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The new National Strategy for VET [vocational education and training]: 2004-2010 [indexed at TD/ANTA 73.11] seeks a VET system which both contributes to, and is able to respond effectively to, innovation. In a competitive global economy, pressure on organisations and enterprises of all kinds to become more innovative has reached new peaks. Innovation is playing a strengthening role in enabling enterprises to maintain and expand their market share and to enter new markets successfully. Innovation is also creating new industries - and re-shaping those that already exist. As a consequence of high levels of innovative activity, skill needs are changing. Previous studies (see Ferrier, Trood and Whittingham 2003) have shown that innovation requires skills - such as research skills to investigate new systems or tools, and management skills to produce and market them. In addition, innovation can create a need for new or different skills. When an industry adopts an innovation such as a new tool or process, some existing skills may become redundant and some new skills may be required. Occasionally an innovation will be so different from what it replaces that a completely new set of skills will be needed. If new and changed skill needs are to be met, appropriate training is essential. Moreover, if the skills are to be available as soon as they are needed this training must be provided in a timely fashion. Innovation thus creates pressure on those who develop and deliver this training - primarily vocational education and training systems.

TAFE institutes face demands for uniquely high skill levels in their workforce at a time when a large number of their experienced workers are on the threshold of retirement - taking with them their TAFE and industry ‘know-how’. One of the means of shoring up this skill base lies in retaining the critical knowledge - if not the worker - through effective knowledge transfer within organisations. This paper reports on research that has explored the benefits of knowledge transfer to the TAFE bottom line and the TAFE culture. It reports on impediments to achieving effective knowledge transfer - whether constraining attitudes or vanishing resources, limiting management practices or unhelpful organisational structures. It presents a range of means that organisations can use to overcome these impediments - the building of attitudes and cultures, the establishing of processes with people at their core, and the integration of knowledge transfer organisation wide. The paper also reports on what TAFE organisations can learn from business models of knowledge transfer.

This paper traces the growth in the Victorian vocational education and training (VET) system of privately owned Registered Training Organisations (RTOs) since 1991 when the VET system was opened up more widely to private providers. This growth is reviewed and a brief literature review places the research in context. The CEOs, or their nominees, in 21 privately owned RTOs which have operated in the Victorian VET system have been interviewed. All the RTOs participating in this research inquiry were registered prior to December 1994 and are still operating. They include enterprise, industry and commercial training organisations of varying sizes. The main purpose of this paper is to report some aspects of what these interviews have revealed. It illustrates the extent of diversity found within this group of RTOs; for example the rationale for seeking registration and the benefits perceived, the markets in which they operate, including the courses they offer, and the client groups they service. The significance of government funding to their operations is also identified. The findings of this research reinforce the need for more detailed research into the activities and impact of privately owned RTOs within the national VET system, particularly as very few of those which do not receive government funds are currently included in statistical data prepared by National Centre for Vocational Education Research (NCVER). This paper represents work in progress and is part of a PhD project. Comments are very welcome.

This study aims to understand the perceptions of soldiers involved in the shift to flexible learning (computer based learning and distance learning) in the Australian Army. This move represents a major shift for an organisation that has hierarchical and authoritarian decision-making and training structures. Interviews and questionnaires with managers, instructors and soldiers involved in flexible learning in an Army Reserve Corporal distance learning pilot course indicated the importance of understanding the organisational context and culture. Students provided reflective insights into their learning experiences that complemented the Army’s more outcomes based evaluation approach. This case study indicates that flexible learning development is not a simple process of introducing a computer based learning package into the organisation. It highlighted the importance of mutual adaptation of flexible learning and the organisation that reflects the learning culture, learners’ needs and a constantly changing environment.

It is evident that the extension of the ‘self’ within organisations is a complex and continual experience where formal development practices constitute just one part of a far wider relational landscape. Unfortunately, much formal organisational development activity is simplistically focused upon immediate skill requirements with limited investment allocated to discovering and exploring the contingent relational issues underpinning personal and subsequently organisational growth. This current research focuses specifically upon professions where recent discourses of managerialism have impacted adversely upon relational wellbeing, with individuals either permanently or temporarily disengaging from their profession and organisation with significant mutual loss. In the VET field of ‘needs analysis’ there has been little systematic investigation into what constitutes ‘professional health or wellbeing’ and therefore limited understanding of what organisational performances might be orchestrated to support and develop both professional individuals and the body of a profession. This paper explores such a major collaborative venture to investigate the meaning of organisational, professional and individual health and wellbeing undertaken by Edith Cowan University and the Western Australian Health, Police and Education Departments with Australian Research Council support. The initial stages of the study are establishing indicators of ‘wellbeing’ within these organisations and their professions. The study is constructing and testing an instrument measuring ‘wellbeing’ across those organisations that will inform practices of organisational development and training. The emphasis in this paper is upon the specific development activity within the Western Australian Police Service (WAPS). Organisational developmental practices are contested by discourses seeking to privilege either global or local agendas. This research attempts to develop a more inclusive organisational perspective that positions individual feedback as the basis for subsequent organisational activity, and where training and development is just one of a raft of potential relational performances used to extend professional health and wellbeing.