The learning climate of an organisation and practitioner competence

The focus of this paper is on the influence of the learning climate in organisations on practitioner competence. Practitioners in the context of the paper are Chartered Quantity Surveyors, while competency is measured in terms of the accuracy of construction contract price forecasts. The results indicate that: The learning climate within quantity surveying practices is perceived to be supportive in terms of human support and to a lesser extent working practices, but less supportive in terms of staff development systems (specifically, the use of appraisal systems and the provision of resources and development facilities). The degree of accuracy of the subjects’ forecasts was found to improve as their perception of the overall learning climate, working practices, staff development systems and specifically items relating to the opportunity to introduce new skills, discussion of prob-lems, working practices, provision of resources and the identification of needs increased. It is recommended that surveying organisations assess their ability to provide an ef-fective learning environment and to address any deficiencies, especially in the provision of staff development systems, to improve individual forecasting performance. Further, they should consider introducing effective feedback mechanisms that require both the individual to critically reflect on their own performance and the organisation to provide effective constructive feedback on an individual’s performance.