Winning the Skills Battle and Losing the Knowledge War in the Railways: Reflections on Changing Culture in a Complex System, and the Impact on Learning and Development

Abstract

The New South Wales Railways are a classic example of a complex system poorly understood by government. Over the past 150 years the railways have developed a level of sophistication in both formal and informal systems of management and operations. If we see knowledge in action as either implicit (in the heads of the people) or explicit (in the written and documented systems), then the NSW railways have for 150 years been largely managed using implicit and shared knowledge. The overall organisation and management culture in the NSW railways evolved based on this high level of social knowledge, shared between people on the job. This has created a kind of knowledge mediation rather than a simple transfer of ideas. The working knowledge is held as a collective consciousness, rather than as a set of rules. Changed management frameworks in the last decade seek to alter the traditional organisation and social culture, in order to reduce the level of uncertainty in the system. In this era of changing strategies, much corporate memory and social goodwill has been lost. This has severely impacted on the ability of the railways to perform and improve customer service.