> Hi Steve Eskow,
> In a message dated 12/8/97 10:21:57 AM EST, you write:
>
> > So it may be useful to stop from time to time and remind ourselves that
> > organizations aren't really alive and can't really do all the things
> > that people do.
> > So: a basketball team isn't a living being, but a rule-governed group of
> > living beings engaged in a certain game . >>
Steve--while I agree with you about a basketball team, I don't agree with
your statement overall. Accepting the Gaia concept, that this planet is a
living organism--and applying the criteria of living systems to organisms
that don't otherwise fit the mental models we usually associate with
life--it may be possible to acknowledge that some complex organizations
exhibit living characteristics. This doesn't mean that human
organizations are human entities--simply that human organizations may be
considered as living entities. Perhaps it's a simile run amok, perhaps
not. There are certainly other organic organizations, or communities,
consisting of individual living entitities, that are considered living
organizations--molds and fungi come immediately to mind (please--no
Dilbert jokes here!).
DHurst1046 wrote:
--snip--
> In his [Weick] view individuals learn and organizations may embody the results of
> that learning, but organizations don't learn in precisely the same way as
> individuals.
--snip--
This was interesting, David. Schon and Argyris present a wonderful
examination of this dichotomy of thinking among practitioners and
academics in their book, Organizational Learning II. They cite Daniel Kim
(in what seemed an appropriate comment to this thread):
"Although the meaning of the term 'learning' remains essentially the same
as in the individual case, the learning process is fundamentally different
at the organizational level. A model of organizational learning has to
resolve somehow the dilemma of imparting intelligence and learning
capabilities to a nonhuman entity without anthropomorphizing it." (190).
They go on to define ways in which individuals "act on behalf" of
organizations, creating what they call "collectivities" of inquiry,
thought and action.
I'd certainly enjoy hearing more thoughts about both of these issues.
regards,
Doc
-- "The familiar life horizon has been outgrown, the old concepts, ideals and emotional patterns no longer fit, the time for the passing of a threshold is at hand." -Joseph CampbellRichard C. "Doc" Holloway Your partner for workforce development Visit me at http://www.thresholds.com/community/learnshops/index.html Or e-mail me at <mailto:learnshops@thresholds.com> Mailing Address: P.O. Box 2361 Phone: 01 360 786 0925 Olympia, WA 98507 USA Fax: 01 360 709 4361
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