form an image of theeffects management tools (control system) have on the organisation. The four pre-requisites of reflective practice are presented in Figure 1.
Reflective practices in case interventions
Reflective practices are planned to enable and facilitate organisational learning pro-cesses. Weick, Sutcliffe, and Obstfeld (2005) refer to reflective learning, whichinvolves disbelieving what was previously held true. In our research, we willfacilitate individual and collective sense making during interventions by arrangingindividuals and groups to have a chance to reframe their knowledge base and traintheir reflection abilities (Raelin 2002). In addition, we observe organisational mem-bers and how their reflectivity manifests and develops during interventions. Wewill also seek to understand how the other levels – namely the collective and organi-sational – interact with the individual level of reflectiveness.
The first intervention (1a) includes launching a reflective competence scanningtool (‘professional mirror’ – Web survey) with an integrated process to facilitatepeer discussion and the formulation of competence development plans. The idea isthat this reflective practice includes the individual reflective portion as a Web surveyfocused on the critical new competencies and reflective capacity. This self-evaluationis followed by a peer discussion to engage employees in collective sharing of mean-ings and experiences. The professional mirror is planned to take the place of theexisting, more traditional survey. In this way, the evaluation of organisational reflec-tivity will be institutionalised as a regular practice. The second intervention (1b)includes forming two pilot groups for developing a practice to collectively tackle thechallenges related to partnering with customers. This might include expert consulta-tions and various facilitation techniques with the goal of forming multiprofessional
Figure 1. Prerequisites for reflective practice (based on Hildén, Tikkamäki, and Suomala2012).
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learning groups. In addition, the research team will participate in evaluating anddeveloping a reward system (1c) that will address the challenges detected in thecompetence scanning. The purpose of these is to strengthen the message that busi-ness-critical competences really are the focus, and they direct the management’sattention, including rewards and compensation.
Planned interventions for Case 2 include reflective manager mornings (2a),which are built on an existing practice, creating new reflective methods for the gath-erings. Reflective learning groups and coaching (2c) support individuals’ (middlemanagers’) reflective capacity and offer a forum for reflecting personal, team, andorganisational performance. Shadow and light (2b) is an intervention in whichresearchers will observe the managers in their everyday work to see how theyactively test and introduce the learning from coaching to practice.
In Case 3 there will be two interventions to support the identity change. First, 3a(‘future masters’) is a mentoring type of programme where the technical product andsales know-how is shared through organised peer sessions. In addition, 3b is anorganised team meeting where relevant accounting information is shared andreflected upon together to form the shopkeeper’s visibility and responsibility. Thisintervention includes a workshop in which suitable financial and non-financial met-rics are developed, together with the company’s top management, selected employ-ees, and researchers. Figure 2 summarises these reflective interventions in the threecase organisations (Hilden, Tikkamäki, and Suomala 2012).
Interventions are planned to ensure the reflective practice at work is related tothe organisations’ change and development challenges. Reflective capacity is
Figure 2. Plan for case interventions based on a reflective practice framework (Hilden,Tikkamäki, and Suomala 2012).
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facilitated by different kinds of writing tasks and learning diaries related to theinterventions’ themes that aim to prepare participants for the reflective meetings anddiscussions. Through various tasks, participants become conscious of theirpresumptions and points of view related to the selected themes, and generate rele-vant and daily work-tight material to be reflected upon collectively. Reflective dia-logue is promoted by various learning groups that create forums for sharingexpertise and negotiating. Participants are also asked to do ‘inquiry tasks’ related totheir daily work tasks in between sessions aimed at focusing on the reflective experi-ment. Moreover, the learning groups create a certain context for the reflective exper-iment as well. These inquiry tasks also support the reflective capacity. Reflectivemanagement control is supported by linking the reflective learning groups and taskthemes to the accounting information and knowledge related to other forms of con-trol (e.g., reward and planning systems, cultural controls). In Case 1, managers tak-ing part in the learning groups are asked to share understandings about the forms ofcontrol; and in Case 2, one aim of the management team’s learning group is to gen-erate a collective sense about the financial and non-financial metrics and to developthem further to be in line with the organisation’s strategic goals.
The interventions open the view to investigate whether personal reflection helpsto construct a more meaningful change, and if and how some rigid mental modelsare challenged. We observe how reflecting on work practices with colleagues allowsa cultural self-evaluation, making visible the possible inertia caused by sharedassumptions about ‘how we do things around here’. Doing all this as part of anorganisation’s established management practices allows the management and theresearchers to see and react to organisational barriers, unrealised tensions betweenthe managerial vision, and forms of control.
Challenges in making the invisible visible
It is obvious that numerous positive qualities are related to reflective practice – itcreates the time and space for legitimising the change initiatives, individual and col-lective sense making, and organisational learning. Reflection provides new interpre-tations, new ideas – and perhaps breaks some old patterns. Through reflectivepractice, employees are heard and have the ability to participate. Reflective practicedemonstrates significant potential in supporting organisational performance.
But what about challenges related to reflective practice? Reflective practice isplanned to challenge existing norms, and the existing social, cultural, and politicalstatus quo, so in practice it means engaging in a process that has an unknown out-come. This can lead to mental and emotional anxiety (Reynolds 1998) and the needfor reorganising identity. Risks inherent in reflective practice include individuals’limited capacity for reflective thinking and dialogue, a hectic work environment,limited decision-making capabilities, dominating individuals who ‘know’ the rightway to proceed, a culture in which learning and exploration are not respected, andbarriers for sharing information between individuals and within groups (Cressey,Boud, and Docherty 2006).
Thus it will be an intriguing challenge for us to address questions such as, inwhich situations and with what kinds of rules does reflection remain constructive andproductive? It remains to be seen how, in real-life settings, reflective practices willhighlight existing power structures in organisations. The idea of posing challengingquestions and engaging in open dialogue requires a fair amount of courage and trust.
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By asking the ‘wrong question’ or in a ‘wrong way’, one might end up in the middleof a political conflict inside the organisation. What makes the difference betweenconstructive questioning and a holdout? Becoming conscious about the invisible,changing old patterns of behaviour and learning something new involve someamount of pain, and perhaps can even cause an individual or organisational identitycrisis – worst of all, causing dissociation from the needed change. Do members ofthe organisation have the knowledge and desire to turn these kinds of crises intolearning experiences? What exactly is the potential of reflective practice, and howcan it be established as a safe and fruitful platform in making the invisible visible?
Conclusions
In this paper we have examined the power of reflective practice in a work contextand presented examples from three case studies on how reflective tools are used in abusiness environment in order to make daily tasks, organisational learning and man-agement practices more ‘visible’. Interventions (including follow-up) provide anunderstanding of the significance of the process whereby experiences and knowledgebecome a professional activity. We also investigate how reflective practice may sup-port continual learning when the new meanings are adapted for real-life situations.We expect this to further clarify (1) the question regarding reflection and action; and(2) how the individual and collective sense-making processes might be recursive inthe experimenting phase. However, the potential of reflective practice to make theinvisible more visible still remains to be seen.
Reflective practice is a prerequisite for productive organisational learningprocesses; furthermore, it is a relevant tool for making the invisible more visible inorganisations. Reflective capacity creates the preliminary grounding for individualability and willingness to take the path of constructive questioning. A reflective dia-logue fosters the collective process of discovering and interrogating in order toachieve a common understanding or agreement. A reflective experiment captures theaction-orientation needed for learning to be integrated into organisational realitythrough active exploring and probing. Finally, in order to create an environment thatenables and encourages sense making, there needs to be reflective management con-trol. This means that structures, practices and rules have built-in flexibility. The chal-lenge is to find meaningful ways to make reflective practice at work more visible byintegrating and facilitating reflective practices as a part of the official language,agenda (Ellström 2006) and strategy in an organisation’s daily life. Reflectivity andreflective processes should be made visible, legitimised as part of a productive workenvironment.
In practice, a significant effort should be aimed at developing each individual’sskills and capacity for reflection, including self-regulation, self-awareness, problemsolving, questioning and critical thinking. Reflective dialogue, in turn, calls for skillssuch as voicing, listening and receiving and giving feedback. Human resource devel-opment professionals and supervisors should be aware of the potential deriving fromreflective capacity. Furthermore, they should actively search for effective ways todevelop these skills both as an individual and as a collective capability. Competencedevelopment interventions (e.g., training, coaching, mentoring) hold a key to feedinga reflective and dialogic learning process. For example, a training session for a newbudgeting tool could involve reflective questions and sharing of learning that stretchthe outcomes from technical know-how to understanding the various organisational
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stakeholders’ viewpoints as well as the purposes underlying the budgeting process.Though the HRD professionals and supervisors hold a critical role in developingreflective capacity, we wish to underline the fact that each professional is responsiblefor developing themselves as reflective practitioners, which requires the courage tomove beyond their professional ‘comfort zone’.
Besides the individual and collective skills and capacity for reflection, this studyalso highlights the role of management control in creating the ‘structural drivers’ forreflective practice. In general, the organisation of the work itself should enable andencourage reflectivity. The critical factors in organising the work are as follows: theworkload, the rhythm of work, the amount of individual versus team/group work, aswell as the organisation and culture of daily meetings. These structural factorsshould be organised in a way that feeds individual and collective reflection.
In terms of practical implications, this could imply reviewing the critical businessprocesses and related organisational structures by asking whether they provideenough room to engage in critical reflection, question routines and create innovativesolutions. The way we manage projects – i.e., our operational planning activities andstrategic plans – can be considered as tools to integrate a sufficient amount of reflec-tion and dialogue into everyday work. This could include, for example, project mile-stone criteria, shared weekly meetings with purchasing and sales, and virtualcommunities for strategic scenario planning. A concern related to management con-trol stems from the overwhelming amount of financial and non-financial measures thatmanagers are expected to utilise. This calls for more research and practical experi-ments regarding how reflection could be used to identify the essential information, or,as Tillmann and Goddard (2008) put it, to develop a ‘feel for the game’. Our furtherresearch continues to explore how reflectivity may help us to understand the so-calledinteractive use of management control (e.g., Naranjo-Gil and Hartmann 2007) whichis receiving plenty of attention in the management and accounting literature.
One of the guiding principles in operationalising the ideas of reflective practiceis to avoid introducing entirely new tricks which are separate from everyday work.Instead, the goal is to introduce a reflective way of working, thereby transformingpresent practices into best practices. Enabling reflective practice, and thus makinglearning more visible in the everyday agenda of the organisation, calls for genuinecommitment and appreciation for a reflective and dialogic way of working. Reflec-tive practice calls for an organisational culture that values continuous discovery andexperimentation. This appreciation is ultimately realised in the organisation’s rewardsystems, official values and shared norms, thus forming a language and a culturethat embrace reflection.
AcknowledgementsThe authors are grateful to the other members of the REFINNO research team, Petri Suomala,Sanna Pekkola, Johanna Rämö, Minna Saunila, Juhani Ukko and Sanna Vauranoja, for theinsightful and constructive academic discussions and joint efforts in case interventions. Theyhave enabled the multidisciplinary development of the interpretation of reflective practice.Colleagues in the REFINNO research team have also provided feedback regarding earlierdrafts of the manuscript, which is acknowledged here. Moreover, funding by the FinnishAgency for Technology has enabled the research projects underlying this publication.
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Funding
The article is written for the REFINNO programme which is a joint venture (2012–14)between its funders Tekes (the Finnish funding agency for technology and innovation), fourFinnish universities, and the participating companies.
Notes on contributorsKati Tikkamäki, D.Ed., has worked as a researcher and teacher at the University of Tampere,Finland for over 10 years. Currently, she is a senior researcher in three research and develop-ment programmes, the first focusing on reflective work practices, the second on dialogic lead-ership and the third on eustress as enterpreneurs’ resource and business potential. She is alsoa freelance trainer specialised in organisational learning and learning at work.
Sanna Hilden, PhD (Tech.), is a research fellow at the Cost Management Center, TampereUniversity of Technology, Finland. She is the project manager of REFINNO, a joint researchprogramme of four Finnish universities, the Finnish funding agency for technology and inno-vation and six other organisations. Her current research focuses on organisational renewal,reflective learning, sense making, performance and management control. She is also a quali-fied supervisor in solution-focused and resource-oriented methods.
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