On 3 Feb 1999, At de Lange gave three examples of Anti-LO, the
Ignoring organisation,
Brutalising organisation and
Stupefying organisations.
Then he invited us to extend the list:
>I leave it up to fellow learners to extend this list. But I want to warn
>against falling into the groove of negative thinking. To prevent this, try
>in each case to find how a LO will react to avoid becoming an antilearning
>organisation of some kind. For example, to avoid becoming a brutalising
>organisation, members of the LO will have to place a high premium on
>ethical behaviour, walking their talk. Bear in mind that in each case the
>solution has to involve an ordinate bifurcation because the difference
>between a LO and an "antilearning" organisation is how they responded
>to ordinate bifurcations.
Reviewing my files, I noticed, that part of such study has been done
already earlier by Kent Quisel <kent@de-sa.com> in "From Hurt to Love
LO20514".
According to the framework of At de Lange, seven requirements
(essentialities) have to be fulfilled for learning to emerge. Thus one
should find in a LO all seven essentialities incorporated as it evolves in
time. Should one or more essentialities be impaired, creativity is
inhibited and the LO cannot emerge, even worse, such organisation may
experience an immergence on the course of its evolution - it becomes an
Anti-LO.
While LOs are unique with respect to their form - they fulfill the seven
essentialities - one can think of many categories of Anti-LO, depending on
which essentiality or combination of essentialities are impaired and why
they are impaired. (I think it is the same with healthy or sick persons.)
With this approach, I wish to add three Anti-LO as found by Kent:
"Other-directed" organisation
(Impaired sureness due to wholism)
>This person/org spends energy making connections and picking up
>signals from the environment. But goals and purpose are poorly
>developed or are so fragile that they change with every change in the
>wind. Therefore a satifsfying contribution is not made. This can be
>very >frustrating if the sense of wholeness creates a sense of
>external need >without knowing how to fill it.
>
>In the terms of an old sociology model, this is "other-directed". If
>the frustration is lacking, the will to contribute may be weak.
"Inner-directed" organisation
(Impaired wholeness due to surenessism)
>This person/org has a strong sense of identity and purpose. Energy is
>devoted to serving this purpose with skill and investments. However, the
>fit of this purpose to the whole situation is poorly seen, perhaps out of
>wishful thinking or lack of interest. Adaptation is poor. Dissappointing
>acceptance, surprising feedback and declining relevence will hinder
>fulfillment. This could be called "inner-directed". If frustration is
>lacking, the predictability of task and purpose may be far more important
>than performance.
Ritualized organisation
(Impaired wholeness and sureness)
>This person/org is childish or undeveloped. Neither a sense of
identity or >a sense of the world has been developed. If the
person/org is not young, >the learning environment as been very
immersive so that a sense of real >purpose in the world has not been
encouraged. This would occur in >ritualized organizations.
Liebe Gruesse,
Winfried
--"Winfried Dressler" <winfried.dressler@voith.de>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>