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PART I:
GLOBALIZATION AND LEARNING
The globalization process and the learning process are inextricably bound together. Globalization requires more flexibility in learning, more extensive learning, and more learning from sources previously overlooked by most organizations.
In our first chapter, Fulmer and Teegen review the Club of Rome’s analysis of learning. Maintenance learning is focused on trying to discover better ways of doing what we already know how to do. The authors note that maintenance learning often misses important clues about a changing world environment or emerging challenges. A new global competitor arises, assets are nationalized, a war breaks out in an emerging market, and what they define as “shock” learning occurs. But learning that occurs under the stress of a crisis seldom includes creative solutions, relying instead on proven, familiar routines from the past. Chapter 1 recommends greater emphasis on innovative or “anticipatory learning.” Anticipatory learning is participative since it cannot take place while there is an assumption that one country or business group has the answers which must be communicated to a less informed constituency. Anticipatory learning is also future oriented, focusing on what is likely or, more appropriately, possible for the future. Encouraging consideration of multiple futuristic plans enhances the firm’s readiness for an uncertain tomorrow.
Building on concepts introduced by Fulmer and Teegen, Adler and Bartholomew, and others, we suggest four major ways that global organizations approach learning (see especially Table 1.1 of Fulmer and Teegen and Exhibit 3.1 of Adler and Bartholomew, Chapter 3). This matrix can guide firms in profiling their organization’s approach to learning.
The first quadrant includes “Dominant Culture Learning.” An authority figure in a particular country says that something is to be taught or learned according to the practices and culture of a dominant headquarters. Japan and the United States have both been notorious for following this approach with their overseas subsidiaries. This is the essence of maintenance learning. The second quadrant is defined as “Decentralized Learning.” Left to their own devices, many international strategic business units or subgroups will find ways to learn effectively.
TABLE 1.1 Global Learning Matrix
| 1 Dominant Culture Learning 2 Decentralized Learning 3 Global Change Master Learning 4 Learning to Create a Synergistic Future Globally |
Fulmer and Teegen borrow from Rosabeth Moss Kanter to note that some strong global companies can be called Change Masters. They recognize the need for future-oriented change and insist that their companies learn to think or do business a new way. Thus, the third quadrant refers to “Global Change Master Learning.” The fourth approach, modeled after Fulmer and Teegen and Ohmae’s The Borderless World, is “Learning to Create a Synergistic Future Globally.” The essence of anticipatory learning is for a group of motivated individuals to work together to create a future to which they feel committed, rather than simply forecasting a future. Like Kanter’s Change Masters, they are anticipatory and committed to change, and as in the synergistic learning of Adler and Bartholomew (Chapter 3, Table 1), they are willing to work with and learn from people from many cultures simultaneously to create a culturally synergistic organization. Like Ohmae’s equidistant manager, this organization sees and thinks globally first.
A model for preparing the global organization to use anticipatory learning would include the following requirements:
1. Stimulate Anticipatory Learning Within the Organization by Introducing the Merlin Exercise or a Similar Learning Process
In Chapter 1, Fulmer and Teegen explain how the Merlin Exercise can stimulate futuristic thinking and encourage participants to make quantum leaps in strategic planning.
2. Analyze Cultural Differences Between the Home and Host Countries Within the Global Organization
Chapter 2, by Rosabeth Moss Kanter and Richard Ian Corn, provides an in-depth look at difficulties of managerial and organizational learning within a critical change context, such as mergers of multicultural firms. The authors found that structural and technical differences in merged organizations may override differences of culture or national origin. Further, they learned that people of different national cultures who interact can be “remarkably adaptable.” The ease of implementation of mergers across cultures depends on, among other things, mutual respect and efficient communication based on that respect, plus the willingness of the acquirer to invest in continued performance of the acquired firm.
3. Develop the Ability to Manage Globally Competent People by Developing a Global or Transnational Human Resource Management Function
Nancy Adler and Susan Bartholomew, in “Managing Globally Competent People” (Chapter 3), suggest that transnational firms need transnational human resource management systems. The mindsets or illusions that prevent this are outlined by the authors. Most can be recognized as symptoms of maintenance learning.
4. Extend and Maintain Global Organizational Learning Through Cross-Cultural Teams
Dealing with cross-cultural mergers and developing transnational human resource management can be improved by using effective team management. While chapters 3 and 4 emphasize the importance of cultural differences, it is clear that learning in such complex environments can be improved by well-organized international teams. Davison (Chapter 4) outlines an effective approach to international team building.
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Chapter 1
Anticipatory Learning for Global Organizations
Robert M. Fulmer
Hildy Teegen
The 1990s have been described as the “decade of learning corporations.” Fortune magazine has suggested “the most successful corporation of the 1990s will be something called ‘learning organization,’ a consummately adaptive enterprise.” A host of articles and books has addressed the issue. Senior executives including Ray Stata, CEO of Analog Devices, and Arie de Geus of Royal Dutch/Shell have proposed that organizational learning may be the source of the “only sustainable competitive advantage” (Stata, 1988). A new “special interest group” at the Academy of Management focuses academic research on this increasingly important and popular theme and related new academic journals are titled The Learning Organization and The Journal of Managerial Learning (Senge and Fulmer, 1993).
THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING IMPERATIVE
One group of authors refers to organizational learning as “sustained improvement by performance” (Hays, Wheelwright, and Clark, 1988, p. 21) Similarly, Stata (1988) cites reductions achieved in his firm in product defects, manufacturing cycle time, and late delivery percentage as indicators of learning.
Organizational learning must extend beyond improvements in performance. These improvements may be the short-lived consequences of fortuitous circumstances rather than evidence of enduring changes in thinking and behavior.
Global organizations develop mental models of the “way things are that are shared within and across countries.” As Stata (1988, p. 21) puts it: “Organizations can learn only as fast as the slowest link …. Change is blocked unless all of the major decision makers learn together, come to share beliefs and goals, and are committed to take actions necessary for change.”
Botkin and Matthews (1992) of the Club of Rome, a futuristic think tank, conducted several important studies focused on the significance of learning as a positive alternative to the excesses associated with unbridled economic and population growth (Botkin, 1979). Reflecting on the study, Barney (1991) concluded that much progress depletes finite resources, but applying or sharing knowledge consumes nothing; new resources are in fact created through the learning process.
ALL LEARNING IS NOT EQUAL
Learning has been greatly facilitated by the systems dynamics perspective pioneered at MIT (Senge, 1995). This perspective parallels the distinction between single-loop and double-loop learning described by Chris Argyris of Harvard and Donald Schon of MIT (Argyris and Schon, 1978). They emphasize the distinction between adjustments in behavior that occur within a feedback structure, which they call single-loop learning, and changes in the structure itself, which they refer to as double-loop learning. Single-loop learning is analogous to the continual adjustments made by a thermostat in regulating temperature. Learning about a structure, however, which leads to changes in the structure itself, is within the spirit of double-loop learning. Within the feedback structure created by existing information flows and operating policies, people are learning in the sense of modifying decisions and actions as new conditions develop. When global organizations merely adjust their inventories, personnel, or facilities across countries, they are engaging in single-loop learning. On the other hand, when they change the mental models that executives and key managers use as a basis for operating, or change their human resource and learning systems to become truly global, or what Adler and Bartholomew (Chapter 3) call “transnational”—they are engaging in double-loop learning.
In No Limits to Learning, Botkin (1979) and his associates described three types of organizational learning: maintenance learning, shock learning, and anticipatory learning. Maintenance learning, the most common, is focused on trying to discover more “correct” ways of doing what we already know. The United Parcel Service, for example, improved its competitive position by abandoning its former emphasis on maintenance learning, efficiency and reliability, in favor of promoting more anticipatory learning to improve its understanding of customers, and thus promote customer service.
Maintenance learning quite often misses important clues about a changing environment or emerging challenges. As a result, situations change, crises arise, and shock learning is introduced. Learning that occurs under the stress of a crisis can seldom anticipate fully the long-term consequences of managers’ reactions. Research has shown that under conditions of high stress most individuals fail to exercise creativity, relying on proven routines from the past (Bartwick, 1991). A few years ago, when Michelin first attacked the market share of Goodyear auto tires in the United States, Goodyear tried matching the reduced prices of Michelin. Shock learning came with the realization they would have to reduce prices across a huge market share, while Michelin’s initiative in the United States, required low margins on only a sliver of market. This caused Goodyear to search for better solutions. They quickly realized that a more effective retaliation was to enter Europe and reduce prices below the equivalent price/value of Michelin. After the Goodyear move, Michelin stopped their price-cutting in the United States.
As a result of the limitations associated with maintenance and shock learning, the Club of Rome recommends greater emphasis on innovative or anticipatory learning. Anticipatory learning would have led Goodyear, like IBM, to realize that the best defense for a home market attack is to be dominant in other countries early. This type of learning involves two challenges for organizations and managers. Anticipatory learning is participative and it is future oriented.
Peter Senge (1995) has noted the importance of informal network creation and maintenance for promoting participation in organizational learning. Organizational as well as national culture differences undoubtedly affect a firm’s ability to encourage participation for organizational learning. Hofstede’s study of over fifty IBM subsidiary offices worldwide highlights four defining dimensions of national culture: Uncertainty Avoidance, Individualism-Collectivism, Masculinity-Femininity, and Power Distance. Nations that are highly collectivist (e.g., Japan, Mexico) will embrace more readily a participative environment in their organizations (Hofstede, 1991). Even within highly individualistic countries (e.g., the United States), however, examples exist of firms with very consensual organization. Nations with low uncertainty avoidance (Singapore) tend to embrace the future and its potential; those with high uncertainty avoidance (Portugal) seek to protect against future outcomes.
THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEARNING MATRIX
Anticipatory learning involves two characteristics (future orientation and participation); a two-by-two matrix captures the essence of the different approaches. This matrix guides firms in profiling their organizational learning.
There are four major ways that organizations approach learning. The first can be referred to as “Because I say so.” An authority figure says that something is to be done (or avoided) but concludes that the explanations of the reasons are too cumbersome for the learner to understand. This is the essence of maintenance learning. In many instances it is appropriate.
The second quadrant can be called “As you like it.” Left to their own devices, many individuals and organizations will find ways to do things better. This is especially true in decentralized operations where performance is measured according to growth objectives, return on investment, or some other quantifiable measure.
To borrow from Rosabeth Moss Kanter, some strong CEOs can be called “Change masters” (Kanter, 1983). They recognize the need for future-oriented change and insist that their companies learn to think or do business a new way. Kotter and Heskitt (1992), in agreement with this viewpoint, conclude that significant, appropriate cultural change is unlikely to take place without strong leadership.
FIGURE 1.1. How Organizations Learn
The fourth approach to learning is “Creating our future.” The essence of anticipatory learning is for a group of motivated individuals to work together, not to forecast, but to create a future to which they feel committed. In 1992, when Ralph Larsen was planning an executive learning effort for the top 700 executives at Johnson & Johnson, the world’s largest health care company, he resisted pressure to articulate the theme of the conf...
