Leading and learning? Knowledge transfer in the Beacon Council Scheme
| Published date | 01 September 2002 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00316 |
| Date | 01 September 2002 |
LEADING AND LEARNING? KNOWLEDGE
TRANSFER IN THE BEACON COUNCIL
SCHEME
LYNDSAY RASHMAN AND JEAN HARTLEY
This paper examines the Beacon Council Scheme as a distinct policy element within
the UK government’s wide-ranging local government modernization agenda. The
aim of the Beacon scheme is two-fold. First, reward for high performing councils
and second, the achievement of substantial change by sharing ‘best practice’ from
identified centres of excellence. The scheme presupposes an implicit theory of
organizational change through learning. The Beacon Council Scheme is based on
the assumption that the organizational preconditions exist which will facilitate
learning, and through its application to practice, improve service delivery. The
paper analyses the presumed and possible conditions which facilitate or impede
interorganizational learning and service improvement through the scheme. The
paper then examines empirical data from 59 local authority elected members and
officers about their attitudes towards and motivation to take part in the Beacon
scheme during the first year of its existence. The data indicate that there are dif-
fering motivations for participation in the scheme and that these reflect different
learning needs. The experiences of local authority participants suggest that the for-
mulators of the dissemination strategy at the heart of the scheme have not yet given
sufficient consideration to the processes of interorganizational learning, the con-
ditions that support such learning between authorities and the embedding of new
understandings, practices and organizational cultures in the receiving authority.
This suggests that the underlying theories of organizational learning and cultural
change may be insufficiently developed to create and sustain the kind of transform-
ational change that is intended by central government.
THE POLICY CONTEXT: MODERNIZATION, IMPROVEMENT AND
ORGANIZATIONAL CHANGE
Since the 1997 general election, the UK government has aimed for the rad-
ical reform of state and local government and the delivery of public ser-
vices. In the area of local government, the message is that ‘councils need
to break free from old fashioned practices and attitudes’ and must embrace
‘a demanding agenda for change’ (DETR 1998a, p. 6). The government has
argued that ‘a fundamental shift of culture throughout local government
is essential so that councils become outward looking and responsive’ (DETR
1998b, p. 6). A number of specific, related initiatives have been introduced
with the intention of helping to ‘manage, motivate and facilitate change’
Lyndsay Rashman and Jean Hartley are in the Local Government Centre of Warwick Business
School, University of Warwick.
Public Administration Vol. 80 No. 3, 2002 (523–542)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
524 LYNDSAY RASHMAN AND JEAN HARTLEY
(DETR 1999b, p. 6) and these include the Beacon Council Scheme, the Best
Value Pilot Programme, Public Service Agreements and the work of the
Improvement and Development Agency. To date, the Beacon Council
Scheme is the only initiative aimed at engaging all councils simultaneously
in learning from each other to achieve continuous improvement and Best
Value (DETR 2000).
The modernization agenda has emphasized incentives and rewards for
better performance and a system of detailed performance measurement and
management. Less attention has been paid to the promotion of learning
and the development of organizational capacity as a means to improve
service standards, all of which makes an analysis of the Beacon Council
Scheme particularly interesting.
Beacon as an initiative to improve performance
The Beacon Council Scheme was given prominence in the Government’s
White Paper Modern local government: in touch with the people (DETR 1998b).
The Beacon Council Scheme was established in 1999 to help to raise stan-
dards across all English local authorities by awarding recognition of Beacon
status to those councils judged to be models of excellence and able to dem-
onstrate their good practice. This acknowledged that there existed councils
which had already developed new and imaginative approaches to service
delivery, community engagement and local political leadership. It is also
the intention of the Beacon scheme that all English local authorities,
whether high-performing, aspiring or unsuccessful, are included in change
through a national programme to share information and spread good prac-
tice. It is argued that the scheme ‘will help councils to achieve continuous
improvement in the quality of local services which Best Value now
demands of them’(DETR 2000, p. 2). The Beacon Council Scheme was
expected to be ‘at the centre of the modernization agenda’(DETR 1999b,
p. 3). The DETR noted that the ‘Beacon scheme is special because it is at
the heart of a national programme to spread best practice across the whole
range of council business’(DETR 1999b, p. 18).
The government has already introduced Beacon schemes to spread best
practice in other public services, notably in health and education. These
schemes share similar broad aims and underlying principles, but they have
been promoted and have evolved differently from Beacon schemes in local
government (National Foundation for Educational Research 1999; King and
Ollerearnshaw 2000). The 287 NHS Beacons are intended to provide opport-
unities for learning for teams and individuals (National Health Service
2000) rather than for the whole organization as in local government. Good
practice Beacon awards are available either for clinical services and for cor-
porate processes, often at the level of small units whereas the local govern-
ment scheme is based on good overall corporate performance combined
with the award to a specific service. Dissemination activities are, as in local
government, a significant part of the scheme and aim to maximize learning
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2002
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