Organizational learning
Encyclopedia
Organizational learning is an area of knowledge within organizational theory that studies models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts.

In Organizational development (OD), learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...

is a characteristic of an adaptive organization, i.e., an organization that is able to sense changes in signals from its environment (both internal and external) and adapt accordingly. (see adaptive system
Adaptive system
The term adaptation arises mainly in the biological scope as a trial to study the relationship between the characteristics of living beings and their environments...

). OD specialists endeavor to assist their clients to learn from experience and incorporate the learning as feedback into the planning process.

Models

Argyris
Chris Argyris
-Bibliography:* Chris Argyris: Personality and Organization, 1957* Chris Argyris: Some Limitations of the Case Method: Experiences in a Management Development Program.” Academy of Management Review 5: 291–298, 1980...

 and Schön
Donald Schön
Donald Alan Schön was an influential thinker in developing the theory and practice of reflective professional learning in the twentieth century.- Education and career :...

 were the first to propose models that facilitate organizational learning; others have followed in the tradition of their work:
distinguished between single-loop and double-loop learning, related to Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson
Gregory Bateson was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. He had a natural ability to recognize order and pattern in the universe...

's concepts of first and second order learning. In single-loop learning, individuals, groups, or organizations modify their actions according to the difference between expected and obtained outcomes. In double-loop learning, the entities (individuals, groups or organization) question the values, assumptions and policies that led to the actions in the first place; if they are able to view and modify those, then second-order or double-loop learning has taken place. Double loop learning is the learning about single-loop learning.
, integrates Argyris, March and Olsen and another model by Kofman into a single comprehensive model; further, he analyzes all the possible breakdowns in the information flows in the model, leading to failures in organizational learning; for instance, what happens if an individual action is rejected by the organization for political or other reasons and therefore no organizational action takes place?
developed a four stage spiral model of organizational learning. They started by differentiating Polanyi's concept of "tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. For example, stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient...

" from "explicit knowledge
Explicit knowledge
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been or can be articulated, codified, and stored in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The information contained in encyclopedias are good examples of explicit knowledge....

" and describe a process of alternating between the two. Tacit knowledge is personal, context specific, subjective knowledge, whereas explicit knowledge is codified, systematic, formal, and easy to communicate. The tacit knowledge of key personnel within the organization can be made explicit, codified in manuals, and incorporated into new products and processes. This process they called "externalization". The reverse process (from explicit to implicit) they call "internalization" because it involves employees internalizing an organization's formal rules, procedures, and other forms of explicit knowledge. They also use the term "socialization" to denote the sharing of tacit knowledge, and the term "combination" to denote the dissemination of codified knowledge. According to this model, knowledge creation and organizational learning take a path of socialization, externalization, combination, internalization, socialization, externalization, combination . . . etc. in an infinite spiral. Recently Nonaka returned to this theme in an attempt to move this model of knowledge conversion forwards
empirically tested a model of organizational learning that encompassed both stocks and flows of knowledge across three levels of analysis: individual, team and organization. Results showed a negative and statistically significant relationship between the misalignment of stocks and flows and organizational performance.
discusses the concept of organizational learning from Peter Senge
Peter Senge
Peter Michael Senge is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization from 1990...

 and the origins of the theory from Argyris
Chris Argyris
-Bibliography:* Chris Argyris: Personality and Organization, 1957* Chris Argyris: Some Limitations of the Case Method: Experiences in a Management Development Program.” Academy of Management Review 5: 291–298, 1980...

 and Schön
Donald Schön
Donald Alan Schön was an influential thinker in developing the theory and practice of reflective professional learning in the twentieth century.- Education and career :...

. The author aims to "re-think" Senge's The Fifth Discipline through systems theory
Systems theory
Systems theory is the transdisciplinary study of systems in general, with the goal of elucidating principles that can be applied to all types of systems at all nesting levels in all fields of research...

. The author develops the concepts by integrating them with key theorists such as Bertalanffy, Churchman
C. West Churchman
Charles West Churchman was an American philosopher and systems scientist, who was Professor at the School of Business Administration and Professor of Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of California, Berkeley...

, Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer
Anthony Stafford Beer was a British theorist, consultant and professor at the Manchester Business School. He is best known for his work in the fields of operational research and management cybernetics.- Biography :...

, Checkland
Peter Checkland
Peter Checkland is a British management scientist and emeritus professor of Systems at Lancaster University. He is the developer of soft systems methodology : a methodology based on a way of systems thinking.- Biography :...

 and Ackoff
Russell L. Ackoff
Russell Lincoln Ackoff was an American organizational theorist, consultant, and Anheuser-Busch Professor Emeritus of Management Science at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. Ackoff was a pioneer in the field of operations research, systems thinking and management...

. Conceptualizing organizational learning in terms of structure, process, meaning, ideology and knowledge, the author provides insights into Senge within the context of the philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...

 and the way in which systems theorists were influenced by twentieth-century advances from the classical assumptions of science.
  • Watson, Bruce D., 2002 argues that organizational learning has proven to be a somewhat elusive concept to grasp and therefore its practical implementation has also been difficult. There are various positions on what "learning" is understood to be and there is a lack of synthesis of theoretical and empirical investigations. He argues that the conception of "learning" in the organizational learning literature has received insufficient attention and that this has largely contributed to the lack of clarity in the concept of organizational learning. It is proposed that cognitive science
    Cognitive science
    Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

    , especially connectionism
    Connectionism
    Connectionism is a set of approaches in the fields of artificial intelligence, cognitive psychology, cognitive science, neuroscience and philosophy of mind, that models mental or behavioral phenomena as the emergent processes of interconnected networks of simple units...

    , provides a model of individual learning that is capable of incorporating implicit and explicit elements of learning and knowledge. Connectionist models of learning mimic the physiological neural processes of the brain and connectionism demonstrates the capacity to combine cognitivist and constructivist theories of learning. To accomplish the transition to an explanation of collective cognitive processes as occur in organizations, and while continuing to recognize the individual neural processes that must be involved, it is proposed that the theory of situated action is united with connectionism. On the basis of such, a reconceptualisation of organizational learning and a new framework to guide management practice is proposed.

provides theory development for organizational learning in schools within the context of teachers' professional communities as learning communities, which is compared and contrasted to teaching communities of practice. Detailed with an analysis of the paradoxes for organizational learning in schools, two mechanisms for professional development and organizational learning, (1) steering information about teaching and learning and (2) encouraging interaction among teachers and workers, are defined as critical for effective organizational learning.
discusses the concept of organizational learning in a political environment to improve public policy
Public policy (law)
In private international law, the public policy doctrine or ordre public concerns the body of principles that underpin the operation of legal systems in each state. This addresses the social, moral and economic values that tie a society together: values that vary in different cultures and change...

-making. The author details the initial uncontroversial reception of organizational learning in the public sector
Public sector
The public sector, sometimes referred to as the state sector, is a part of the state that deals with either the production, delivery and allocation of goods and services by and for the government or its citizens, whether national, regional or local/municipal.Examples of public sector activity range...

 and the development of the concept with the learning organization
Learning organization
A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment...

. Definitional problems in applying the concept to public policy are addressed, noting research in UK local government that concludes on the obstacles for organizational learning in the public sector: (1) overemphasis of the individual, (2) resistance to change and politics, (3) social learning is self-limiting, i.e. individualism, and (4) political "blame culture." The concepts of policy learning and policy transfer are then defined with detail on the conditions for realizing organizational learning in the public sector.
, and proposed and validated a causal model explicating organizational learning processes to identify antecedents and consequences of effective human capital management practices in both for-profit and non-profit sectors. The results demonstrate that managerial leadership is a key antecedent of organizational learning, highlight the importance of employee sentiment, and emphasize the significance of knowledge management
Knowledge management
Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

.

Organizational knowledge


Some of this knowledge can be termed technical – knowing the meaning of technical words and phrases, being able to read and make sense of data and being able to act on the basis of generalizations. Scientific knowledge is ‘propositional’; it takes the form of causal generalizations – whenever A, then B. For example, whenever water reaches the temperature of 100 degrees, it boils; whenever it boils, it turns into steam; steam generates pressure when in an enclosed space; pressure drives engines.

A large part of the knowledge used by managers, however, does not assume this form. The complexities of a manager’s task are such that applying A may result in B, C, or Z. A recipe or an idea that solved very well a particular problem, may, in slightly different circumstances backfire and lead to ever more problems. More important than knowing a whole lot of theories, recipes and solutions for a manager is to know which theory, recipe or solution to apply in a specific situation. Sometimes a manager may combine two different recipes or adapt an existing recipe with some important modification to meet a situation at hand.

Managers often use knowledge in the way that a handyman will use his or her skills, the materials and tools that are at hand to meet the demands of a particular situation. Unlike an engineer who will plan carefully and scientifically his or her every action to deliver the desired outcome, such as a steam engine, a handyman is flexible and opportunistic, often using materials in unorthodox or unusual ways, and relies a lot on trial and error. This is what the French call ‘bricolage’, the resourceful and creative deployment skills and materials to meet each challenge in an original way. Rule of thumb, far from being the enemy of management, is what managers throughout the world have relied upon to inform their action.

In contrast to the scientific knowledge that guides the engineer, the physician or the chemist, managers are often informed by a different type of know-how. This is sometimes referred to a ‘narrative knowledge’ or ‘experiential knowledge’, the kind of knowledge that comes from experience and resides in stories and narratives of how real people in the real world dealt with real life problems, successfully or unsuccessfully. Narrative knowledge is what we use in everyday life to deal with awkward situations, as parents, as consumers, as patients and so forth. We seek the stories of people in the same situation as ourselves and try to learn from them. As the Chinese proverb says "A wise man learns from experience; a wiser man learns from the experience of others".

Narrative knowledge usually takes the form of organization stories (see organization story and organizational storytelling
Organizational storytelling
Organizational storytelling is an emerging discipline in the study of management, strategy and organization studies. As an emerging discipline it is contested ground, with some academics describing it is a purposeful tool to be used by business people, and others describing it is a way of...

). These stories enable participants to make sense of the difficulties and challenges they face; by listening to stories, members of organizations learn from each other's experiences, adapt the recipes used by others to address their own difficulties and problems. Narrative knowledge is not only the preserve of managers. Most professionals (including doctors, accountants, lawyers, business consultants and academics) rely on narrative knowledge, in addition to their specialist technical knowledge, when dealing with concrete situations as part of their work. More generally, narrative knowledge represents an endlessly mutating reservoir of ideas, recipes and stories that are traded mostly by word or mouth on the internet. They are often apocryphal and may be inaccurate or untrue - yet, they have the power to influence people's sense making and actions.

Individual learning

Learning
Learning
Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...

 by individuals in an organizational context is the traditional domain of human resources, including activities such as: training, increasing skills, work experience, and formal education. Given that the success of any organization is founded on the knowledge
Knowledge
Knowledge is a familiarity with someone or something unknown, which can include information, facts, descriptions, or skills acquired through experience or education. It can refer to the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject...

 of the people who work for it, these activities will and, indeed, must continue. However, individual learning is only a prerequisite to organizational learning.

Others take it farther with continuous learning. The world is orders of magnitude more dynamic than that of our parents, or even when we were young. Waves of change are crashing on us virtually one on top of another. Change has become the norm rather than the exception. Continuous learning throughout one’s career has become essential to remain relevant in the workplace. Again, necessary but not sufficient to describe organizational learning.

What does it mean to say that an organization learns? Simply summing individual learning is inadequate to model organizational learning. The following definition outlines the essential difference between the two: A learning organization actively creates, captures, transfers, and mobilizes knowledge to enable it to adapt to a changing environment. Thus, the key aspect of organizational learning is the interaction that takes place among individuals.

A learning organization
Learning organization
A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment...

 does not rely on passive or ad hoc process in the hope that organizational learning will take place through serendipity or as a by-product of normal work. A learning organization actively promotes, facilitates, and rewards collective learning.

Creating (or acquiring) knowledge can be an individual or group activity. However, this is normally a small-scale, isolated activity steeped in the jargon and methods of knowledge workers. As first stated by Lucilius
Lucilius
Lucilius is the nomen of the gens Lucilia of ancient Rome.*Gaius Lucilius, satirist 2nd century BC. Lucilius was credited by Horace and others with originating the genre of satire.*Lucilius Junior, friend and correspondent of the younger Seneca....

 in the 1st century BC, “Knowledge is not knowledge until someone else knows that one knows.”

Capturing individual learning is the first step to making it useful to an organization. There are many methods for capturing knowledge and experience, such as publications, activity reports, lessons learned, interviews, and presentations. Capturing includes organizing knowledge in ways that people can find it; multiple structures facilitate searches regardless of the user’s perspective (e.g., who, what, when, where, why,and how). Capturing also includes storage in repositories, databases, or libraries to ensure that the knowledge will be available when and as needed.

Transferring knowledge requires that it be accessible to as needed. In a digital world, this involves browser-activated search engines to find what one is looking for. A way to retrieve content
Content (media and publishing)
In media production and publishing, content is information and experiences that may provide value for an end-user/audience in specific contexts. Content may be delivered via any medium such as the internet, television, and audio CDs, as well as live events such as conferences and stage performances...

 is also needed, which requires a communication and network infrastructure. Tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge
Tacit knowledge is knowledge that is difficult to transfer to another person by means of writing it down or verbalising it. For example, stating to someone that London is in the United Kingdom is a piece of explicit knowledge that can be written down, transmitted, and understood by a recipient...

 may be shared through communities of practice or consulting experts. Knowledge needs to be presented in a way that users can understand it, and it must suit the needs of the user to be accepted and internalized.

Mobilizing knowledge involves integrating and using relevant knowledge from many, often diverse, sources to solve a problem or address an issue. Integration requires interoperability
Interoperability
Interoperability is a property referring to the ability of diverse systems and organizations to work together . The term is often used in a technical systems engineering sense, or alternatively in a broad sense, taking into account social, political, and organizational factors that impact system to...

 standards among various repositories. Using knowledge may be through simple reuse of existing solutions that have worked previously. It may also come through adapting old solutions to new problems. Conversely, a learning organization learns from mistakes or recognizes when old solutions no longer apply. Use may also be through synthesis; that is creating a broader meaning or a deeper level of understanding. Clearly, the more rapidly knowledge can be mobilized and used, the more competitive an organization.

An organization must learn so that it can adapt to a changing environment. Historically, the life-cycle of organizations typically spanned stable environments between major socioeconomic changes. Blacksmiths who didn’t become mechanics simply fell by the wayside. More recently, many Fortune 500 companies of two decades ago no longer exist. Given the ever-accelerating rate of global-scale change, the more critical learning and adaptation become to organization relevance, success, and ultimate survival.

Organizational learning is a social process, involving interactions among many individuals leading to well-informed decision making. Thus, a culture that learns and adapts as part of everyday working practices is essential. Reuse must equal or exceed reinvent as a desirable behavior. Adapting an idea must be rewarded along with its initial creation. Sharing to empower the organization must supersede controlling to empower an individual.

Clearly, shifting from individual to organizational learning involves a non-linear transformation. Once someone learns something, it is available for their immediate use. In contrast, organizations need to create, capture, transfer, and mobilize knowledge before it can be used. Although technology supports the latter, these are primarily social processes within a cultural environment, and cultural change, however necessary, is a particularly challenging undertaking.

Learning organization

The work in Organizational Learning can be distinguished from the work on a related concept, the learning organization
Learning organization
A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment...

. This later body of work, in general, uses the theoretical findings of organizational learning (and other research in organizational development, system theory, and cognitive science
Cognitive science
Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

) in order to prescribe specific recommendations about how to create organizations that continuously and effectively learn. This practical approach was championed by Peter Senge
Peter Senge
Peter Michael Senge is an American scientist and director of the Center for Organizational Learning at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He is known as author of the book The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization from 1990...

 in his book The Fifth Discipline
The Fifth Discipline
The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization is a book by Peter Senge focusing on group problem solving using the systems thinking method in order to convert companies into learning organizations...

.

Diffusion of innovations

Diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of innovations
Diffusion of Innovations is a theory that seeks to explain how, why, and at what rate new ideas and technology spread through cultures. Everett Rogers, a professor of rural sociology, popularized the theory in his 1962 book Diffusion of Innovations...

 theory explores how and why people adopt new ideas, practices and products. It may be seen as a subset of the anthropological concept of diffusion and can help too explain how ideas are spread by individuals, social networks and organizations.

See also

  • Air-defense experiments
    Air-defense experiments
    The Air-defense experiments were a series of management science experiments performed between 1952 and 1954 by RAND Corporation's Systems Research Laboratory...

     - studies on training groups to perform complex decision operations
  • Action learning
    Action learning
    Action learning is an educational process whereby the participant studies their own actions and experience in order to improve performance. Learners acquire knowledge through actual actions and repetitions, rather than through traditional instruction....

  • Activity theory
    Activity theory
    Activity theory is a psychological meta-theory, paradigm, or theoretical framework, with its roots in Lev Semyonovich Vygotsky's cultural-historical psychology. Its founders were Alexei N...

  • After Action Review
    After Action Review
    An after action review is a structured review or de-brief process for analyzing what happened, why it happened, and how it can be done better, by the participants and those responsible for the project or event. After-action reviews in the formal sense were originally developed by the U.S...

  • Ambidextrous organization
    Ambidextrous organization
    Organizational ambidexterity refers to an organization’s ability to be efficient in their management of today’s business and also adaptable for coping with tomorrow’s changing demands.- Origin and Development :...

  • Community of innovation
  • Community of practice
    Community of practice
    A community of practice is, according to cognitive anthropologists Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a group of people who share an interest, a craft, and/or a profession. The group can evolve naturally because of the members' common interest in a particular domain or area, or it can be created...

  • Collaborative learning
    Collaborative learning
    Collaborative learning is a situation in which two or more people learn or attempt to learn something together. Unlike individual learning, people engaged in collaborative learning capitalize on one another’s resources and skills...

  • Educational psychology
    Educational psychology
    Educational psychology is the study of how humans learn in educational settings, the effectiveness of educational interventions, the psychology of teaching, and the social psychology of schools as organizations. Educational psychology is concerned with how students learn and develop, often focusing...

  • Knowledge capture
  • Knowledge management
    Knowledge management
    Knowledge management comprises a range of strategies and practices used in an organization to identify, create, represent, distribute, and enable adoption of insights and experiences...

  • Knowledge organization
    Knowledge organization
    The term knowledge organization designates a field of study related to Library and Information Science . In this meaning, KO is about activities such as document description, indexing and classification performed in libraries, databases, archives etc...



  • Knowledge transfer
    Knowledge transfer
    Knowledge transfer in the fields of organizational development and organizational learning is the practical problem of transferring knowledge from one part of the organization to another part of the organization. Like Knowledge Management, Knowledge transfer seeks to organize, create, capture or...

  • Learning
    Learning
    Learning is acquiring new or modifying existing knowledge, behaviors, skills, values, or preferences and may involve synthesizing different types of information. The ability to learn is possessed by humans, animals and some machines. Progress over time tends to follow learning curves.Human learning...

  • learning network
  • Learning organization
    Learning organization
    A learning organization is the term given to a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. Learning organizations develop as a result of the pressures facing modern organizations and enables them to remain competitive in the business environment...

  • Organizational memory
    Organizational memory
    Organizational memory is the accumulated body of data, information, and knowledge created in the course of an individual organization’s existence...

  • Organizational engineering
    Organizational engineering
    - Theory :Organizational Engineering is a form of Organizational Development. It was created by Dr. Gary Salton of Professional Communications, Inc. It has been developing continuously since 1994 on both theoretical and applied levels....

  • Sociomapping
    Sociomapping
    Sociomapping is a method developed for processing and visualization of relational data . It uses the data-landscape metaphor, creating a visually coded picture resembling a map that can be interpreted with similar rules as navigation in the landscape...

  • Value network
    Value network
    A value network is a business analysis perspective that describes social and technical resources within and between businesses. The nodes in a value network represent people . The nodes are connected by interactions that represent tangible and intangible deliverables. These deliverables take the...

  • Value network analysis
    Value network analysis
    Value network analysis is a methodology for understanding, using, visualizing, optimizing internal and external value networks and complex economic ecosystems. The methods include visualizing sets of relationships from a dynamic whole systems perspective...

  • Onboarding
    Onboarding
    Onboarding, also known as organizational socialization, refers to the mechanism through which new employees acquire the necessary knowledge, skills, and behaviors to become effective organizational members and insiders...

  • Text and Conversation Theory
    Text and conversation theory
    Text and conversation is a theory in the field of organizational communication illustrating how communication makes up an organization. In the theory's simplest explanation, an organization is created and defined by communication. communication “is” the organization and the organization exists...


Further reading

  • Amidon, Debra M. (1997) Innovation Strategy for the Knowledge Economy. Butterworth-Heinman, Newton, MA. p19
  • Argote, L. (1999). Organizational learning: Creating, retaining and transferring knowledge. Norwell, MA, Kluwer Academic Publishers.
  • Argyris, C. (1990), Overcoming Organizational Defences: Facilitating Organizational Learning, Allyn & Bacon, Boston.
  • Bray, D. (2007). "Literature Review - Knowledge Management Research at the Organizational Level", Social Science Research Network.
  • Easterby-Smith, M. and M. A. Lyles (editors). (2003). The Blackwell Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Oxford, Blackwell Publishing.
  • Garvin, D. A. (2000), Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work, Harvard Business School Press, Boston, MA.
  • May, Paul (2000) The Business of E-Commerce. Cambridge university press, New York. p7

External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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