Benefits agency staff have been praised for managing to maintain ‘business as usual’ during the introduction of complex new modernisation in their decision-making processes.The annual report of the Chief Adjudication Officer assesses the quality of decisions made about individual benefit claims. The report covers a crucial period last year when both the Benefits Agency and Employment Service were working together to adopt new decision making and appeals processes.

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Measures to ensure that the NHS gives full consideration to the health needs of people from all ethnic communities have been announced.They follow the announcement by the Home Office that race discrimination, both direct and indirect, are to be outlawed by statute across the public sector. (See Publicnet of Friday, January 28, 2000)

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Marsick V J, Watkins K EThe Learning Organization, (UK), 1999 Vol 6 No 5

Start page: 207. No of pages: 5

Points out that organizational learning has the potential to create a workplace that revitalizes employees or one that exploits and dehumanizes them. Reports anecdotal evidence that supports this view. Draws a distinction between organizations that place learning and knowledge development at their core and those that focus on efficiency and profitability. Asks if the concept of the learning organization is being subverted by ‘carpetbaggers’, using this term for consultants who are taking up organizational learning and selling it back to companies as a quick and easy fix for their organizational problems. Argues that becoming a learning organization is a long-term process, involving a critical evaluation of all the organization’s processes and procedures. Sees the value in the concept of the learning organization as lying in the prominence it gives to learning for both organizations and individuals.

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