Replying to LO24015 --
Dear Organlearners,
Rick Karash <Richard@Karash.com> writes:
>I received this inquiry from a business school student:
>>I would like information about the pros and cons of the
>>learning organization.
>>
>>I am a student studying business at Central Washington
>>University. It seems like every website I have read always
>>talks about the good side of the learning organization. As
>>a future manager, I would like to know about any drawbacks
>>of the learning organization.
(snip)
>My response is below... How would you respond? What are
>the objections to the learning-organization approach to
>organizational improvement?
Greetings Rick,
Your question and the many responses to it so far reminds me very much of
using "entropy" to improve on life!
Firstly, we can only improve on life where we previously have jeopardised
it.
Secondly, many of our improvements result actually from our own inability
to adapt to life so that we rather want to force life to conform to us.
Thirdly, many of our improvements on life eventually turn out to be gross
failures.
Fourthly, and this is where "entropy" comes in, our understanding of
"entropy" determines how we use or even refuse to use it. For example,
Maxwell thought of entropy as a measure of chaos. Should we follow suite,
then entropy has nothing to say to life since life is also about order. On
the other hand, Planck thought of entropy as a measure of nature's
propensity. Should we follow this viewpoint, then entropy has much to say
for the evolution of life with its propensity for greater complexity.
Likewise, should an organisation measure its values in terms of for
example monetary profit, then the LO has nothing to say to it.
Let us leave "entropy" itself aside and rather explore the distant
ramifications of "entropy production".
Many people think of "learning organisation" as they will, for example,
think of "brilliant green". Like the "brilliant" qualifies the "green",
the "learning" qualifies the "organisation". They focus on the
qualification (being) without ever thinking that a process (becoming) is
responsible for that qualification. In the case of a "brilliant green"
object it has to be illuminated by all the colours of white light. Then
all the colours of the white light get absorbed. (Some of them may be
transformed into green light which is then emitted again in a fluorescent
fashion.) Nevertheless, the green colour is itself is immediately emitted
after absorbtion so that we tend to think of it as a reflection. However,
should we illuminate the same object with say a red light, this colour
will get absorbed so that nothing gets reflected. Thus the object becomes
"pitch black" rather than having a "brilliant green" colour.
It is the same with a "learning organisation". The process responsible for
its qualification is "authentic learning". Should it be illuminated by the
whole diversity of society's culture, it will absorb all of this
diversity, transform some of it and emit that variety of the diversity
which is determined by its very mission. However, should it be
illuminated by a society of a variety alien to its own mission, it will
appear as an organisation with no life of its own. For example, it is
useless trying to establish a LO in a society which refuses to accept
social responsibility or ascribe to hedonism as its highest ideal.
What happens when an organisation which wants to emerge into a LO confuses
its qualifying process of "authentic learning" with "rote learning"
(parrotry)? Then it becomes impossible for the organisation to have a
"brillant green" colour except when illuminated with a "brilliant green"
colour. This is because the organisation will now reflect exactly whatever
it is illuminated by. In other words, it will be like a mirror based on a
metal with a silver sheen. Society will look momentarilly at it, see its
own reflection, go away and forget what it has seen. Imagine how all
living plants would have looked like when the green chlorophyl in the
leaves gets substituted by something silver. Ugly! They will also not be
able to synthesis carbohydrates so basic for living tissue.
(Side track -- democratic governments function presently as mirrors of
their nations. It is becoming a serious concern for some voters, even
though they are still a small minority. Perhaps the LO concept needs to be
incorporated into the constitutional development.)
One of the most important distinctions to be made is that authetic
learning results in ordered levels of knowledge: experential, tacit,
formal and sapient. Once we have made this distinction, we can formulate
the following VITALLY IMPORTANT question on Peter Senge's formulation of
the concept of a LO a decade ago: Did Senge introduce a novel concept, or
did he finally managed to articulate (which is self also a novel act) what
humankind has known tacitly for millenia? If he introduced a novel
concept, then its life time will most probably be short as with most novel
concepts -- perhaps a decade or so. But if he managed to articulate what
humankind has known for many millenia, then the life time of the LO
concept will be many centuries.
Leo and I had a dialogue about two years ago on this list that the guilds
of the Middle Age were the Europeans' conception of a LO in that age. If
it is the case, then the concept of a LO will be with us for many years. I
intend to look soon into the tacit awareness of a LO in the ancient
civilisations of Egypt and Babilonia. Some preliminary studies have
already given me interesting insights.
I am of opinion that the greatest confusion on the concept of a LO is
because people are not aware that it is an emergent phenomenon. It means
that should all the members of an organisation learn continuously, they
will together as an organisation NOT automatically constitute a LO. In
other words, their organisation will still be far from a LO. Trying to use
such an organisation to learn about a LO is like trying to learn about
life in a hot desert in the artic icecap.
Another very important source of confusion is that the LO concept only
applies to the realm of organisations with a profit incentive. Thus few
system thinkers realise that a married couple, a sports team, a class in
school, a parish or even a scientific community can also emerge into a LO.
Even less of them are able to "deepen" the LO concept so as to involve
more than humankind with its cultures. Doing so will allow us to learn
more about a human LOs when studying, for example, symbiosis in nature.
Rick, after so much, I have to conclude like you
>Well... I'm one of the advocates on the good side.
>
>When people resist LO, it seems to me it is with one of these
>lines of thinking:
Objections to the LO concept do not come because the concept is
intrinsically not sound, but rather because of unsound thinking on this
concept.
The following is not meant as a judgement. I have found that the
objections of some people to the LO concept provided me with valuable
information on their thinking and what may be possibly unsound in it. The
"catch 22" situation is that these people need to become part of a LO so
as to become aware of what may be unsound in their thinking. But they do
not want to become part of it as a result of their very objections. I
believe that this vicious loop can be broken with a paradigm shift. The
paradigm shift is that complexity has to replace simplicity in our Systems
Thinking.
I want to stop, but I still feel very uneasy about the request
of the business student: "I would like information about the
pros and cons of the learning organization." There is for me
(who is perhaps far too sensitive) a lack of depth in this question
which I discern in words like --
would like rather than am eager
information rather than to learn
pros and cons rather than implementation and pitfalls
Perhaps it is as if the student has already decided that he/she
will take notice of only some aspects of the LO without becoming
completely involved with the concept.
I did not try to make any judgement above, but rather a careful
observation. What I wrote I did with deepest compassion and respect for
this business student substantiated by my many years of experience as a
teacher. If that student want to escape the mediocrity of management and
its education, the student will have to seek the burning fire of authentic
learning. He/she must get involved with an organisation functioning as a
LO to get ignited with that fire. Seek the practice (doing) to understand
the theory (talking)!
With care and best wishes
--At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa
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