Steve Eskow wrote,
> There is an interesting--to me--phenomenon at work in the discussion of
> whether organizations are alive.
> A number of discussants insist that the question of no interest and
> importance--and then go on to discuss it at great length, exactly as if
> it were of interest and importance.
(snip)
> The "living organism" thesis is a mental model.
> We cannot do without mental models.
> A model, a map, a metaphor is not true or false in any absolute sense. It
> is useful or not useful.
Steve, this is to me a helpful reminder. The tendency to confuse a map
(or any symbolic representation) with that which it represents is
well-known, although often recognised only after we have wallowed into it!
Umberto Ecco has a wickedly mischievous essay on this in his collected
essays, "How to Travel with a Salmon."
Let me try to go a step further. Isn't part of our dilemma about
whether it's accurate, or useful, to use the living entity metaphor
for organizations and their capacity to accumulate, process, and act
on information ('learning") found in the fact that the very word,
"learning," is a construct completely dependent on the experience of
living human entities? Thus, even to apply it to the experience of
non-human living creatures is inherently "inaccurate" and metaphorical,
and even more in the instance of non-living organisms.
So doesn't that leave Steve's "utility" test as a good determinant of
whether or not a particular mental model / paradigm is worth any of our
attention? If it works for you, fine; if not, then the task is to keep
looking for metaphors and models that DO support one's own understanding
of what learning is, and how it happens in organizations.
--Malcolm Burson mooney@maine.maine.edu
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