learning writers management popularise capacity dialogue "systemic thinking" "collective learning" disciplines production transformation

Many consultants and organizations have recognized the commercial significance of organizational learning -- and the notion of the 'learning organization' has been a central orienting point in this.

In this sense the learning organization is an ideal, 'towards which organizations have to evolve in order to be able to respond to the various pressures [they face] (Finger and Brand 1999: 136).

This might be because the vision is 'too ideal' or because it isn't relevant to the requirements and dynamics of organizations.

Second, the focus on creating a template and upon the need to present it in a form that is commercially attractive to the consultants and writers has led to a significant under-powering of the theoretical framework for the learning organization.

The literature on organizational learning has concentrated on the detached collection and analysis of the processes involved in individual and collective learning inside organizations; whereas the learning organizations literature has an action orientation, and is geared toward using specific diagnostic and evaluative methodological tools which can help to identify, promote and evaluate the quality of learning processes inside organizations.

On this page we examine the path-breaking work of Donald Schon on firms as learning systems and then go on to explore Peter Senge's deeply influential treatment of the learning organization (and it's focus on systemic thinking and dialogue).

We must become able not only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are 'learning systems', that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation.

He suggests that the movement toward learning systems is, of necessity, 'a groping and inductive process for which there is no adequate theoretical basis' (ibid.: 57).

Of particular importance for later developments was their interest in feedback and single- and double-loop learning.

Subsequently, we have seen very significant changes in the nature and organization of production and services.

Companies, organizations and governments have to operate in a global environment that has altered its character in significant ways.

Productivity and competitiveness are, by and large, a function of knowledge generation and information processing: firms and territories are organized in networks of production, management and distribution; the core economic activities are global -- that is they have the capacity to work as a unit in real time, or chosen time, on a planetary scale.

The social view of the learning organization looks to interaction and process -- and it is this orientation that has come to dominate the popular literature.

As Kerka (1995) goes onto comment, the five disciplines that Peter Senge goes on to identify (personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning and systems thinking) are the keys to achieving this sort of organization.

Systems theory and the learning organization Systemic thinking is the conceptual cornerstone ('The Fifth Discipline') of Peter Senge's approach.

Favours individual and collective learning processes at all levels of the organization, but does not connect them properly to the organization's strategic objectives.

The exact functions of organizational learning need to be more clearly defined.

In our view, organizational learning is just a means in order to achieve strategic objectives.

But creating a learning organization is also a goal, since the ability permanently and collectively to learn is a necessary precondition for thriving in the new context.

Therefore, the capacity of an organization to learn, that is, to function like a learning organization, needs to be made more concrete and institutionalized, so that the management of such learning can be made more effective.

This, they suggest, can be achieved through defining indicators of learning (individual and collective) and by connecting them to other indicators.

Conclusion It could be argued that the notion of the learning organization provides managers and others with a picture of how things could be within an organization.

Along the way, writers like Peter Senge introduce a number of interesting dimensions that could be personally developmental, and that could increase organizational effectiveness -- especially where the enterprise is firmly rooted in the 'knowledge economy.

However, as we have seen, there are a number of shortcomings to the model -- it is theoretically underpowered and there is some question as to whether the vision can be realized within the sorts of dynamics that exist within and between organizations in a globalized capitalist economy.

It might well be that 'the concept is being oversold as a near-universal remedy for a wide variety of organizational problems' (Kuchinke 1995 quoted in Kerka 1995).

There have been various attempts by writers to move 'beyond' the learning organization.

(The cynics among us might conclude that there is a great deal of money in it for the writers who can popularise the next 'big thing' in management and organizational development). Thus, we find guides and texts on 'the developing organization' (Gilley and Maybunich 2000), 'the accelerating organization (Maira and Scott-Morgan 1996), and 'the ever-changing organization' (Pieters and Young 1999). Peter Senge, with various associates, has continued to produce workbooks and extensions of his analysis to particular fields such as schooling (1994; 1999; 2000).

In one of the more interesting developments there has been an attempt to take the already substantial literature on trust in organizations (Edmondson and Moingeon 1999: 173) and to link it to developments in thinking around social capital (especially via the work of political theorists like Robert Putnam) (see Cohen and Prusak 2001).

We could also link this with discussions within informal education and lifelong learning concerning the educative power of organizations and groups (and hence the link to organizational learning) (see the material on association elsewhere on these pages).

Here the argument is that social capital makes an organization more than a collection of individuals.

(Social capital can be seen as consisting of 'the stock of active connections among people: the trust, mutual understanding, and shared values and behaviours that bind the members of human networks and communities and make cooperative action possible', Cohen and Prusak 2001: 4). Social capital draws people into groups.

learning cognition socialization practice experiences orientation communities education policy "distributed cognition" "double-loop learning"

Is it individuals that learn in organizations, or can organizations learn themselves?

From this exploration we suggest that there are particular qualities associated with learning in organizations.

The page links into discussions on different pages of the encyclopedia of informal education.

Learning For all the talk of learning amongst policymakers and practitioners, there is a surprising lack of attention to what it entails.

In Britain and Northern Ireland, for example, theories of learning do not figure strongly in professional education programmes for teachers and those within different arenas of informal education.

It is almost as if it is something is unproblematic and that can be taken for granted.

In a similar fashion, when we come to examine the literature of human resource development and more generally that of organizational and management change, the idea that 'learning' may in some way be problematic is only rarely approached in a sustained way.

The behaviourist movement in psychology has looked to the use of experimental procedures to study behaviour in relation to the environment.

Learning in organizations As Mark Easterby-Smith and Luis Araujo (1999: 1) have commented the idea of organizational learning has been present in the management literature for decades, but it has only become widely recognized since around 1990.

These experiences may derive from explicit sources such as financial information, or they may be derived from tacit sources, such as the 'feel' that s skilled craftsperson has, or the intuition possessed by a skilled strategist.

The more tacit and 'embodied' forms of learning involve situated practices, observation and emulation of skilled practitioners and socialization into a community of practice.

A classic expression of the technical view can be found in the work of Argyris and Schön on single- and double-loop learning (1978, 1996).

Lave and Wenger (1991) and Wenger (1998) provide a fascinating example of the social perspective in action in their studies of apprenticeship and communities of practice.

Interestingly Donald Schön (1983; 1987) also provides some insights into the use of 'tacit' sources in his exploration of reflective practice.

Those operating within the social perspective may view organizational learning as a social construction, as a political process, and/or as a cultural artifact (Easterby-Smith and Araujo 1999: 5-7).

Christine Prange (1999: 27) in her review of organizational learning theory, notes that when we review the processes of organizational learning 'we encounter "learning from experience" as a genuine component of almost all approaches'.

We review Kolb's (1984) famous formulation, go back to John Dewey's (1933) exploration of thinking and reflection, and Kurt Lewin's use of the notions of feedback and action learning; and take note of David Boud and associates useful contribution on the nature of reflection.

This model of learning goes back to some work that Argyris and Schön did in 1974, but it found its strongest expression and grounding in organizational dynamics in 1978.

the individual is best understood as a self-contained entity.

It links into a dialogical understanding of selfhood and the work of people like George Herbert Mead (Cole and Engeström 1993 provide a useful historical overview of the development of thinking around distributed cognition).

They suggest that each member of an organization constructs his or her own representation or image of the theory-in-use of the whole (1978: 16).

They need to know their place in the organization.

Hence, our inquiry into organizational learning must concern itself not with static entities called organizations, but with an active process of organizing which is, at root, a cognitive enterprise.

Individual members are continually engaged in attempting to know the organization, and to know themselves in the context of the organization.

As Salomon and Perkins (1998) put it, 'we do not ordinarily consider possession of an artefact knowledge, yet possession of a database constitutes a kind of organizational knowing.

For example, different individuals and units within an organization may hold somewhat different criteria of success.

Also, advocates of a policy are likely to interpret any difficulties with it as reflecting an insufficiently vigorous pursuit of the policy, while opponents interpret the same data as signifying a bad policy.