Replying to LO30282 --
Dear Keith, dear LOŽers
Keith wrote after my question:
> >Is there an eco system where a LO could live, grow and survive?
>
> All organizations that survive are "learning organizations". They must
> display the characteristics of living systems. Some appear to be better at
> it than others. This is the challenge of organizational learning (and
> knowledge management): to help organizations better fulfil their natural
> tendencies to generate and capture commonly-held and accepted knowledge.
> Even so called government and corporate bureaucracies are learning. It is
> just that most of the learning has already happened in view of those in
> charge, and the acceptable behaviours have been documented.
Keith, if a virus or unicellular could think, will it think that it is the
highest step in the evolutionary ladder? It even has an amazing capacity
to mutate and anticipate to new situations. These ceatures have everything
in it, that single cell could live on its own, it seems more complex than
the cells in e.g. our bodies. Our cells are not able to survive without a
whole bunch of other cells.
If something could survive and reproduce, does it mean that it is the
highest order? I donŽt think so. The fact that some sort of organisation
could survive, live, reproduce, or learn, does not mean that it is a LO.
As I have explained in my original contribution, it might even be so that
a LO is not able to survive, think of the medieval guilds.
> >2. The second possible reason why LO's are rare.
>
> >A LO emerges from an OO (Ordinary Organisation). It is an evolutionary
> >feature. The phenomenon of evolution is very interesting, but not simple
> >to comprehend. Evolution in nature is a result, it has no specific goal
> >or purpose. It happens.
>
> >...What do you think?
>
> Here are some selected quotes from the earlier dialogues:
>
> "A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating,
> acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behaviour to
> reflect new knowledge and insights."
This definition comes close to the description of the World Wide Web. Is
the WWW a LO? (I think that the problem with this definition is is that
the terms knowledge and information seem synonymous).
Keith, I do not care so much about definitions. Definitions suggest that
our world is composed of sharp boundaries and that everything could be
placed in a single box. It is the world of the excluded middle.
If I think of the emergence of a LO from a OO, I have something in mind
like the vortex which suddenly develops from a laminar flow (the emptying
bath picture). And that sudden change to a more complex internal structure
and internal organisation is not clearly stressed in the descriptions you
quoted.
But before we enter inside the LOŽs, my intention was to concentrate for a
while to the ŽidealŽ environment for a LO.
Thank you for stimulating my thoughts.
Leo Minnigh
--"leo minnigh" <minnigh@dds.nl>
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