Abstract

This is a study of the AnCO Training Advisory Service set up by government to promote skills development within industry. The research reported here attempts to account for the rise and decline of the division. It asks why an expensive mechanism for state intervention in the labour market failed to have the desired effect, and why it took so long to have the failure recognised. At a more generic level the study examines the role and effectiveness of state agencies which have an intervening function. The research highlights the failure of manpower policy literature to explain the empirical data. The study applies the insights gained from the literature on strategic change, and draws heavily on the context-process-outcome meta-framework developed by Pettigrew (1985; 1990), in order to understand the process which the Training Advisory Service was promoting. The Advisory Service is studied on a longitudinal basis, from its genesis to the formation of FAS, after which it was effectively dismantled. An ethnographic approach is used to collect the data on the inner context, content and process. The Cultural Web and the Paradigm(Johnson, 1992)are used to rationalise the structural and cultural elements of the organisation while a modified version of Mintzberg and Waters(1985) framework is used to analyse organisational strategy. The main findings show that the strategy of the Training Advisory Service was unable to respond to its changing outer context as it was constrained by its founding history and its paradigm. As a result it failed to understand that its primary role was to promote the achievement of competitive advantage within Irish industry through a differentiated factor of production namely highly developed manpower. At a more generic level the study generates descriptive theory on the role and functioning of an intervening agency while on a more practical level it proposes a framework for the study of organisations which have an intervening function.