Rethinking Strategic Learning

Russ Vince

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2004
• eBook ISBN: 9781134419753
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Russ Vince examines learning as both a social and a strategic process, invariably linked to emotions and politics that are mobilized by attempts at learning and organizing. He makes a substantial contribution to theories of organizational learning and develops new ideas about critical reflection and collective leadership.The author outlines a criti

1 An introduction

This book is a collection of ideas and interests that have developed over the past five years. The process of researching and writing it started when, in 1998, I took up the Chair in Organizational Learning at the University of Glamorgan. The post was sponsored for three years by Hyder plc, which was at that time the largest private company in Wales, in the United Kingdom. Hyder, which was taken over and ceased to exist in the autumn of 2000, and Hyder managers, figure to a significant extent in this book. The reason why Hyder people wanted to sponsor a Chair at the university was because they thought that a senior academic linked into the organization would be able to provide in-depth and continuous consultancy and inquiry connected to their efforts to promote learning and to manage change. I am not sure that they got exactly what they wanted. As managers and practitioners they had an idea that I would advise and consult on how approaches to learning, managing and organizing could be best applied within the organization ‘to add value’. I would help them to further conceptualize learning within the company, and especially help to devise learning strategies for the senior managers.

From my point of view as an academic, I wanted continuous and open access to the company in order to research and to write about the emotional and political dynamics of learning and organizing within Hyder. As I began to develop an action-research approach within the company I realized that here was an organization with a considerable commitment to an idea of organizational learning. Hyder had highly developed internal processes for individual and group learning. The take-up on these processes was mixed, of course, but where individuals wanted to learn they were given the opportunity – whether this was short courses, exchanges, mentoring, or qualification processes. The only explicit proviso or expectation was that such learning would inform practice, helping to create knowledge that could be applied to the benefit of the company. The Human Resource (HR) group in Hyder, alongside colleagues at the University of Glamorgan, had invented ‘the learning journey’, a flexible structure of learning for Hyder staff.

From the outset, what the HR managers in Hyder wanted me to do was to help them to develop the learning journey for the senior management within the company. They called this the ‘strategic level’ of learning (set alongside the operational and business levels of learning that were already connected to the company’s learning journey idea). They wanted to know: what could or should the learning journey look like for the senior, strategic level of managers in Hyder? This was an important question for the HR managers because senior managers were already replete with formal and informal development, and yet they were also detached from corporate ideas and initiatives to do with learning. An associated and wider issue therefore was that senior managers, if they were detached from the corporate learning journey, would not be leading and encouraging their staff through the lens of continuous, work-based learning. Clearly, they were not. Indeed, why should they when complicated issues of (for example) finance, position, personality and shareholder value dominated their everyday actions and interactions?

I do not have a convincing answer to that question and, despite my enduring personal belief in the value of learning as an organizational metaphor, I am not sure that I ever will. I am convinced that the analysis of the HR group in Hyder was correct: the behaviours and interactions of many senior managers were not strategic in the sense of leading the future direction of the company, nor were they concerned with learning other than in the sense that learning was generally seen to be ‘a good thing’ for people. Through my research within Hyder I learned that the HR group’s intuition about the importance of combining strategy and learning was insightful. In the last five years I have developed (somewhat belatedly from Hyder’s point of view!) a perspective on strategic learning that approximates to the hopes expressed for my role within Hyder, particularly by the HR staff. Since I took up the ‘Hyder Chair’ in 1998 I have written a number of papers that tell parts of the Hyder story. They are incomplete snapshots of the experience of working within complex organizational settings, and they have been revised, combined and developed within this book. Hyder is not the only organization with a role in this book – other organizations I have come into contact with since 1998 are here, but they are not named directly. Together they represent an attempt to better understand one perspective on strategic learning, and particularly to highlight aspects of the relationship between emotion, politics, learning and organizing. While these four concepts are of particular interest to me, I also want to acknowledge that they are all difficult ideas and processes to make sense of, both independently and in relation to each other.

Hyder managers’ orientation towards learning could not resolve the emotional and political turmoil that simmered under the surface of managerial relations, nor could it deal with the broader organizational issues that led Hyder towards its demise. This story unfolds throughout the book, and it reflects what I am seeking to understand and to say about the relationship between learning and organizing. One way I express this in the book is by saying that learning is at the same time both desired and avoided within organizations. My interest is in trying to understand the emotions and the politics that construct and are constructed by attempts at learning and organizing. I am also interested in finding a way to bridge academic and practitioner perspectives on learning and organizing.

The fact that the outcome of my academic task is (at least) two years late as far as its impact on the practitioners that sponsored it are concerned seems somewhat typical of the relationship between academics and practitioners. ‘They’ want quick-fix, put-it-into-action answers to complex questions and ‘we’ want to complicate answers by continually reframing them in terms of yet more questions, reflections and inquiries. One aim of this book, however, is to explore the interplay and tensions between my academic voice and the meaningfulness and accessibility of this voice in practice. Typically for an academic, I do this more by raising questions, issues and ideas than by providing answers. This is a book that opens up more things than it attempts closure on. I don’t have many prescriptions to offer, nor do I advise them, but I have tried to structure the book in a way that keeps issues and examples of practice firmly in mind while advocating critique as the key to strategic learning.

Not so long ago I made a presentation to Human Resource Development (HRD) managers and practitioners from the National Health Service (NHS) in Wales, in which I introduced and argued for several of the ideas in this book. When I had finished my presentation a member of the audience asked the question ‘What you have said is very interesting, but what do I have to do to put it into practice?’ In response, I said that if there were aspects of what I had been talking about that seemed particularly useful to develop within his organization then he, together with other staff and colleagues, might try to find ways of putting these into practice. ‘Yes, but how?’, he said. We could have gone round this circle for ever, and in one sense I think that we do. I think that it is a paradox inherent in the lived experience of organizing that ‘how-to’ prescriptions are and always will be at the same time both useful and unhelpful. But, then, I would say that. These two perspectives on the same story are inseparable. Each enriches the other, and it is clearly part of any journey that seeks to understand the relationship between learning and organizing to explore further the tensions and possibilities apparent between academics and practitioners.

I find that it is as difficult to write about learning as it is to put it into practice. However, as part of this introduction I am going to try to explain what I mean by the various words that make up the title of this book. First and foremost is learning. My favourite definition of learning is that it is ‘the capacity to doubt those things that seem unquestionably true’ (Palmer, 1979). Learning therefore involves the transformation of ideas and actions that have become an integral aspect of current understanding or practice. Learning implies a continuous need to question the knowledge one has gained before it becomes too solid or rigid, thereby affording the possibility of transformation. The things that seem unquestionably true may be facts, attachments, habits, bottom-lines, beliefs, opinions and ways of doing, but there is nothing about them that cannot be transformed. Of course, this does not mean that there is any reason to reinvent the wheel, but it alludes to the idea that there is every reason to reinvent behaviour, relations and ways of organizing. This is not to say that facts, attachments, habits, etc., are unimportant; on the contrary, they may be fundamental to personal and interpersonal health, stability and meaning. However, the pull between stability and transformation that informs learning (and the actions that make learning possible or undermine it) is a key theme of this book. I can emphasize the importance of this definition of learning by saying that it calls into question my certainty that doubt is transformational.

Two particular terms that connect to learning are important to me; these are experiential learning and organizational learning. In my mind, experiential learning can be explained by a focus on ‘here and now’ experience within learning groups or ‘learning spaces’ that have been deliberately created to entertain the possibilities of learning. My experience in such situations is varied, but the most memorable or potent ones usually arise from moments where I feel anxious but also willing to stick around to see what happens; where existing knowledge and expertise is called into question or seems to make little impact; and where others are similarly caught up in exploring what is being mutually created. In addition, there are two consistent issues that arise with experiential learning: first, the determination to make time to reflect on experience is always an integral part of the experience, and second, learning is always situated in social power relations, cultural practices, contexts and artefacts.

I am fond of the following reflection on organizational learning: ‘organizational learning is not for the faint of heart’ (Crossan, 2003). To my mind, organizational learning is not for the faint of heart because: attempts at organizational learning often mobilize personal and organizational defences against learning, powerful emotions, political strategies, and the questioning of established assumptions. The study of organizational learning is an attempt to engage with some complex and difficult issues associated with organizing. As a result of all this, organizational learning is a fascinating and an enduring metaphor, one that continually yields fresh insights about organization. In addition, however, there are frustrations about the study of organizational learning. There are many theories and perspectives that claim to inform and to represent organizational learning, some of which are poorly thought through; prescriptions for organizational learning in action are at best temporary, but new prescriptions are nevertheless being invented constantly; and almost every senior manager that I have come across has either done that and moved on, is doing it continually, has her or his own way of defining it in practice, or wants to be told how it can be done. One thing that is generally agreed about the meaning of organizational learning is that ‘it is a process’ that is connected to ‘action’ (Sun, 2003). This helps to explain why I talk more in this book about approaches to management and organizational learning such as action learning and group relations than (for example) a syllabus to explore theories and case studies of strategic learning.

The academic perspective that I have on organizational learning is connected to some particular parts of the current body of knowledge. I locate myself with other academics who believe that ‘learning … stems from the participation of individuals in social activities’ (Gherardi and Nicolini, 2001; also Elkjaer, 1999) as well as authors who are interested in the politics of organizational learning (Coopey, 1995; Coopey and Burgoyne, 2000) and emotion and organizational learning (Antonacopoulou and Gabriel, 2001; Gherardi, 2003). The contribution to organizational learning in this book is based on both broadening and bringing together political and emotional perspectives on organizational learning. Therefore, for example, I do not focus on organizations as cultures, since the word ‘culture’ does not sufficiently connote or emphasize the emotions and politics of organizing. Instead I use the word establishment. For me this word effectively represents how organization impacts on the internal worlds of individuals to legitimize or suppress emotions (and the actions that are connected to them), and how emotions generate interpersonal politics (particularly around interaction and the avoidance of interaction) that institutionalize into specific ways of structuring, behaving and working within collectives. At its most direct, my argument is that emotion is political.

A final reflection on my perspective on organizational learning is that it is connected to and informed by insights from the psychodynamic study of organizations. This theoretical approach recognizes the role of unconscious processes in the construction of both learning and organizing (Brown and Starkey, 2000). The focus within this body of theory is not individual psychology, but system psychodynamics. Individuals’ roles are part of a broader system, whatever personal histories and processes are being enacted. To put this another way, the focus is not so much on an understanding of ‘the conscious and unconscious processes underlying emotional life in an organization, as their meaning: what they have to say about the organization as a system in context’ (Armstrong, 2000). In terms of a practice of management learning and management education that relates to these ideas, the psychodynamic perspective is represented here through my discussions of Group Relations (or Institutional Transformation, as it is known in some countries). Group Relations is an approach to learning from experience that has an explicit interest in understanding the institution or establishment that is being created through the various attempts that individuals and collectives make to learn and to organize together.

The word ‘strategic’ in strategic learning signifies various things. I have already mentioned that my engagement within Hyder was focused on managers with strategic responsibilities. The word serves as a bridge between my interest in the academic theory of organizational learning and my interest in finding ways to engage and communicate with practitioners. It is often difficult to communicate the fascinating interplay between emotion and politics in the construction of organizing processes that both legitimize and inhibit learning, without alienating at least some practitioners. To talk about strategic learning doesn’t have the same effect. This is because managers recognize that learning processes are fundamentally related to future knowledge as well as to the decisions and innovations that are connected to this knowledge. The use of the word ‘strategic’ therefore connects to a more general interest practitioners have in how to try to shape what will be. In addition, linking learning and strategy provides an opportunity within the book to focus on two key organizing processes, reflection and leadership, that have considerable impact on either supporting or undermining learning processes. One further point about strategy: I am using the word ‘strategic’ to help to modify learning and to link it with organizing, not as a connection into the academic field of strategy or strategic management.

This brings me to the word ‘rethinking’. There is a certain connection in this word to previous publications that have explored management and organizational issues from a critical perspective, particularly to ‘rethinking management education’ (French and Grey, 1996). Rethinking does not claim to be new thinking, but a different take on (or from) existing thinking; it concerns the integration of knowledge/learning and critique. There is another aspect to the word that is important in this book. ‘Rethinking’ implies that reflection is an integral and continuous aspect of strategic learning both in theory and in practice. There are two particular ways in which this has been explored and expressed in the production and content of this book (in addition to how the subject has been covered). First, as an explicit part of the process of writing the book, I initiated a small conference of ten academics and practitioners who focused, over two days, on ‘the future practice of HRD’. This is consistent with what I am arguing here, that reflection is not the individual process of ‘looking back’, but an active and integral part of organizing reflection (see Vince, 2002; Chapter 7, this volume; and Reynolds and Vince, forthcoming). The results of this collective experience of ‘rethinking’ are integrated mostly into the next chapter, but also into Chapter 9. Second, after I had completed the first draft of the book, I sent it to six people, including academic colleagues, practitioners and my father, and asked them to review the book and to send me their comments. My thinking here was that there is much to be gained by getting at least some of the reviews of this book before it is published in order to provide me with the opportunity to integrate the various criticisms and suggestions into the book. To an extent this comes from my experience of reading reviews of my previous publications, where I would have liked to be able to integrate some of the reviewers’ criticisms and insights into the works. Having done this, I have learned once again the value of ‘rethinking’ my ideas with the benefit of others’ critique.

Finally, although the phase ‘human resource development’ is not in the title, the book is part of a series that discusses and develops key issues for HRD. The perspective in this book is that, both in theory and in practice, HRD needs to reconstruct itself less as a means for the training and development of people and more as an approach that supports the impact people can have on organizing, as well as being a focal point for understanding the impact of organizing on people. HRD can and should make a distinctive contribution to organizing. It is an intervention within a political system, a practice of management and leadership, with all the difficulties and contradictions that attempting to manage and to lead are likely to contain and reveal. HRD therefore needs to construct itself critically, and as an integral part of continuous learning and change. HRD practitioners have to take a lead in creating the processes, designs and developments for future business – and this means a focus on how learning and change are avoided as well as planned, on the different forms and approaches to leadership required, and on the complexities of organizational learning. The focus of HRD is on action, on developing the capacity to act, on generating credibility through action, and on influencing and working with others in situations loaded with emotion and politics.

Before I provide a summary of the various chapters I have included, there is one more brief reflection I want to include in this introduction, concerning the emotional experience of writing this book. For me, writing is a process that is full of mixed emotions. At times I am swept along with enthusiasm for and belief in what I am writing, at other times I am bogged down in the rearrangement of words and phrases that seem to make sense one minute and then, as soon as I have looked away, regress to being repetitive, obscure or without meaning. At times I cannot imagine what it was I was trying to say, at other times I cannot contain my joy at the attempt.

A brief summary of the chapters

In Chapters 2 to 6 I build and develop my thoughts and ideas about strategic learning by using examples from organizations to explore the relationship between emotion and politics. The examples demonstrate how emotional responses create political responses, which then shape the ways in which emotions are experienced and enacted both by individuals and by collectives. Such underlying emotions contribute to characteristic or habitual ways of organizing. For example, I describe the emotions mobilized through a major change initiative in Hyder. These emotions are shown to be created from and to reinforce habitual organizational responses to change initiatives. In this example, shifts in the emotions associated with a change initiative (from initial enthusiasm to eventual disappointment or cynicism) help to explain the perpetual rise and fall of change initiatives in the organization. I also explore the organizational dynamics created through repeated patterns of caution and blame within a public-sector organization (not Hyder). These dynamics inhibit processes of reflection and communication within the organization, undermining the implementation and development of agreed strategies. I return to Hyder to analyse the experiences of managers involved in the takeover of the company. These experiences reveal insights about the political and emotional relatedness of managers to strategic learning and change.

The remaining chapters shift towards key issues concerning strategic learning in practice. My focus here is initially on reflection and leadership, and reframing these as collective rather than individual processes. My interest is not on what an individual (reflective practitioner) know...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 An introduction
• 2 Strategic learning and HRD
• 3 Power, emotion and organizational learning
• 4 Emotion and strategic learning
• 5 Being taken over
• 6 The politics of imagined stability
• 7 Organizing reflection
• 8 Redefining leadership
• 9 The point of intervention
• References
• Index