KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT AND POSSIBILITIES OF PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT IN PUBLIC SECTOR

Abstract

One of the important parts of Human Resource Management (HRM) is knowledge management and professional development of employees of each organisation. There are no doubts that it is vital for general organisations development and sustainability. Professional development of public sector employees is necessary for developing environment. There should be training programmes especially for public sector institutions’ employees from new European Union countries.

For this study authors make the assumption that public sector employees are all officials, civil servants, staff and employees engaged in public sector organisation activities and employed by these organisations.

The problem outlined in this paper is connected to the assumed to work in public administration employees that do not have relevant education to fill appropriately opened vacancies on the market. The aims of the study is to define the areas of a group the most required occupations on Latvian labour market in public administration and propose the justified ways of professional development of current and future employees in public administration. The objective of the authors is to present the historical overview on knowledge management and learning concepts applying monographic research. One more objective of the paper is to compare and generalise the definitions of the terms ‘knowledge economy’ and ‘knowledge management’. The task of the authors was also to analyse the job standards and requirements for the public sector employees. This analysis helped to identify what kind of education and skills are important for public administration employees. Authors also made a research on lifelong education possibilities for public service servants and employees based on case of Latvia.

The main conclusion after the analysis of definitions of the term ‘knowledge management’ is that it is possible to consider knowledge management as a process of making decisions connected to the activities for leveraging knowledge of people in the organisation, to improve their performance. According to the analysed standards of the chosen for the analysis occupations the main knowledge requirements for some public sector occupations are at the following fields: Communication, Country language and foreign languages, Finance, Labour relations, Law, Legislation, Occupational health and safety, Professional terms, Professional ethics, Project management, Record keeping. Only professional terms and record keeping requirements could not be covered by offered courses within analysed master programmes on Public Administration or Management. However, beside formal education, public sector employees can take Massive Open Online Courses, participate in special trainings or be trained on the working place to improve or gain some skills that have not been developed at school or university. Conclusions mainly are based on the quantitative data and the pilot small range studies. Applicable conclusions are made using inductive method.

Based on the research authors propose the most suitable set of subjects, which could be proposed for further professional development in public sector. There are possibilities proposed for public sector employees for their further professional development. However, there is a need of special education programme development based on new tendencies and standards for public service employees.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.8.6844