Replying to LO27828 --
Rick asked:
> Who are the most responsible people who DISAGREE with the organizational
>learning field? Who are the challengers to these ideas?
Dear RICK and fellow LO'ers,
Now and then, I come across situations and arguments that might be
considered as 'challenges' to the idea of organisational learning (or
learning organisation). I am presenting some of those arguments here:
1. LEARNING DRIFT
Learning drift is a process in which people learn 'unselectively' and
learn without improving.
Reference: The source of poor policy: controlling learning drift and
premature consensus in human organizations, Jim Hines
(JimHines@Interserv.com) and Jody House (jhouse@ece.ogi.edu), System
Dynamics Review, Volume 17, Issue 1, 2001. pp: 3-32.
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/78503854/START
2. LEARNING EXTERNALITIES
Local learning may bring about local improvements in specific situations.
But, there is no guarantee that these local improvements are in fact not
militating against some general (or global) values. To illustrate, a group
of imposters can learn to be more effective, thus bringing more misery to
the wider community. This might be called 'global externality' of local
learning. Similarly, there can also be a reverse phenomenon, i.e., 'local
externality' of global learning.
Reference: Local and global learning in a virtual distributed market
modeled by a multi-agent system, Denis Phan, Cyrille Piatecki, and Antoine
Beugnard.
http://www-eco.enst-bretagne.fr/~phan/artifice/wheia.html
3. LEARNING LIMITATIONS
Sometimes, we learn enough to realise the limits to further development.
Addressing those limits requires new mindsets, sparks of innovation,
further explorations, new connections, reorganisation of the context, etc.
However, there seems to be no clear approach within the LO perspective
regarding the generation and legitimation of such new mindsets,
innovations, reorganisation, etc., within the relevant collective(s).
Sincerely,
DP
--"D P Dash" <D_P_Dash@nts2.ximb.ac.in>
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