Replying to LO29904 --
Dear Organlearners,
Mark McElroy <mmcelroy@vermontel.net> writes
>First, you say that "Mark thinks that a practice is by definition
>incomplete..." What I was suggesting is not that "a" practice
>is incomplete, but that "the" practice advocated by Peter is, or
>may be, incomplete. Why? Because his body of practice is
>the 5Ds, and I do not see a corresponding theory of how the
>system that the 5Ds are supposed to enhance is presumed to
>function or operate. I may have missed it, but if so I wish
>someone would point it out to me. Perhaps it's out there in
>Peter's work.
Greetings dear Mark,
Thank you for correcting me. Rick changed the topic as he wrote
>[Host's Note: I changed the subject line. It was "LO as
>paradise lost and liberation" ..Rick]
and by that i think that he has thrown us up to our chins in the "quick
sand" of thinking.
What is the nature of a theory? My own training the first five years at
university was in the faculty of science. There i got the impression that
a theory is a concise repesentation of a large body of facts obtained by
observation and measurements. It is like a map of a territory. The map is
constructed by using logic, models and/or algorithms. Theories have to be
modified whenever they make predictions which are wrong to measurements
and observations, i.e. when the map misrepresents the territory.
Four years later i began studying the humanities. Only then i began to
realise that the scientist's impression of a theory differs much from the
viewpoints of a sociologist, economist, linguist or artist. For some the
theory is an idealised situation to be attained. For others the theory is
a speculation to escape tradition. Sometimes a theory is a critique of
existing theories without giving much of an alternative. Whereas in the
natural sciences the goal is to disapprove theories, the goal is often in
the humanities to approve theories. Whereas in natural sciences laws play
a guiding role in theories, principles play the guiding role in the
theories of the humanities.
So, in the face of this immense diversity in the viewpoints on the nature
of a theory, i will not take too a definite position on what the nature of
a theory should be. I will at most admit that for me a theory ought to be
a fair map of the territory to be explored. I think that this is what you
also have in mind, but it is for you to say.
You have a valid point that Peter Senge does not give a concise theory of
the Learning Organisation. But that he ought to have done so, i cannot
agree with. For example, since 1972 i have studied dozens of theories for
the learning of the individual. All of them fall short of telling us how
an individual learns. I would today be very hesitant to propose a theory
of learning, even though i have been working on one for more than twenty
years. (It involves the Law of Entropy Production.) Fortunately, my mentor
warned me in 1972 never to confuse an observation on learning with a
theory of learning.
>This brings me to my next comment. Your said that "Senge
>took what i call "tacit LOs" and described them by way of the
>5Ds." Here you seem to be saying that Senge's theory of the
>LO is expressed by his 5Ds. But that's not true, is it? His 5Ds
>are a body of practice, not a set of descriptors for how LOs
>operate. Practicing them (the 5Ds), according to Peter, will
>help to foster and evoke OL, but there is a difference between
>"disciplines" practiced by managers or workers as a way of
>stimulating collective learning, and the manner in which the target
>system actually learns. There's an important duality here.
I have to admit that his 5Ds may be interpreted as a set of descriptors as
well as a set of "prescriptors" (for a lack of a better word). But we have
to bear in mind that his elucidation of a LO had been in the context of
managerial science. I wonder whether i myself would ever have been able to
elucidate the LO outside the context of managerial science. I have been
contemplating for twenty years my experiences of two "tacit LOs". Other
than thinking highly of it, i could not make more out of it by for example
making a theory. But once reading the Fifth Discipline, i knew what these
experiences involved.
Your phrase "Practicing them (the 5Ds), according to Peter, will help to
foster and evoke OL, ..." have something in it most crucial for me. It is
the "foster" and "evoke". I have no doubt that the 5Ds, used implicitly,
will help to prepare an OO (Ordinary Organisation) to transform into a LO.
I also have no doubt that once transformed into a LO, the 5Ds, then used
explicitly, will even be more helpful to grow up as a LO. But what i now
doubt seriously, is that the 5Ds will evoke the transformation of an OO
into a LO.
>My theory of system is what gives me confidence that my
>chosen practice will actually work. So I do not think Peter's
>5Ds are in any way a theory of OL. They are a theory of
>practice about how to enhance OL, which advocates 5
>practices, or disciplines, which should be (according to Peter)
>targeted at organizations as a way of evoking stronger OL
>performance. They are a theory of practice, not a theory of system.
The above reminds me of my own training as a teacher more than thirty
years ago. Education was presented to me as a system imbedded in the
encompassing system of culture. Learning had to fit into these systems. I
thought that i had been prepared sufficiently to teach. But after six
months of actual teaching i knew how little i had been prepared. In my
training the cart had been put in front of the horses! Those six months
gave me enough experience to realise that learning is an act using both
the learner's mind and body as the system. It was wrong to expect learning
to fit into the educational system. It should have been the other way
around.
Like IL (Individual Learning), OL (Organisational Learning) is also for me
primarily an act (practice), even though far more complex. The system in
this case of the organisation in which the OL happens. As in my own
training as a teacher, the OL should not be made to fit the organisation.
It has to be the converse -- the organisation should be made to fit the
OL. The is exactly the difference between a OO and a LO. OL has to fit the
OO, but the LO has to fit OL.
>Entropy production may be the underlying enervating force
>that drives LOs (and everything else, for that matter), but it
>still leaves us hanging in terms of not knowing what the
>characteristic dynamics, or operating behaviors of OL happen
>to be. To say that a system is driven by entropy production
>is not to describe its characteristic behaviors.
As I have indicated over many years on this list, entropy production is
far more complex than what one would normally expect. For example, i
argued about a year ago that the fitness landscapes of Kauffman are
nothing but entropy landscapes.
>Here, I rely on a blend of CAS theory and Popperian
>epistemology. My theory of practice then takes off from
>there. Thus, it is 'grounded' in a clearly articulated theory
>of system. Insofar as I can tell, the 5Ds are not.
Mark, it took me many years of questioning and contemplating to free
myself from the premiss that the system comes before the practice. It is
known in philosophy as the ontological premiss. The converse is known as
the ontogenical premiss, i.e., the practice defines the system. Today i
think of the system's "being" and its "becoming" as a complementary pair
of which i do not try to favour the one above the other. Nevertheless, i
have to admit that for me there is an order between the two, first the
"becoming" and then the "being" as its outcome. I consider both as
essential to the system.
This makes me think. Should the 5Ds reflect the practice of a LO, then the
next ordered step would be to create the theory of a LO rather than the
other way around as you argue. However, and this is most exciting, your
argument is actually contributing to the making of the theory of a LO
following up the already existing practice of the LO.
>The life cycle theory of system I refer to above can be
>viewed at the following link:
> http://www.macroinnovation.com/images/KnowledgeLife7.23.02.pdf
Thank you. I see in the second phase (knowledge integration) a bit of
Kauffman (SKC), a bit of Popper (FKC) and a bit of Goedel (UKC).
Where would you put Michael Polanyi's "tacit knowing" in your theory of
system?
>No, a theory of practice must be grounded in a theory
>of system. Else, how are we supposed to evaluate
>competing theories? This is not too much to ask, I think.
As I have explained before, it is not too much asked in ontological
thinking. But it is too much asked for somebody who thinks ontogenically.
It becomes an issue of competing paradigms. As for me, i prefer neither
these two kinds of thinking, but one which transcends them both.
>For me, At (and Don), the distinction I'm making between
>and 'theory of system' and a 'theory of practice' is crucial to
>this discussion. It's fundamental to our issue. I suggest we
>try to agree on the meaning and usefulness of those terms
>before we continue. Can we do that?
Dear Mark, when the philosopher Hegel made the distinction between "sein"
("being") and "werden" ("becoming") some two hundred years ago in his
Phenomenology of the Mind, who would think that the past couple of decades
it would become such a hot issue? Let us bear in mind that we have an
issue here on which the jury is still out.
For example, in his remarkable book Order out of Chaos (with co-author
Stengers) Prigogine touches upon many issues. He also uses the book as the
context for his second book From Being to Becoming. But few have he
mathematical background to follow the reasoning in this second book. Allow
me to summarise it. He argues that physics and chemistry had too much
"being" and to little "becoming" in them to uncover the complexity of
living systems. But as their "becoming" increased, so their ability to
account for biological systems.
As for me, i do not want to fragment "becoming" and "being" from each
other. I am not sure whether you want to focus with your "theory of
system" on "being" and "theory of practice" on "becoming". Should it be
the case, then i would prefer to work with both together which is nothing
else than an art. In this manner the heading of the topic should have been
"Art Underlying Organisational Learning".
It makes me wonder. How much is The Fifth Discipline an art of
organisational learning rather than the practice of organisational
learning? It is certainly a book very much unlike the others in managerial
science.
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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