Hi Doc,
In a message dated 12/12/97 1:44:48 PM EST, you write:
>Schon and Argyris present a wonderful examination of this dichotomy of
>thinking among practitioners and academics in their book, Organizational
>Learning II....They go on to define ways in which individuals "act on
>behalf" of organizations, creating what they call "collectivities" of
>inquiry, thought and action.
My colleagues at the Ivey School of Business put it this way:
"Organizations "learn" through their individual members...Understanding
the process through which groups learn, how they integrate individual
schema into shared belief structures that direct coordinated action is
important. Individuals learn within a context. In formal organizations an
important part of this context is the other members of the organizational
community...Individual learnings and shared understandings developed by
groups become, over time, institutionalized as organization artifacts:
formal relationships, structures and systems. Once established these
artifacts become part of the context that affects learning within the
organization." (Crossan, Lane, Rush, White, "Learning in Organizations",
Unpublished paper, 1992)
In the beginning, first time around, organizational learning is the the
process of organizing whereby individual know-how becomes
institutionalized. After that has happened, and the context has changed,
organizational learning has to take into account how new learning is
facilitated at the indivdiual level and how the old learning is displaced
at levels above. I have argued that it takes a shock or disturbance of
some kind to achieve this in mature organizations.
Hope that this helps,
David Hurst
Speaker, Consultant and Writer on Management
Phone: (905) 338-2628
Fax: (905) 338-7917
--DHurst1046 <DHurst1046@aol.com>
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