Organizational Learning and the Learning Organization

Developments in Theory and Practice

Mark Easterby-Smith, Luis Araujo, John Burgoyne, Mark Easterby-Smith, Luis Araujo, John Burgoyne

• Publisher: SAGE Publications Ltd
• Year: 1999
• Print ISBN: 9780761959168, 9780761959151
• eBook ISBN: 9781446227152
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

`The introduction chaper by Mark Easterby-Smith and Luis Araujo introduces the reader to the unresolved issues with which the field is still grappling today.... All in all, this is an interesting and useful book for both researcher and manager alike. First, and perhaps most importantly, the book incorporates multiple perspectives on learning - the psychological, sociological and the philosophical... Second, the book is neither purely theory driven, nor purely empirically driven. Theoretical contributions are complemented by empirical studies which help to illustrate the application of the theoretical contructs. I suspect that this would be of immense value to the practicing manager. Finally, the book provides a critical commentary on the state of the field in a nice compact way which should enhance its value to scholars in this area... a book which is both useful and interesting? - Organisational Studies

`[M]ost importantly, the book incorporates multiple perspectives on learning - the psychological, sociological and the philosohical... provides a critical commentary on the state of the field in a nice, compact way which should enhance its value to scholars? - Organization Studies

`A valuable resource for academics and practitioners in management and corporate strategy, as well as those involved in mangement training and development? - European Foundation for Management Development

`This is a particularly interesting and useful work because it combines some chapters which deal primarily in concepts or indeed theories, and others which describe the experiences of trying to carry out the practices involved in creating both/either organisational learning and/or the learning organisation? -Industrial and Commercial Training

?The editors? overall assessment is that there has been insufficient dialogue between the two camps of action research and theorizing.... As a contribution to mapping this divided house, the text is an apt illustration of these problems. The editor?s overview is of interest...? - Stephen Gibb, University of Strathclyde, MCB University Press

The debates surrounding concepts of `organizational learning? and the `learning organization? receive a welcome synthezis in this book. International experts explore the links between the two fields of enquiry, which hitherto, despite their intersecting concerns, have represented separate constituencies, literatures and perspectives.

The book provides a much-needed integrated framework of concepts and theories which draws on current insights from management cognition, theories of knowledge and learning, management practice and work psychology.

PART ONE

REVIEW AND CRITIQUES

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2 Organizational Learning – Desperately Seeking Theory?

Christiane Prange

Organizations are reeling from discontinuities created by a growing level of globalization, heightened volatility, hypercompetition, demographic changes, and the explosion of knowledge. Ever faster means of communication alter today’s business climate and it is becoming more evident every day that we cannot anticipate the environment of tomorrow. Recently, ideas such as ‘organizational learning’ (Garratt, 1987; Garvin, 1993; Probst and Büchel, 1994) and the ‘learning organization’ have been proposed to increase the ‘knowledge intensity’ of companies, a prerequisite for coping with the previously mentioned trends (Starbuck, 1992; Tenkasi and Boland, 1996). This, in turn, has led authors to think about the ‘management of knowledge’ (von Krogh and Venzin, 1995), which gives credence to the fact that any occupation with learning requires some substantiation of the essence of the learning process, that is, of knowledge.

To classify knowledge along different distinctions and functions, and then think about possible methods of intervention, is a valuable effort. However, this is not the objective of this chapter. Nor will I participate in the equally fruitful discussion about the ‘learning organization’ which takes a similar ‘hands-on focus’ on action perspectives, and whose major proponents have deliberately tried to distinguish it from the concept of ‘organizational learning’. In this chapter I will focus on ‘organizational learning’, which, in contrast to the ‘learning organization’, refers to processes of individual and collective learning – both within and between organizations (Dodgson, 1993; Prange, 1996; Wiegand, 1996). Although we are not dealing with a completely new topic, the popularity of organizational learning has continuously increased, and recently its shift to the centre stage of organization theory has been suggested (Glynn et al., 1994; Miner and Mezias, 1996).

If we examine the history of organizational learning we note that the concept was mentioned in the early 1950s in reference to the birth and death of public administrations. Especially in the early 1960s, researchers became attracted by the idea of organizational learning (Argyris, 1964; Cangelosi and Dill, 1965; Cyert and March, 1963). But it was only in the late 1970s that a sparse, but regular stream of articles and books began to flow (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Duncan and Weiss, 1979; March and Olsen, 1975). During the 1980s some 50 articles were published in academic journals, which can be compared with over 184 papers (written by 149 different authors, or groups of authors), appearing thus far in the 1990s (cf. Crossan and Guatto, 1996).¹

The multitude of ways in which organizational learning has been classified and used purports an ‘organizational learning jungle’ which is becoming progressively dense and impenetrable. As Mackenzie (1994: 251) notes, ‘The main conclusion is that after 30 years of effort, the scientific community devoted to organizational learning has not produced discernible intellectual progress.’

On the other hand, if the various communities interested in organizational learning have not yet resolved the different definitions and conceptualizations of organizational learning, one may ask whether perhaps they cannot, or even do not intend to do so. This, at least, is what Thatchenkery (1996: 5) formulates sarcastically: ‘In a world where action rather than reflection is valued, even the reflective learning organization apparently has to race at a pace that leaves little room for deliberation.’ One might just as well ask for any visible progress in theory development in the field of organizational learning.

Starting from these introductory remarks I propose that in organizational learning research theory building is impeded by an excessive concern for ‘usefulness’ to the practising manager. I suppose that many theorists, implicitly or explicitly, adopt a meta-theoretical position that deals with an objective world about which they can make valid judgements; the researchers’ task then is to develop knowledge that finally represents this external world. In terms of the philosophy-of-science literature this has been referred to as a realist ontology and a positivist epistemology. I should mention at this point that I do not assume that organizational learning theorists follow a ‘naive’ realism that evaluates knowledge development according to its complete correspondence with an objective reality. I will show later that there is a range of alternative positions that go well beyond this ‘simple-minded’ objectivism.

In order to compare organizational learning theories I will use several criteria that have been formulated as to what constitutes a ‘good’ theory. These will help in identifying omissions in current approaches (section 1). Subsequently, I will show that the formulation of theoretical criteria follows a particular underlying philosophy-of-science logic; but the criticism against organizational learning theories may not be as convincing if one broadens the range of ontological and epistemological assumptions. I will deconstruct three, partly overlapping, criticisms of organizational learning theory in order to show that this could indeed present a valuable way to liberate current theorizing from the shackles of prescriptive theories that are supposed to inhibit theory development. In more detail, I will analyse the criticism that:

1	organizational learning lacks theoretical integration, and research is being done in a non-cumulative way;
2	organizational learning does not provide ‘useful’ knowledge for practitioners;
3	organizational learning is mostly used in a metaphorical and/or analogous sense.

I propose to revise or, at least, broaden the assumptions on which this criticism is based (section 2).

I will use the last criticism of organizational learning, namely its largely metaphorical character, and advocate that it is the use of metaphors which can be of practical value because the reader will be sensitized to varying possibilities of interpreting the world. In this sense, organizational learning theories provide ‘lenses’, and not ‘tools’. Concurrently, this can be a promising approach to theory development, one which goes well beyond a prescriptive stance (section 3). Finally, a short summary will be followed by a critical outlook on the ‘desperate’ endeavour of organizational learning theory and some positive alternatives for the future (section 4).

1 Towards an organizational learning theory – some criteria for evaluation

What is the value of ‘good’ theories? Against which criteria should ‘good’ theories be evaluated? Most generally, theories shape the landscape of facts by guiding thinking. They tell people what to expect, where to look, what to ignore, what actions are feasible, what values to hold. These expectations and beliefs then influence actions and retrospective interpretations, perhaps unconsciously (Rosenthal, 1966).

If one looks at evaluation criteria in more detail one finds that different researchers have provided different answers. Webb (1961), for instance, said that good theories exhibit knowledge, scepticism and generalizability. Lave and March (1975) proposed that good theories are metaphors that embody truth, beauty and justice; whereas unattractive theories are inaccurate or unaesthetic. McGuire (1983) noted that people may appraise theories according to either internal criteria, such as their logical consistency, or external criteria, such as the status of their authors. Others have distinguished between a theory’s prescriptive and its descriptive value, and again other researchers have provided more formal requirements for theory building, such as, the relevant factors that are part of the explanation of the phenomenon, and their possible interrelation, that is, ‘the theoretical glue that welds the model together’ (Whetten, 1989: 491).

Also, the criterion of consistency has been widely used, and I will adopt it for my purposes. Further, I will evaluate organizational learning theories according to their descriptive versus prescriptive contribution, that is, whether they depict how something is done without reference to how it should be done, or whether they exhibit prescriptive, or normative features which explicate how some problem in an applied setting should be solved. In this last category, the practitioner can be seen as the final judge of the degree to which a theory’s prescribed course of action is authoritative.

After the decision on evaluation criteria has been taken, there remains the question of which approaches are representative such as to be included in my review. Everyone who tries to provide a review within a fragmented field of research faces this question. What are sensible criteria along which to select approaches? Which approaches are relevant and/or interesting? Crossan and Guatto (1996) provided a distinction that proves useful for my purposes. They distinguished between four formal categories of articles: analysis, synthesis, review and application. As my objective is theory development, those articles that focus on application are clearly outside the scope of this work. Also, I deliberately excluded pure review and synthesis articles, because they do not generally present a completely new approach within organizational learning research. Instead, I decided to look for articles which fall into the group of analysis, which provide a novel approach to the study of organizational learning, and which attempt to advance the field.

Further, I apply the selection criterion of ‘completeness’, that is, in how far theories of organizational learning cover all those questions that have been considered relevant by researchers (e.g. Reinhardt, 1993; Wiegand, 1996). The following questions are by far the most reasonable ones that can be conceived of within a theory of organizational learning:

• What does organizational learning mean? (definition)
• Who is learning? (learning subject)
• What is being learned? (content of learning)
• When does learning take place? (incentives and motives for learning)
• What results does learning yield? (efficiency and effectiveness of learning)
• How does learning take place? (processes of learning)

In order to decide on a basis for selection I used a citation search conducted by Crossan and Guatto (1996), and synthesized those articles that are analytical, and complete according to the previously formulated six essential questions, and also representative according to the number of citations (for exact numbers see Crossan and Guatto, 1996: 110).

Table 2.1 depicts a comparison of major approaches to organizational learning, and I will now apply my two evaluation criteria, that is, consistency and descriptive/prescriptive undertaking. The most general result is that there is a lack of consistency between (and sometimes even within) approaches. The lack of consistency can be convincingly demonstrated with the following examples. We encounter the following rather confusing contradictions: for instance, if we want to study organizational learning through organizational routines, as Levitt and March (1988) suggest, we don’t seem to get much help in spotting the object of interest. Their description of routines is so inclusive that we are reduced to saying that organizational learning is what happens in organizations. If we remain in the What? column of Table 2.1 we are unsure whether it is insights, behaviour or both that constitute the content of organizational learning, and what precisely is supposed to change.

One of the greatest myths of organizational learning is probably the who question, that is, the way in which learning might be considered organizational. It remains fairly unclear whether we are talking about individual learning in organizations (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Cangelosi and Dill, 1965; Duncan and Weiss, 1979; Hedberg, 1981; March and Olsen, 1975), organizational learning that is like individual learning (see especially Hedberg, 1981), or some kind of aggregate or emergent learning (Cyert and March, 1963; again Hedberg, 1981; Levitt and March, 1988; Weick and Roberts, 1993). Perhaps the idea of organizational learning is an anthropomorphic fallacy, that leads to an inappropriate reification of the concept of organization (Jones, 1995).

If we look at the processes of organizational learning we encounter ‘learning from experience’ as a genuine component of almost all approaches (most prominently: Duncan and Weiss, 1979; Hedberg, 1981; March and Olsen, 1975). Also, ‘history dependence’ is emphasized in some approaches. However, the consequences of different histories and different experiences, leading to an examination of different learning needs are neglected (see for an exception Levitt and March, 1988). A further point of irritation is that some authors emphasize the sources of knowledge and neglect processes of knowledge generation, that is, learning, altogether (Huber, 1991). One more example of theoretical omission can be seen in the distinction between levels or intensities of learning, for example, lower- vs. higher-level learning (Fiol and Lyles, 1985); single-loop vs. double-loop learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978). Referring to th...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Contributors
• Part One Review and Critiques
• Part Two Evaluations of Practice
• Index