Replying to LO29590 --
Dear Organlearners,
Mark McElroy <mmcelroy@vermontel.net> writes:
>To the extent that any organization takes action on the basis
>of collective learning at some underlying level, the organization
>can be said to be learning -- or be said to be a learning
>organization. This is especially true when the underlying
>learners have the authority to commit the organization to
>specifc courses of action. They are its surrogate learners.
(snip)
Greetings dear Mark,
I think that our dialogue on this topic is now entering a critical stage.
Consider as example universities. They are organisations and their primary
activity is learning. Individual learning (Personal Mastery) and
organisational learning (Team Learning) abound. They are organisations
which learn. But does this make them Learning Organisations according to
the description of Peter Senge? Let us explore it.
In my mother tongue Afrikaans we have a powerful grammatical construction.
For example, when we write "yellow root", we refer to any root having the
property (colour) yellow. But when we write "yellowroot", we indicate a
certain species of plants which has yellow roots as one of its
distinguishing features.
Another example is "racing car" and "racingcar". A "racing car" is an
ordinary vehicle used in a racing event. But a "racingcar" is a car built
specifically for racing events and not ordinary commuting. I can give
fellow learners hundreds of similar examples, but i hope these examples
will suffice. The grammatical construction can be articulated as
"concatenate where you must, but write separately where you can."
Should i use this construction in English too, "learning organisation" and
"learningorganisation" would refer to two different things. Among all
"learning organisations" there will be a particular kind which can be
identified as "learningorganisations". Peter Senge's Fifth Discipline
concerns "learningorganisations" and not "learning organisations". In
English "learning organisation" (two words, the first predicating the
second) and "learning organisation" (two words, but one concept) are two
different things. Unfortunately, English does not have a grammatical
construction indicating this difference such as in Afrikaans.
There is a certain technicality in Afrikaans concatenation which i have to
point out. In Afrikaans we would write "lerende organisasie" (the gerund
"lerende"=learning predicating "organisasie") and "leerorganisasie" (the
infinitive "leer"=learn concatenated with "organisasie"). The literal
eqiuvalent in English would be "learning organisation" (organisation in
which any learning happens) and "learnorganisation" (organisation in which
a special kind of learning described by Senge happens). So, should English
speaking people learn from Afrikaans speaking people, they would refer to
Senge's concept as a "learnorganisation" and not a "learning
organisation".
[But for this to happen, people speaking English and Afrikaans will first
have to become a "learnorganisation" rather than staying a "learning
organisation" as is presently the case. Explore the metanoia of a
"learnorganisation" by writing "learnorganisation" when you mean it.]
>The idea that an organization either is or isn't a learning
>organization is the dualistic claim I'm critiquing here. All
>organizations learn, I argue -- only to varying degrees.
>Our job as practitioners is to make interventions aimed at
>enhancing the quality of OL, not to take organizations that
>are not learning and convert them into ones that are, for
>there are no such organizations. Anyway, that's my claim.
Dear Mark, in view of what i have written above, there is also a third
possibility besides the (1) yes/no LO -- dialectical logic and (2) varying
degree LO -- fuzzy logic. This possibility is (3) LO and not L+O -- new
meta-logic. I cannot make any claims except in terms of my experiences
which i have thought well over. I was involved in two "tacit LOs" and is
presently still involved in a "tacit LO". All three followed possibility
(3). Several year ago i began to prepare for a fourth "tacit LO" and
early this year i began organising it, again according to possibility (3).
So far it is functioning better that even to the best of my expectations.
[A "tacit LO" is an organisation which is operating according to Senge's
descriptions, but which is completely unaware of his descriptions.]
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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