How the Teaching Company Scheme helps Companies

Abstract

Companies have difficulties in extending their capabilities in new unfamiliar areas. This paper outlines how the Teaching Company Scheme (TCS) helps companies overcome such difficulties by supporting links between academics and industry. Firms are having to find ways to cope with the intensifying international competition and with the emergence of a cluster of new, pervasive technologies. Their response is based increasingly on the application of technology and modern management methods to the development of new products of consistent high quality and their efficient manufacture. The complexities of the new product development processes, shortening product life‐cycles, the transformation of production processes, the growing use of computer‐based innovations such as Materials Requirement Planning, and organisational innovations such as Total Quality Management all demand that firms learn to do things in new ways (Dodgson, 1993). It takes time and effort for firms to understand technologies which are new to them, and to accumulate technological expertise. Acquiring such understanding may require investment in new competences, in training and retraining. Firms which fail to employ graduate level staff have limited capacity to learn, or to use technology and modern management and marketing methods properly and systematically. Employees who have received a university education acquire ‘knowledge of knowledge’: when they are confronted with technical problems beyond their capability, they know how to seek out external information to solve such problems (Gibbons & Johnston, 1974). A key part of the learning process is concerned with the identification of information which can add value to the business, and with integrating new knowledge into a company's existing accumulated knowledge (Tiler & Gibbons, 1991). Various studies show that external technology acquisition cannot substitute for in‐house R&D capability (Mowery, 1983; Granstrand et al, 1992), nor is recruitment generally the first step by which firms acquire capability in new technological fields (Faulker and Senker forthcoming). Firms often form links with university experts to learn something about the new field before committing themselves to recruitment. In the absence of procedures to ensure internal diffusion of new knowledge, firms which attempt to build up their knowledge through the use of a consultant or the recruitment of an expert are likely to gain little from their investment: It is necessary to ensure that knowledge which is received from external sources is communicated and utilised effectively throughout the organisation. For example, Dale (1986) has shown that it is dangerous for an organisation to rely on individual IT experts. The organisation as a whole must learn to use IT, so that it can draw upon the complex blend of skills and talents over which it has control, locating and drawing upon the strengths in its knowledge base. The effective introduction of new technology requires not only technical expertise, but managers who appreciate the wider implications of introducing new technology. Studies of firms involved in automation implementation have shown that they very often fail to secure the anticipated benefits from their investment largely as a consequence of senior management failure to understand the need to manage new technology introduction according to a strategy which covers work and its organisation in addition to technical aspects (Senker, 1984; Bessant & Haywood, 1988; Senker & Simmonds 1991). Organisational learning may also be constrained by a firm's culture, which is generally conservative and sustains existing structures of belief (March et al, 1991). A recent research project sought to assess the extent to which the programmes supported by British Teaching Company Scheme have contributed to the solution of these very difficult problems, and to make proposals for enhancing its effectiveness (Senker et al, 1993). This paper describes the Scheme and its objectives, outlines the aims of our study and reviews its findings.

Citation

Senker, J. and Senker, P. (1995), "How the Teaching Company Scheme helps Companies", Management Research News, Vol. 18 No. 6/7, pp. 1-8. https://doi.org/10.1108/eb028410