Organizational Learning in the Global Context

Michael Kenney, M. Leann Brown

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351913362
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Organizational learning is an area of study that focuses on models and theories about the way an organization learns and adapts. This volume investigates how various global and regional intergovernmental organizations, states and national bureaucracies, as well as nongovernmental organizations, exploit experience and knowledge to change their understanding of the world, their policies and their behaviours. Drawing upon and synthesizing organizational, social and individual-level learning theories, the cases explicate various learning processes, learning by illicit actors, and deterrents to organizational learning. The twelve case studies of this volume consider organizational learning associated with multiple issue areas including the United States embargo against Cuba, food security in the European Union, the Russian energy sector, Colombian drug trafficking, terrorist groups, the Catholic Church, and foreign aid agencies. Based entirely on original research, the volume is relevant to international relations, comparative politics, organizational sociology and policy studies.

Chapter 1

Organizational Learning: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations

M. Leann Brown and Michael Kenney

The social sciences assign fundamental importance to learning. For example, cognitive psychologists and educators investigate how human beings acquire, organize and store information, ideas and knowledge. Anthropologists and sociologists examine how cultural values, norms and group identities are transmitted across collectives and generations. And, economists and the business community study the development of new technologies and how firms survive and become more effective over time.¹

No less than their cross-disciplinary kin, political scientists have exhibited considerable interest in learning. Dating back to Herbert Simon’s seminal formulation in 1947,² a significant body of scholarship focusing on “organizational learning,” “political learning,” “government learning,” “policy learning,” and “social learning” has emerged. Taking theoretical cues particularly from psychology, organizational sociology and economics, scholars of public policy and administration, and international and comparative politics have sought to understand how individual decision-makers, government bureaucracies, states and societies draw upon experience, information and knowledge to change their understanding of the world, their policies and their behaviors.

In spite of the breadth of this work—or perhaps because of it—learning scholars employ divergent concepts, assumptions, units of analysis and methodologies, creating discourses that speak past rather than to each other. Among these islands of learning, consensus has yet to emerge around a number of basic questions, including: a) What are organizational and social learning? Is learning best understood as a process or an outcome? What are the most appropriate units of analysis, indicators and measures of learning? b) Which internal and external factors tend to facilitate or deter organizational learning? What conditions are necessary and sufficient for learning to take place? c) How do politics and power affect learning? d) What are the implications for learning when those that learn are engaged in socially undesirable or illegal activities? These persisting theoretical uncertainties hamper empirical research in organizational and social learning, and this volume will address them within the context of several empirical studies.

Table 1.1 Summary of Case Studies

C­h­a­p­t­e­r­/­C­o­n­t­r­i­b­u­t­o­r	Theoretical Contribution	Issue Area	Unit of Analysis
2 – Brown	orders of learning	food policy	European Union
3 – Spadoni	leadership and learning	the Cuban embargo	US Congress
4 – Morgan	competing epistemic communities	energy	the Russian energy sector
5 – Zarkin	social learning; paradigmatic change	telecommunications	the US government
6 – Oliver	social learning; orders of learning	macroeconomic policy	UK government
7 – Ellis	learning “ecologies”	humanitarian intervention	US government
8 – Kenney	competitive learning; crisis and learning	illicit drugs	drug cartels, the state
9 – Jackson	illicit learners; technology	terrorism	terrorist groups
10 – Campbell	middle managers and learning; dogmatic organizations	liberation theology	the Catholic Church
11 – Eden	“framing” and learning	the physical world	corporations, various
12 – Guttieri	compartmentalization and learning	stability operations	US military
13 – Hyden	drawing the “wrong” lessons	direct foreign assistance	aid agencies

The case studies in this volume are organized to consider, firstly, several aspects of learning processes including levels or orders of learning, leaders and learning, and the role epistemic communities play in learning. We then devote a segment to social and policy learning that draws particularly on the social learning literature in comparative politics and constructivism. The third segment, Chapters 8 and 9, considers learning by illicit organizations, drugs cartels and terrorist groups, under crisis conditions. The final four chapters acknowledge the potential challenges and pitfalls involved in organizational learning under the heading “Deterrents to Learning.” Table 1.1 on page 2 summarizes the theoretical contributions of each empirical chapter. We next turn our attention to the divergent conceptualizations of organizational learning found in the literature.

Defining Organizational Learning

As was noted, organizational and social learning scholars define “learning” in disparate ways, and consequently focus their attention on different units of analysis, indicators and measures of learning. A partial accounting of this definitional and conceptual diversity includes:

•the acquisition of information, knowledge or skills,³

•the detection and correction of errors by organizational personnel,⁴

•changes in leaders’ beliefs or worldviews,⁵

•the “…process by which consensual knowledge is used to specify causal relations in new ways so that the results affect the content of public policy…”,⁶

•a change in cognitive structure; increased cognitive complexity,⁷

•changes in organizational routines and practices as a result of experience,⁸

•governments’ embracing new epistemologies or policy paradigms as a consequence of experience and social interaction,⁹

•the ability of the political system to meet new conditions,¹⁰ and,

•increased effectiveness of behavior.¹¹

Some contend that organizational learning is a metaphor or heuristic device for understanding collectives of individuals engaged in learning. For example, Mark Dodgson writes that “organizational learning…[is a] metaphor for individual learning, and the contextual and internal stimuli to learning in people…”¹² Similarly, Daniel Kim asserts that organizational learning is a metaphor derived from our understanding of individual learning, and that organizations ultimately learn via their individual members.¹³ Bo Hedberg argues, however, that

Although organizational learning occurs through individuals, it would be a mistake to conclude that organizational learning is nothing more than the cumulative results of their members’ learning. Organizations do not have brains, but they have cognitive systems and memories…. Members come and go, and leadership changes, but organizations’ memories preserve certain behaviours, mental maps, norms and values over time.¹⁴

James N. Rosenau concurs:

Collectivities are conceived as having institutionalized ways of storing information and memories of historical turning points, of transmitting goals and values, and of maintaining procedures for adapting to new challenges.¹⁵

However, given the conceptual and the methodological challenges associated with assigning causality to cognitive factors and changes in foreign policy, Jack Levy recommends that analysts content themselves with focusing on changes in beliefs and worldviews of individual organizational leaders.¹⁶ Paolo Spadoni’s (Chapter 3) and, to some extent, Michael Oliver’s (Chapter 6) contributions embrace this approach and examine changes in leaders’ beliefs as a potential source of policy change. In contrast, several chapters embrace Levitt and March’s definition of organizational learning as changes in routines and practices in response to experience, including Leann Brown, Michael Kenney and Brian Jackson in Chapters 2, 8 and 9.

Social learning analysts such as Hugh Heclo, Peter Hall, and Larry Dodd are concerned that simply examining changes in leaders’ beliefs and world views and changes in organizational routines and practices is overly parsimonious.¹⁷ They define government and policy learning as paradigmatic or epistemological change deriving from the social interactions of multiple state actors and the wider society. The Michael Zarkin, Michael Oliver and David Ellis contributions (Chapters 5–7) explore the interactions of state and societal actors that foster policy learning.

Orders of Organizational Learning

Most scholars concur that organizational and social learning varies in complexity and sophistication. Some classify small changes in organizational routines, procedures and policies in response to new information and experience as adaptation rather than “learning.” Haas describes adaptation as:

the ability to change one’s behavior so as to meet challenges in the form of new demands without having to evaluate one’s entire program and the reasoning on which that program depends for its legitimacy.¹⁸

Argyris and Schon, however, label adaptation as single loop learning, the most simple level of learning:

Organizational learning involves the detection and correction of error. When the error detected and corrected permits the organization to carry on its present policies or achieve its present objectives, then that error-detection-and-correction process is single-loop learning.¹⁹

This most simple level of learning is also referred to as evolutionary, cybernetic, tactical, operational or instrumental learning.²⁰ Argyris and Schon add two additional levels of complexity, double-loop and deutero-learning:

Double-loop learning occurs when error is detected and corrected in ways that involve the modification of an organization’s underlying norms, policies and objectives.

They regard deutero-learning or “learning how to learn” as the most sophisticated level of learning:

When an organization engages in deutero-learning its members learn about the previous context for learning. They reflect on and inquire into previous episodes of organizational learning, or failure to learn. They discover what they did that facilitated or inhibited learning, they invent new strategies for learning, they produce these strategies, and they evaluate and generalize what they have produced.²¹

Hall discusses “orders” of learning rather than embracing Argyris and Schon’s “loop”-related discourse. His conceptualization of first order learning (adjusting policy techniques and settings while holding policies constant) coincides with single loop learning, however, he provides two further distinctions within the double-loop category. Second order learning occurs if policy goals and instruments are altered as a consequence of social learning. Third order learning is present if the organization’s paradigm or worldview and overarching goals are changed. In C...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• List of Contributors
• List of Abbreviations
• 1 Organizational Learning: Theoretical and Methodological Considerations
• Part 1 Learning Processes
• Part 2 Social Learning
• Part 3 Learning by Illicit Actors
• Part 4 Deterrents to Learning
• Part 5 What Have We Learned about Organizational Learning?
• References
• Index