Scott Elliot writes:
"structure" as set of commonly-held data, axioms, tenets and theorems upon
which further knowledge can be built."
"Learning" is either building new knowledge upon this "structure", or
demolishing parts of the structure found to be lacking and rebuilding it."
"Process" is the way people go about building knowledge or remodeling the
structure."
"I think of organizational policies and politics as "culture"."
Scott's post was a reply to John Dicus' query about vocabulary on this
list. The lack of a common vocabulary has concerned me for some time, not
only on the list, but in the literature of learning organizations. For
example, consider the following quotes:
"Structure is an entity formed by the influence the parts have on each
other and on the whole." Robert Fritz, Corporate Tides.
"The term 'structure' as used here, does not mean the 'logical structure
of a carefully developed argument or the reporting 'structure' as shown by
an organization chart. Rather, 'systemic structure' is concerned with the
the interrelationships that influence behavior over time. These are not
interrelationships between people, but among key variables..." Peter
Senge, The Fifth Discipline.
Culture of a group is "A pattern of shared basic assumptions that the
group learned as it solved its problems of external adaptation and
internal integration, that has worked well enough to be considered valid
and, therefore, to be taught to new members as the correct way to
perceive, think, and fell in relation to those problems." E.H. Schein,
Organizational Culture and Leadership.
In this context, I read Scott's definition of structure to most closely
match Schein's definition of culture, implying that learning involves
change culture. Scott's definition of culture, organizational policies and
politics, if depersonalized and expressed as the interrelationship between
key variables of policies and politics, sounds much more like structure as
defined by Senge.
Of course, no one definition is correct, but we all suffer from the lack
of a common longuage or terms of reference. So in answer to John Dicus'
initial post, yes, I believe the list would be very well served by
discussion that helped to clarify the common terms of reference in our
lexicon. Culture, process, learning, systems thinking, structure,
performance measurement and more. We all use these terms as though they
were part of a common mental model, but they are not. Each of us has
different, and in some cases, very different, definitions. In view of our
shared interest in learning organizations, it seems only natural that we
develop a process to surface the mental models of this group around the
core infrastructure concepts.
-- Mike
Michael A. Gort
Mail18081@pop.net
(203) 637-9279
--Michael Gort <mail18081@pop.net>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>