Responding to Rick Karash in LO28677 --
Rick forwards a request from a post-grad student which asks for
information, ideas and opinions regarding a critical evaluation of a
statement from page 139 of Peter Senge's The Fifth Discipline. (There
were a couple of minor differences between the quote given by the student
and what appears on page 139 of my copy of Senge's book so what appears
below is what appears in my copy of the book.)
> >'Organizations learn only through individuals who learn. Individual
> >learning does not guarantee organizational learning. But without it no
> >organizational learning occurs.'
>
> >Critically evaluate this statement, with particular reference to the
> >interdependency of individual and organisational learning.
I think the proper starting point is what we mean by "learning."
Doubtless, we all mean many things by it and therein lies much of the
difficulty. At a conference, I once heard Peter Senge say that knowledge
is the capacity for action. From this, it would follow that at least some
learning amounts to acquiring some new capacity for action. That seems
consistent with what Peter says on page 13 of his book when he writes that
"through learning we become able to do something we never were able to
do."
If to learn is to acquire some new capacity for action, then any
work-related learning by an individual means that this new capacity for
action is available to the organization and thus it is tempting to say
that the organization's capacity for action has been extended as well; in
other words, we infer and we say that the organization has learned.
However, if this individual leaves the organization, the organization no
longer possesses that particular capability or capacity for action and
thus it would seem after all that the organization did not in fact learn.
There is, then, and understandably so, a great deal of interest in
promoting and fostering the sharing of individual learning with other
members of the organization so that capacities acquired at the individual
level remain available to the organization despite the departure or loss
of this or that particular person. (There is also the potential for some
very nasty conflicts and confrontations between individuals and their
organizations regarding ownership and rights to knowledge acquired by
individuals but that's probably off topic right now.)
I happen to believe that organizations do not learn in the same sense as
individuals. I do not believe in the existence of some "collective
consciousness" that makes of an organization the same kind of sentient
being as a human. More strongly put, I believe that people learn and that
organizations don't. This stems from my exposure to some early
organizational work by Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch of Harvard on
organizations and environment, somewhere in which they wrote that
"Organization's don't do anything, people do." (I'll have to chase that
down some day.) However, I'm enough of a pragmatist to go along with
discussions of organizational learning while keeping in mind that
"organizational learning" is essentially a figure of speech, a convenient
shorthand way of referring to various patterns and constellations of
individual learning, whether in isolation or in interaction with others.
So, it seems to me that organizations do indeed acquire the capacity for
new action based on learning at the individual level. But it doesn't end
there. Organizations also acquire the capacity for new action based on
the design or redesign and engineering or reengineering of their business
processes. Ditto for the introduction of new systems, new machinery, new
plants, etc. Does that qualify as "organizational learning"? I, for one,
don't think so. Yet, there is something to be said for that view. On
page 14 of his book, Senge writes that the basic meaning of a learning
organization is "an organization that is continually expanding its
capacity to create its future." Does not the creation of new processes,
new systems, new plants, etc. contribute to the creation of the
organization's future? I think the honest answer is maybe yes, maybe no.
Only time will tell if the bets made today will pay off tomorrow. That
holds as true for bets made on people as it does for bets made on plants,
equipment and systems.
Back now to the final point of the essay question, the "interdependency of
individual and organisational learning." I don't believe they are
interdependent. I do believe that organizational learning (at least in so
far as people are concerned) is dependent upon individual learning. I do
not believe that individual learning is dependent upon organizational
learning because "organizational learning," as stated above, is merely a
shorthand way of referring to patterns in individual learning.
Regards,
Fred Nickols
740.397.2363
nickols@safe-t.net
"Assistance at a Distance"
http://home.att.net/~nickols/articles.htm
--Fred Nickols <nickols@safe-t.net>
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