There are two areas central to my interest here. The first is the first
two of Senge's disciplines. It seems to me that the whole character of
what we do must flow from well-developed purposes, otherwise popular,
available and traditional means begin to drive the ends. It isn't clear
to me that enough attention is paid to these things. The process of
developing our own personal purposes in life is problematic if these are
supposed to be chosen, because we are usually ill-equipped to do it, and
there are powerful forces around us which would determine our purposes for
us. In the case of organizational vision, it seems to me that it might be
difficult to create visions which are sufficiently employee-oriented, and
to maintain the will to follow them through if they are. It also seems to
me that these are the areas where the solution to the problems of
motivation which have been discussed on this List must lie. I am
absolutely opposed to implementations of the Learning Organization which
are simply more subtle ways of manipulating people to get more, and/or
better, work out of them.
I am strongly wedded to recognizing the importance of social process
through all of our institutions which harm people's abilities to think,
reason, create and cooperate. In talk of schooling, for example,
educational ideals simply becomes romantic and unreal unless the processes
which work against these ideals in and out of schools are honestly and
frankly confronted. I believe that the same is true in business and
elsewhere. To be realistic, efforts to develop Learning Organizations
must face up to the "bad news" -- the things that make it genuinely
difficult to achieve, primary among which are the harmful, and mostly
ideological learnings which "business as usual", "schooling as usual" and
the "family as usual" have encouraged people, including leaders, to
acquire.
I have a study leave coming up in the early part of 1998, within which I
am able to travel. I am most likely to have the equivalent of a
round-trip ticket from New Zealand to London available to me, though my
time will be limited to six weeks or so, because of limits on my personal
means. Would any of you be willing to show/explain to me, perhaps on
site, what you have been able to achieve, or expect to be able to achieve
in developing Learning Organizations? Are there academic programmes of
teaching/research where I might benefit considerably, even from a short
visit? There is a wealth of experience out there, and I am hoping that
there might be some of you who are willing and able to broaden my own
vision, and set me on track.
Graham
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R. Graham Oliver (h) 07-856-3566
Education Studies, University of Waikato
Hamilton, New Zealand (w) 07-856-2859
E-mail: g.oliver@waikato.ac.nz
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--"Graham" <goeduc@mailserv.waikato.ac.nz>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>