DRAFT version January 2000
Katerina Nicolopoulou
PhD researcher
London School of Economics
email: K.Nicolopoulou@lse.ac.uk
Abstract:
This review
explores the great variety of understandings of the term
‘organisational learning’. This is not a concept with an agreed
definition but an umbrella term with a multitude of meanings. The main
perspectives on organisational learning are brought together as they
present themselves in a number of organisational-related literatures
and academic as well as practitioners’ discourses.
The paper is structured as an overview of the main perspectives taken in the study and discussion of organisational learning:
- Systems scale approaches ( for example Systems thinking, Cybernetics, Autopoiesis)
- Organisational
scale approaches ( for example the Resource-based view of the firm,
Knowledge creation and Knowledge management, Organisational Memory,
Management-related literatures) - Individual/people scale approaches ( for example the Psychological perspective , Individual and Collective learning processes)
Following the discussion
about these main approaches, the paper puts together important issues
for practitioners, in the form of seven main themes. The third part of
the paper introduces the relationship between organisational learning
and the Learning Organisation, an idea popular amongst many companies
nowadays, which are committing resources towards this aim.
Finally, the paper
briefly surveys ideas about learning in the field of policy-making, as
they manifest themselves in relevant documentation. The ideas on
organisational learning are evidenced on a wider societal level; in the
complex contemporary business and socio-economic environments, the
interactions between the private and the public sphere of economic
activity have brought to the forth the need to build the capacity for
learning in institutions, societies and cultures. This is an area of
interest that I am still researching and will most probably write more
about in the future.
1. The Literature review of the concept of Organisational Learning
Organisational learning
is a relatively new field of study that has been shaped as an amalgam
from influences coming from different disciplines and theoretical
standpoints (Burgoyne, 1997). Being closely tied to real-world business
and planning activities as well as organisations employing innovative
practices, organisational learning has arguably managed to stay at the
forefront of management thinking and research. Currently, uncertainty
and turbulent socio-economic and business conditions stress the
importance of capability-building on the face of enormous change, to
which organisations must respond (Dodgson, 1993) .
Until the beginning of
1999, the main themes of organisational learning research in the UK has
focused around the following areas:
1. Organisational
learning versus national cultures and the extent to which models of
organisational learning are valid outside the USA (Easterby-Smith, 1998)
2. Studying
organisational learning with reference to the differences between
practitioners and academics (Easterby-Smith, Snell, Gherardi, 1998;
Edwards, et al, 1998; Weil, 1998)
3. Exploration of how
narratives about learning inside and outside education reveal the
messiness and non-linearity of learning (Weil, 1998),
4. Studying the
relationship between formal, informal and collaborative learning in the
workplace and providing relevant tools and techniques for it (Mumford,
1995; Pearn, Roderick and Mulrooney, 1995; Burgoyne, 1991 and 1997;
Gear, McIntosh and Squires, 1994; Machell and Frank, 1993; Marshall and
Reason, 1993).
This review of the
literature is structured as an overview of the main perspectives taken
in the study: The main approaches discussed include the following
across a macro, meso and micro scale:
a) Systems scale (Macro) ( for example systems thinking, cybernetics, autopoiesis
b) Organisational scale (Meso) ( for example the
resource-based view of the firm, knowledge creation and knowledge
management, organisational memory, management-related literature)
c) Individual/people scale (Micro) ( for example
the psychological perspective, individual and collective learning
processes)
Although the epistemology
of organisational learning operates on all these three scales, in this
paper, more focus has been put on organisational approaches. When
mentioning ‘epistemology’ I am referring to talking about how we know
what we know about a specific subject or domain of knowledge, in this
context more specifically, about organisational learning. The systems
approaches are in respect taken into account since organisational
learning is presented as a systems phenomenon, an emergent quality of
the organisation, usually responding to an environmental change, or
co-evolving with the changes that take place in the wider
socio-economic and business environment around an organisation. The
individual scale will come into play whilst considering the role of the
individual as a representative of the learning taking place in the
organisational context.
1.3 A discussion of the main approaches to organisational learning
a) Large scale systems approaches:
General systems theory
has introduced the concept of input-output with reference to
organisational processes. The basic tenets of systems theory have been
put forward by Katz and Kahn (as found in Maghalaes) and embrace a
number of notions that have influenced thinking about organisations in
a very substantial way (p. 1) : ‘homeostasis, a steady state achieved
by the system despite the continuous inflows and outflows of energy;
importation, transformation and exportation of energy from the
environment to the system and back to the environment; equifinality-the
system being capable of reaching the same final state from initial
conditions and in different ways’.
Coming from that
theoretical tradition, the organisation itself is viewed as a learning
system according to a mechanistic paradigm (response to a stimulus).
The prevalent metaphor according to general systems thinking is that of
an organisation ‘having a brain or a nervous system that will be
activated in response to a stimulus from the environment’ (Maghalaes,
1996). The ‘computer metaphor’ of the human brain is also carried to
the organisational level (Simon, 1981), with organisations seen as
information-processing systems and in the organisational learning
literature the wider systems scale approach is specifically evident in
considering the organisation as an information processing or
interpretation system (Daft and Weick, 1984).
However, this is only one
of the prevalent views about organisations, since for example Gareth
Morgan (1986) has proposed a multiplicity of alternative images and
metaphors according to which organisations can be viewed. The
multiplicity of these approaches alludes to the fact that for each of
those, a specific rationale has been built which legitimises their
existence most prevalently in the minds of the people working in
organisational environments. It would be interesting to research how
different people’s perceptions about organisational metaphors of the
same organisation would influence for example their capacity to operate
and learn in it. Morgan’s (1986) metaphors include organisations as
machines, organisations as cultures, organisations as political
systems, organisations as psychic prisons, organsiations as flux etc.
Moreover, according to
the concept of dynamic homeostasis, the environments around the
organisations evolve with them. This view contradicts the previously
dominant one, ie that of a mechanistic stimulus-response paradigm. This
is yet another discourse added to multiplicity of views about the issue
of how organisations evolve or respond to the environment around them,
and consequently learn.
Systems thinking and especially systems dynamics
have been thought of as a tool for facilitating organisational
learning. Organisations under this perspective have been seen as giant
networks of interconnected nodes, whereby changes intended to improve
performance in one part of the organisation can affect the other parts
of the organisation. Systems dynamics concepts have been used for
simulating organisational behaviour, and focus around the notion of
minimising systems delays as performance improvement. This approach has
also been proposed as a training tool; by learning how the
organisational policy works, there is a double learning function to be
accomplished. (Stata, 1989).
Cybernetics
deal with structural and technical aspects of social relations. In the
literature, the first treatment of organisational learning from a
cybernetics perspective was given by Cyert and March (1963) in ‘A
behavioural theory of the firm’. Organisational learning is described
as part of the decision-making process of the organisation, consisting
of data processing activities that focus on constructing knowledge for
control and decision-making(Wijnhoven, 1995).
Coming again from biology, like systems thinking, autopoiesis
developed as a new theoretical paradigm in social sciences, mainly
through the work of Maturana and Varela (1992). Being autopoietic, a
system contains in itself the mechanisms that enable it to produce and
reproduce itself. The main tenets of autopoiesis include ‘autonomy of
the system with relation to the environment; organisational closure and
self reference that use experience and knowledge so that living
organisms continue to self-produce; and finally structural coupling
whereby environmental influences affect the system but do not determine
these changes’ (p. 4) (Maghalaes, 1996). Autopoiesis has brought an
increasing interest in the analysis of organisational discourse and
narratives so as to capture the different perceptions of learning,
change and experience in organisations. This is because autopoiesis
views communication as language-based action rather than information
exchange (Maghalaes, 1996).
Systems scale approaches
to organisational learning view learning as a systemic phenomenon, a
residual element of a certain process that is more or less structured
or environmentally dependent according to the viewpoint taken.
Information and energy are seen as external forces that impact the
system and when the system handles them, learning is caused as a result
of the ‘changing process’. By solely treating learning as a systems
phenomenon, however, one loses the feeling of interaction and
relationship that exists in a real organisational setting, where people
come into contact with each other and learn both from what they are
doing and from the people around them. This is also based on two
writers: a) the findings of SOL research that took place in large scale
organisations which have actively implemented organisational learning
initiatives (Clarkson, 1997; 1998). This view is also justified by Hall
and Moss (1998)who on an everyday operational level locate relationship
in the assistance amongst employees in order for new skills and
competencies to be acquired.
- Organisational scale approaches:
In the UK, the
socio-technical systems (Emery and Trist, 1960; Mumford, 1983), view an
organisation as a living thing that is capable of learning. Action
learning (Revans, 1982) is seen as an iterative cycle of taking action
to address a problem and then reflecting on what was learned with the
assistance of others, typically leading again to a new cycle of action
and reflection.
Organisational-based
action research is being rediscovered as having potential value to
those working with the challenge of change (Weil,1998), whilst up to
now, action research in learning has been connected more with US
approaches, and particularly the work of the Learning Centre at MIT
(Easterby-Smith, 1997).
Finally, the influence
of organisational development as organisational consultancy and
intervention (Garratt, 1995) as well as the spread of the Total Quality
Movement (Miner and Mezias, 1996) caused organisations to re-examine
their capacity to interact with their environment, as well as to
re-address their standards of work and production and the quality of
their operations.
Most economists tend to
view learning as simple quantifiable improvements in business
activities judged by the outcomes. The management, business and
innovation literatures equate learning with sustainable comparative
efficiency. However, these literatures tend to consider the outcomes of
learning, rather than understand the processes that produce these
outcomes (Dodgson, 1993). By placing the focus on organisational
outcomes, they lose the whole of the learning experience and how this
is experienced by people in organisations.
In contrast to the
outcome-based view of the firm, the resource-based view of the firm
conceives a firm as seeking to acquire unique valuable resources and
capabilities. This approach assumes an organisational dimension to
learning related to strategy. Distinctive capabilities developed during
the firm’s quest for differentiation are called ‘core capabilities’ (Amit and Schoemaker, 1993).
Capabilities are
developed by combining and using resources with the aid of
organisational routines. Such routines have a strongly embedded organisational knowledge
acquired through learning during the process of accomplishing the
routine loop (Nelson and Winter, 1982). This means basically that each
time that a process terminates, knowledge is accumulated as a result of
the action that took place. The potentiality to store this knowledge
lies with the organisation and is basically one of the main
characteristics of the learning organisation.
According to Andreu and
Ciborra (1996), core competencies are seen as an interaction between
external resources, work practices, capabilities and core capabilities
that shape the strategy of the firm. Some writers use the term ‘knowledge base’
in order to analyse how knowledge is formed and accumulated. Prahalad
and Hamel (1990) claim that competitiveness in the 1990’s depends on
firms nurturing their core competencies, which they describe as the
‘collective learning of the organisation’.
One viewpoint that defies
this rationale comes from Nonaka and Takeuchi (1995), who identify four
phases of the knowledge creation and dissemination spiral:
socialisation, externalisation, combination and internalisation. In the
organisational environment, an individual’s knowledge can be enhanced
through experience. Also, by sharing tacit experience amongst people
who work in similar project areas and form ‘communities of practice’
(Brown and Duguid, 1991), knowledge can be shared. By defying formal
task-related procedures and by focusing more on processes and
interactions knowledge and learning can be propagated. Finally, by
cultivating trust in social intercourse and in socialisation, learning
can be fostered in organisations.
Viewed from this perspective, the theory of knowledge creation is presented as a more humanistic approach as opposed to the ‘economic rationality’ related paradigms.
Knowledge Management
has been treated via a number of further perspectives in the
literature. These include amongst others ‘the study of knowledge
systems and integrated intelligent agents in terms of applications
development; the human resource management approach in terms of
insights of personnel, and the universal knowledge management approach,
used to shape the knowledge basis of the whole of the organisation’ (p.
? )(Van Pijl and Van Boven, 1998). Coming from the domain of
information systems, this approach brings to the forth a much more
utilitarian point of view. For many of the existing companies
operating, a knowledge management system is basically an intranet-based
system which is used as a platform for storing, distributing and
communicating knowledge of best practices about completed projects. On
the pragmatic level, it has been widely debatable the extent to which
this body of knowledge really consists knowledge or simply information.
In the domain of management, the existence of knowledge is legitimised
through the potential usability of the knowledge for a purpose, ie, in
order to see results from an action taken as a result of making use of
the ‘best knowledge’.
The knowledge management literature links to the central concept of organisational memory. According
to Stein (1995), organisational memory features as an excellent example
of the point analysed above, as it stands for ‘the means by which
knowledge from the past is brought to bear on present activities, thus
resulting in higher or lower levels of organisational effectiveness’.
The concentrated expertise of an organisation is presumably at stake in
the face of the loss of personnel. An example of that is experienced
when people leave an organisation and take the knowledge and skills
that they have acquired with them. Organisations are facing a real loss
in that sense, because many well qualified and well educated people
take with them a lot of the added value that is created based on the
specific project knowledge. The loss is double, since they these people
not only take with them their qualification and past experience, but
also more importantly the added value that they have acquired
‘on-the-job’.
Management-related literature:
Management-related
literature that deals with organisational learning is by and large
performance-related. Currently, management and business literature
often equates learning with sustainable innovation. The contributions
of the management literature to organisational learning are the notions
of creation and dissemination of information, the notion of
organisational knowledge, informating management processes and seeing
levels of learning as progressively desirable (Easterby-Smith, 1997).
Managers taking a
performance-related view see organisational learning as characterised
by goals, initial conditions, levels and rates that can be manipulated
in the search for solutions to well defined problems (Schwandt, 1996).
Furthermore, organisational learning is seen as the capacity or process
within an organisation to maintain or improve performance based on experience (Nevis, DiBella, Gould, 1995).
Organisational learning indicates a need to improve efficiency and productivity, as measured by the ‘learning curves’
that are familiar to managers in the context of industrial production.
Alternatively, such concerns might grow out of an awareness of
intra-organisational conflicts that express conflicting purposes,
interests, or values (Schon, 1983). The issue of leadership is
seen as essential in reflecting on organisational learning in that
context, with dialogue and discussion seen as two of the most important
leader’s tools for exploring multiple viewpoints in any given situation
(Morgan, 1986). Leaders have been proposed to act as ‘stewarts’ by
inspiring purpose and commitment to the organisation, by delegating
authority, employee empowerment, and the fostering of a participatory
approach that would facilitate double-loop learning in the organisation
(Stata, 1989).
Organisational culture and organisational values
are important for learning to take place in the organisation (Arie de
Geus, 1988). Writing from within real-time experience in organisational
settings, Garvin (1993) places learning in this context as depending
upon other factors, such as delegation of responsibility,
participatory decision-making and the disposition of people to learn
both in terms of time and abilities. The way this could be realised
in organisations is via an increased communication capability
internally as well as with the outside world. Arguably, the openness and accessibility to information influences organisational learning. An essential step seems to be the fostering of a culture that is conducive to learning (Garvin, 1993).
The concept of continuous improvement,
especially as it has been articulated in approaches like TQM, serves as
a motivator to avoid complacency with the company performance, because
as a mental frame, this principle aids in maintaining an overall
awareness of the environment around the organisation (Montgomery and
Scalia, 1996) . In much of the literature, emphasis is placed upon the
need for environmental alignment; in pursuing long term
survival and growth, the organisation must align itself to its
environment in order to remain competitive and innovative (Nicolini and
Meznar, 1995). Driving organisational learning are rapidly changing
technology, increased industrial competition, as well as pressure from
the customers, suppliers and the environment which includes regulatory
effects (Dodgson, 1993). Such changes are likely to depend upon the
market and socioecomic factors that influence how the company operates,
from the customisation of products in a increasingly competitive
industry, to changes in demographic patterns and populations (Moreton,
1995).
This particular view of
organisational learning seems to be quite narrow in the sense that it
is quite deterministic. Learning in the management literature is
typically seen as a variable dependent on performance, management
initiatives and the ‘right behaviour’, alluding to conditions that if
followed or ameliorated could increase learning in the organisational
setting. Also, this strand of literature tends to indicate towards
factors for measuring learning. Such an approach defies the
improbability and complexity of real-life situations and how they can
affect performance and learning in organisations. This is the reason
why currently, in trying to make sense of knowledge and learning in the
organisational context, the themes of languaging, discourse, narratives and dialogue in organisations have emerged.
Dialogue, has also been
given prominence as a means to overtake organisational learning
limitations, advance organisational interactions and develop shared
meanings. Thus, organisational dialogue can become more productive and
comunicative and act as a means for promoting organisational
development (Dixon, 1998).
By tracking
organisational narratives, organisational learning can feature more
prominently rather than trying, for example, to measure constructed
variables or try to discover and unfold mental maps of organisational
members (Maghalaes, 1996). By de-constructing the narrative,
perceptions of roles played by organisational members may be examined.
Deconstruction is focused around discovering embedded values in
proclaimed narratives. Jacques Derrida, considered by many the father
of deconstruction, suggests that deconstruction is better described as
‘a suspicion against thinking what is the essence of’ (p. 93) (Colins
and Mayblin, 1997).
Garrick and Rhodes (1998)
have openly argued that language is the repository of learning and by
deconstructing and analysing it we can make sense of the learning that
has taken place in the organisation.
c) Individual/people scale approaches
The Psychological perspective:
organisational learning regarded from a psychological point of view,
emphasises the change of the behaviour of individuals according to the
change in their knowledge. This is again a ‘result-driven’ approach
that defies the importance of the interactions within the whole of the
personality. According to Kolb (as found in Wijnhoven, 1995), learning
is fundamentally experiential, whereby the transformation of experience
as a process creates the learning.
Piaget (found in
Wijnhoven, 1995) expressed his developmental psychology based on a
‘Hegelian’ dialectic; the thesis antithesis and synthesis are expressed
through existing cognitive structures and knowledge which are
challenged by new knowledge continuously, leading to the final
integration of it.
From this point of view,
the ‘learning organisation’ is one whose goals are to thrive by
systematically using its learning to progress beyond mere adaptation
(Dodgson, 1993).
The psychological
theories mentioned above seem to be deterministic, alluding to the norm
that more (or better) knowledge creation can account for innovation and
efficiency. The major criticism of developmental psychology especially,
is that not all people are the same, and therefore, they cannot learn
in a linear, progressive fashion. This is more so the case with
organisations, which anyway consist of more than the sum of their
personnel. Organisational politics, policies and norms could have an
important role to play in restraining the learning taking place on a
collective level.
Gestalt psychology
(Kohler, 1947; 1970) resonates systems thinking in its principles and
offers an alternative point of view to those psychological approaches
that have prevailed for the most time. Gestalt psychology has put
forward the concept of dynamic self-distribution. This was evidenced
and argued about as concerns sets of stimuli. Effects on a sensory
field were no longer viewed as a strictly local stimulation, but rather
as a ‘togetherness’ of several stimuli. It has subsequently been
proposed that except from the purely sensory experience, the concept of
Gestalt is applied to the processes of ‘learning, recall, striving, of
emotional attitude, of thinking and so forth’ (p. 179).
Finally, the last
approach to review here is ‘Learning through Inquiry’ (Clarkson, 1998)
for individuals, organisations, institutions and societies in general.
This is an ‘educational research concept attempting to specify some of
the assumptions, conceptual frameworks, methodology, sampling and
selection criteria, analysis of discourse and verification procedures
with recommentation for its conduct and evaluation. It is concerned
with the professional education (‘leading forth from within’) of
psychologists, psychotherapists, supervisors and organisational
consultants, the application of qualitative research as ongoing
practice….and the necessity for ongoing exploration of cultural and
ethical situatedness in…the postmodern condition’ (p.242). This totally
new approach is founded upon the capacity to live with and within the
existing questions and learn by researching and inquiring every
possible moment the world around us.
Individual and collective learning processes:
According to the Information Processing view, organisations are seen as having cognitive systems and memories
(Hedberg, 1981). Individuals come and go, but organisations preserve
knowledge, behaviours, mental maps, norms and values over time, often
through the interpretation of managers. The organisation experiences
interpretation when a new construct or concept is introduced into the
collective cognitive map of the organisation (Daft and Weick, 1984).
Learning is distinguished from interpretation by the concept of action. Learning involves a new response or action based on interpretation (Argyris and Schon, 1978).
Influenced by the cybernetics movement,
Argyris and Schon (1978) describe three processes through which
organisational learning can be achieved, namely single loop, double
loop and deutero learning. These incorporate respectively the
capacities for organisational members to detect and correct errors when
responding to changes in the organisational environment; the capacity
to reflect and resolve organisational norms that do not fit and finally
the capacity to learn from the organisational behaviour.
Stata, (1989) claims that learning is a process by which individuals gain new knowledge and insights and thereby modify their behaviour and actions.
Organisational learning, similarly, entails new insights and modified
behaviours, since organisations can only learn as fast as their slowest
link. Change is blocked, unless all the major decision makers learn
together, come to share beliefs and goals, and are committed to take
the actions necessary for change. Learning builds on past knowledge and
experience, that is, memory. Organisational memory depends on
institutional mechanisms (eg: policies, strategies and models) used to
retain knowledge.
However this approach
seems more of an ‘ideal’ about learning rather than a realistic
description. As so often is the case, management literature has a
prescriptive slant that when decontextualised cannot be applied
diagnostically.
Learning is furthermore seen as the process of modifying one’s cognitive maps or understandings, thereby changing the range of one’s potential behaviours.
Thus, it has more to do with a change in one’s interpretation of events
and actions than with the events or actions themselves. Daft and Weick
(1984) defined interpretation as the process through which
people give meaning to information. Organisational learning involves
the development of diverse interpretations (Fiol and Lyles, 1985). As
Nelson and Winter (1982) noted, organisational capabilities are not
embedded in any single person, but in the links across diverse
individual capabilities. Learning in organisations entails not only the
acquisition of diverse information, but the ability to share common
understanding so as to exploit it (Fiol, 1994). This idea is taken
further by Brown and Duguid (1991), explored in the concept of ‘communities of practice’.
Adaptive learning
in organisations is seen as occurring through people interacting in
context, or more specifically in multiple contexts. Learning is often
enhanced not just by bringing people together, but by moving them
around to confront different sorts of clues, gather different types of
data, using different kinds of tools, and experiencing different
pressures relevant to a given problem (Tyre and von Hippel, 1997).
Social interaction
in groups facilitates not only communication and coordination, but also
learning. For learning to be achieved, coordination and communication
are facilitated through identity. Social learning is very much based
upon shared categorisations and discourses which in a social
(organisational) setting aid to the creation of a common identity.
Learning implies becoming
a different person with respect to the possibilities enabled by these
systems of relations. Learning involves the construction of identities,
long-term, living relations between persons and their place and
participation in communities of practice. Thus, identity, knowing and
social membership are interrelated (Lave and Wenger, 1991).
The transition from
individual to collective learning processes gives out an interesting
perspective related to the idea of socialisation and learning in
communities of practice or interest. This sociological point of view is
expressed by Brown and Duguid (1991), as well as Raelin (1997) and
Nonaka and Takeuchi, (1995).
Learning is propagated in
the organisational setting through systemic ineractions (Nevis, Di
Bella, Gould, 1995), thus making learning an emergent organisational
property. In trying to pinpoint the locus of learning, one is bound to
look into the relationship between people in formal or informal
settings and also on a scale, from one-to-one up to the group and
organisational relationships. This alludes to a qualitative approach to
learning, that tries to understand the ‘hows’ and ‘whys’ of
organisational learning, by placing at the centre the people and their
perception as well as reactions to others in a more or less
institutionalised organisational context.
2. Main themes coming through the literatures on organisational learning
a) Individual versus Organizational Learning
Special stress
is usually placed in organizational learning bibliographies on the
importance of the individual employee as one of the organizational
assets. Company training and development programmes are geared towards
enhancing the skills of the participating individuals.
Individuals constitute
the informal information network through which information is brought
from the outside world into the organization.
Individuals can
contribute to organisational learning both through their own education
and experience, as well as through inquiry into various sources
following changes in the environment while currently employed
(McDonald, 1995).
In the case of
organizational learning, however, the two units of analysis (namely the
individual and the organizational levels) do not fully coincide.
Although learning does depend on individuals, the organizational
learning capacity could be characterised as something ‘greater that the
sum of its parts’. This principle of holism has been spelled out by
Smuts (1987) :
‘…the ever-deepening
nature of the Whole…(is seen)…as a specific structural synthesis of
parts with inner activities of its own which cooperate and function in
harmony…towards a definite inherent inner end or purpose that together
they constitute and for a whole of a more or less distinctive character
with an identity and an ever-increasing measure of individuality of its
own’ (p. 107).
The principle has been
taken on board in the management setting by adopting for example a
Gestalt approach to organisational consulting (Nevis, 1987). In this
way, the involvement of the external consultant with the organisational
reality can prove a more powerful intervention rather than the delivery
of a performance where ‘the learning experience is …being witnessed’
(p. 79).
For Levitt and March
(1988) organisational learning transcends the individuals who
originallly own the insights and skills that later become embedded in
the organisational routines.
The role of environment in organizational learning:
The
environment around the organization can be considered as a driver for
Organizational Learning, since organizations learn in order to improve
their adaptability and efficiency during times of change. According to
Dodgson (1993), organisational learning is driven by rapidly changing
technology, increased industrial competition, as well as pressure from
the customers, suppliers and the environment (eg: regulation). Learning
enables quicker and more effective responses to a complex and dynamic
environment (Grantham, 1993). However, responding to change does not
only mean that the organization will accept information that comes from
outside; the organization will have to process this information
efficiently as well as to create itself information and knowledge in
order to internalise the environmental influences (Nonaka, 1994).
Environmental scanning,
scenario and contingency planning are also important processes and
methods that help organisations see what is happening around them in
the world and discern current and future trends.
Performance considerations and management initiatives
According to a
large number of the authors reviewed here, the motivation behind
implementing organizational learning initiatives is very much rooted in
performance considerations. This is a ‘result-driven’ view of
organizational learning, which has been seen as the process of
‘improving actions through better knowledge and understanding’ (Fiol
and Lyles, 1985).
Nevis et al (1995) treat
organizational learning as ‘the capability or processes within an
organization to maintain or improve its performance based on
experience’. Dodgson (1993) observes that although some form of
learning is inevitable, in order for such learning to result in
organizationally desirable outcomes, it must be goal-directed.
Continuous
improvement programs have been implemented in many organizations as
they strive to better themselves and gain a competitive edge. This sort
of performance consideration requires a continuous commitment to
learning in order to acquire tangible benefits (Garvin, 1993). Emphasis
is placed on time to reflect and analyse, think about customer needs,
assess current work systems and invent new products. The methods that
are used for training in order to increase the learning capacity
include brainstorming, problem solving, experimenting; participating in
conferences and working in teams in order to span boundaries and
exchange ideas becomes also important.
Organizational culture and leadership
Organizational
culture is the climate and practices that organizations develop around
their handling of people (Schein, 1992). Organisational culture could
also mean the values and beliefs espoused by an organisation which its
employees are a part of. A culture to foster learning would build on
trust between management and employees.
Leadership is seen in
this literature as the vision that a leader bestows to an organisation,
but is also pragmatically supported and sustained by the funding of the
management.
This is more so the case
with these companies that have particularly attempted to implement
Organizational Learning initiatives and have invested money in specific
learning enhancement programmes.
The importance of groups and teamwork for organizational learning
Groups are an
essential link between individual and organizational learning,
especially in considering the synthesis and the ways of working of the
operational groups in organisations.
Different degrees of role
definition and task allocation in the formation and cooperation in
groups can aid the enhancement of organizational learning (Unger and
Lorscheider, 1996); this would include building multiskilled,
interdisciplinary teams that could be aided by training in project
management, communication skills and joint decision-making.
The importance of Information and Communication Technologies for organisational learning and knowledge management
The use of
Information and Communication Technologies has been featuring as an
important tool for supporting learning in organisations in recent
literatures. Technologies with the greatest relevance to the concept of
organisational learning are the Internet, company intranets,
specialised databases, data mining, intelligent agents and even the use
of e-mail.
It has also been argued
that the use of such technologies could probably have a major effect in
decreasing resistance of communication channels and sharing much more
information with organisational members, as well as contributing to the
organisational memory (Montgomery and Scalia,1996).
3. The Learning Organisation vs Organisational Learning
The idea of the Learning
Organisation came about in 1988, following a trend of the 1980’s to
establish a stronger link between training, development, Human Resource
Management, as well as company performance and competitiveness
(Pettigrew and Whipp, 1991).
During the whole of the
past decade companies have been thinking over how to train employees so
as to be equipped with the appropriate skills to manage more
effectively and to cope with a whole new range of production and
marketing objectives. This has been particularly accentuated with the
onset of total quality management programmes. (Jones and Hendry, 1994).
Organisational learning
and the ‘Learning Organisation’ are not the same thing. According to
Pedler et al (1988), a Learning Organisation is one that concentrates
on change, worker participation and development, adaptation, management
systems and structures, as well as the processes of delegation of power
and control. In short, a Learning Organisation is one that ‘facilitates
the learning of all its members and continuously transforms itself’. In
contrast, Organisational Learning is focused more on HRM, training and
skills acquisition.
The ‘Learning
Organisation’ is more of a goal that various organisations have tried
to implement through specific initiatives in order to enhance their
learning capacity.
The ‘Learning
Organisation’ is seen as bringing hard (technique-related) and soft
(related to social contexts in which it is applied) issues together and
in so doing, creating a tension(Jones and Hendry, 1994). This argument
also resonates in Stacey (1996) who claims that an organisation is a
complex adaptive system where agents interact and through their
interaction, patterns emerge in terms of behaviour and learning which
takes place at the creative ‘edge of chaos’ where the organisational
members are free to play, engage in dialogue and be creative without a
pre-determined paln or purpose.
According to Garvin
(1993), a Learning Organisation is one skilled at creating, acquiring
and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to reflect
new knowledge and insights, through learning from others as well as
from their own experience and through transmitting that knowledge in
the organisation.
Charles Handy (1989) in
the ‘Age of Unreason’, purports that the Learning Organisation should
be taking into consideration mistakes and failures which should not be
discarded, but rather seen as opportunities to learn. There could be
some help towards that through mentoring in the organisation and also
through building a developmental approach in the appraisal systems.
4. The idea of learning in policy-making
Organizational Learning
is admittedly quite hard to pin down as a concept, and this has been
very evident throughout this present review; however, Garatt (1987)
characterised the predominant culture of our society as a
knowledge-based one, in which learning is central to survival and
growth of all organizations.
International
policy-making organisations have been using notions of learning
extrapolating from the importance placed on the issue on a societal
level.
The emphasis on
international organisations has been on reshaping education and
training policies towards encapsulating the new societal ‘learning
paradigm’. In many cases, these policies affect organisations in their
own decisions, either by choice or by enforcement, creating a change
around the company environment, to which the latter is called to
respond by the implementation of certain initiatives.
According to an official
survey of training practices in UK, for example (CEDEFOP, 1996), UK
companies were presented to demonstrate a high training activity within
their workforces, without leading to formal qualifications; this
reliance on informal skills or low-skill processes could produce
problems in the future, such as falling of productivity because of
difficulties in introducing new technologies.
The European Union: The
idea of learning is central even on a high level of policy-making, like
the initiatives propagated by ‘umbrella organizations’, such as the
European Union. Initiatives such as ‘Lifelong Learning’ are set up to
help European countries combat skill obsolescence of the adult working
population through a pro-active approach to industrial adaptation,
change and the needs of the labour market; the existence of the
‘Learning Organizations’ is a manifestation of such tendencies on both
a social and an organizational scale.
The White paper on
teaching and learning was the official document presented in 1995 under
the initiatives of Edith Cresson, Commissioner for Research, Education
and Training, Padraig Flynn, Commissioner for Employment and Social
affairs and Martin Bangemann, Commissioner responsible for Industrial
affairs, Information and Telecommunications technologies, following the
previous White paper on ‘Growth, Competitiveness and employment’.
The idea of Information
Society has also influenced policy-making on the learning front, as
access to and mastery of the new technological developments has been
central to the new lifelong learning paradigm. There are four axes
around which the 1995 White Paper develops: creating a broadbase knowledge, vocational training for combating unemployment, lifelong learning and mobility. Emphasis
is placed around creating the capacity for continuous learning while
both at school and at vocational training within a context where
schools and businesses would cooperate a lot more by creating
apprenticeship schemes around Europe. The proclamation of 1996 as the
Year of Lifelong Learning brought to the forth focus on the use of
information technologies and multimedia applications for continuous
learning and training. Finally, cooperation between business and
academia is proposed as taking place on a pan-European scale, also
validating skills that are acquired through experiential learning and
not only through traditional studies.
In OECD
documentation (Adult learning in a new technological era, 1996),
lifelong learning is seen as a factor of economic prosperity. Survival
in the new economic conditions is presented as dependent on education
and on combating illiteracy. ‘Just-in-time learning’ methodologies have
been developing, whereby educational services are offered only when the
adult needs them. The basic aim is to develop a methodology as well as
content base and an infrastructure so as to deliver educational
services to the workplace in time.
On a world-wide scale, UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) challenges
the formal learning channels of education, by recognising that many
times in themselves they become a barrier to learning, based on the
various cultural and socio-economic constraints present in diverse
socio-economic environments. The Learning without frontiers Unit aims
to support the struggle of communities on the face of social and
economic change by the creation of distributed learning environments.
By envisaging learning as pro-active towards admitting to a wide
variety of resources and ways of constructing knowledge, UNESCO is
contributing to the vision of a sustainable educational future.
The World Bank report
‘Knowledge for Development’(1998) presents and discusses the uses and
importance of knowledge for economic transactions and for the collapse
of markets. Knowledge about technology (know-how) or technical
knowledge is missing in the developing countries, causing thus,
knowledge gaps and unequal distributions across and within countries.
Knowledge about attributes (the qualities of workers or firms) is also
missing, creating thus information problems.
Both of these issues have
an impact on development and international institutions have an
important role to play in helping governments address them. The World
Bank has put in place programmes and initiatives geared at knwledge
sharing amongst projects, networks of expertise and geographical
regions. An interesting part of that activity is centering around
sharing indigenous knowledge, that is the traditional ‘know-how,
built-in living skills and coping mechanisms that exist in all
societies’. Paying attention to the production and sharing of that
knowledge, brings to the forth the importance of local knowledge for
addressing the local needs through the intermediary of the Global
Knowledge Bank.
5. Conclusions:
The broad literature
review that has been completed in the current paper indicates the great
variety that exists in terms of the literatures on organisational
learning. There is a great number of influences that have shaped
organisational learning ideas; however, the vast majority of at least
the literatures that address practitioners’ problems come from a
management, performance-oriented perspective. This has as a result the
focus of the literatures on efficiency, learning measured in terms of
productivity and results and less on human relationship and
interaction, which is how learning is achieved from a human-social
interaction point of view. In these literatures, there is evidenced a
lack of congruence in terms of theories of how learning is achieved as
well as a relatively low existence of concrete methodologies and tools
for putting organisational learning in action.
Learning in policy-making
documentation has placed the individual as the main focus, while at the
same time, by putting in place initiatives and leveraging knowledge at
a global level, such organisations aim at achieving a systems-wide
change.
This was the
first working paper produced within the context of activities of
SOL-UK, aiming at presenting an overview of the ideas of organisational
learning as they are evidenced in a variety of literatures. The first
part of the paper (A discussion of the main approaches to
organisational learning) comes largely from the first chapter of my
doctoral dissertation to be submitted during the summer term 1999-2000.
The development of the paper took place within the scope of research
activities with partners of the Complexity and Organisational Learning
Programme at the LSE and during time spent with the Leadership
Development Group (HRSLD) of the World Bank in Washington, DC
(1998-1999).
A matrix for classifying the literatures reviewed in the paper:
|
Systems scale |
Organisational scale |
Individual scale |
|
Systems theory Systems thinking, systems dynamics Cybernetics Autopoiesis |
Organisational learning Socio-technical Action research Organisation Development Innovation literature Capabilities literature Organisational knowledge creation and management Organisational memory
Performance,
|
Psychological perspective Cognitive perspective Mental models Behavioural change Adaptive change Social interaction |
|
Practitioners issues Individual versus organisational learning Business and socio-eonomic environments Performance considerations Management initiatives Organisational culture Leadership Groups and teamwork Information and Communication technology Knowledge Management |
||
|
Creative tension Complex adaptive system
Knowledge for economic transactions and for development practices (World Bank) Indigenous knowledge (World Bank) Sharing knowledge amongst networks (World Bank) |
Learning Organisation Training HRM TQM
Policy-making Institutions and Organisations in the community Church Universities Businesses
|
Cognitive approach Behavioural change Mentoring
Training for individuals (EU) Access to Information technologies (EU, OECD) Lifelong learning (EU, UNESCO) Mobility (EU) Sustainable pathways to learning (UNESCO) |
This matrix is just a
summary of the main approaches that are found in the literatures across
the three scales analysed in this review. It is intended to initiate a
conversation as to the nature and meaning of learning for organisations
and societies in general. While by no means it intends to be exhaustive
(for example only a small amount of psychology literature has been
covered in this review), the matrix indicates towards the emphasis that
has been placed in the literatures up to now, and this is in itself a
contribution, alongside with the addition of policy-making which has
not been before written about. This is an area of on-going research
interest for me, and I intend to present later on more work-in-progress
on this issue.
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