In the "Pay for Performance" string Fred Nickols' wrote:
"In particular, I'd like to know what you mean by learning and I'd like to
see some examples of what you mean by learning at various organizational
levels. I'm particularly interested in your reference to organizations
learning without any one of the individuals in the organization being
aware of what the organization has learned. Finally, how do you
distinguish between individual and organizational learning?"
I will try to augment the John Gunkler's comments which address
organizational learning at other than the individual level of the system.
Much of what follows was extracted from material posted last summer.
I suspect many question an organization's capacity to learn that is not
the direct result of individual learning. If we view learning as changing
future behavior based on the response from previous behavior there are
several mechanisms where organizational level learning can occur even
absent the learning of individuals in the organization. These
organizational level learning mechanisms include Market Mechanisms, Clan
Mechanisms and Hierarchy Mechanisms.
I. Market Mechanisms (Population and Selection Mechanisms, "Darwinian
Learning")
The most obvious organizational level knowledge storage and learning
mechanism are the populations of individuals in the organization and the
intake, selection and retention mechanisms by which those populations
change.
More than a decade ago, as a National Account Branch Manager for AT&T, I
hosted a client sports event that attracted 10-15 high level executives
from one of my National Accounts. While I am 6' 5", I was startled to
find that many of my late-middle-aged guests towered over me. It seems
that in the 1940's, '50's and '60's, the company had an active AAU
Basketball program. This corporate effort influenced their selection
criteria for management hires. While I don't pretend to know how the
results of this long term intake selection bias influenced the
organization's behavior, I find it hard to believe it had no influence
(and I know that height isn't individually learned).
The internal market mechanisms that enable organizational learning are not
limited to the populations of individuals who make up the organization.
In some firms, business units compete with each other for corporate
resources (e.g., capital, talent, executive attention). Successful
business units grow and acquire outside firms while less successful
business units may shrink, be disbanded or divested. What the
organization has learned about business success is stored in the business
unit boundaries. And, the business unit population and characteristics
shape how the parent organization "perceives" and reacts to the external
environment.
II. Clan Mechanisms (Neural Network Mechanisms and Skinnerian Learning)
Another organizational level learning mechanism is the fabric of
information sharing relationships among individuals in the organization
and the mechanism by which these relationships increase or diminish
information flow.
An extreme example -- I once read where a "neural network" was created
from a gym full of students Each student had a fixed instruction set, a
battery, a meter and switch which were wired together to create the
network. This "network organization" was then "taught" to recognize input
presented to the "receptor" level of students. What I find interesting
about this example: 1) the organization could learn without the students
learning anything (their instructions and conditional behavior didn't
change), 2) no student knew what the organization knew, in fact, 3) no one
could know what the organization knew without observing the organization's
response to stimulus and 4) the process of testing what the organization
knew would most likely change the organization's behavior.
I have not doubt that such networks exist and influence large
organizations. And, I have not doubt that in many cases no one in the
organization (or even in the network) are aware of the network's existence
or influence. I remember one case where organizational level behavior was
eventually tracked back to a network of smokers that emerged when the
smokers were forced to periodically go to a smoking room or outside
courtyard.
III. Hierarchy Mechanisms (Symbols and Rules, "the Organization as a
Stored Program Machine")
I suspect this is the most obvious mechanism for organizational level
learning and the storage of what has been learned. This includes the
policy, practices, language, shared culture, etc. etc. Just two example
follow.
In the early 1980's, sales managers in AT&T's long distance business faced
ever increasing competition for their business customers. The managers
and sales folks were paid under an incentive compensation plan that
reflected the importance of protecting the incumbent base of revenue from
competitors while promoting applications to stimulate usage growth.
Unfortunately, the billing and tracking systems that supported sales
operations were left over from the monopoly days. Immediately after
divestiture of the local business, a customer who selected a competing
long distance supplier for all their business would no longer appear in
AT&T's sales management system. (A system built when AT&T was a
monopoly.) The field sales folks realized that when faced with the
prospects of losing a significant fraction of a customer's business, their
compensation prospects would be better served if they ignored the
situation, focused their efforts elsewhere, and lost all of the customer's
business. Having taken their business elsewhere, the customer dropped from
the system and "no longer existed" when future sales quota were assigned.
The sales folks then could work to win back the "non-existent customer"
and the resulting revenue would be rewarded as new business growth.
Another example of how "symbols and rules" shape organizational level
learning comes from US history. In "Democracy In America", Alexis de
Tocqueville discussed the importance of inheritance laws in shaping a
society. He compared the Primogeniture and Equal Share approaches to
inheritance and argued that Equal Share made the US society much more
democratic and dynamic by continually breaking down the accumulation of
individual wealth with each successive generation. In this case, these
organizational level governance rules shaped societies capacity to adapt.
While I suspect there are analogues in a business organizations they will
be difficult to find and understand if the primary LO Community focus is
on the learning of the individuals in the organization.
These non-individual level these forms of organizational learning may be
better labeled under the term "Organizational Governance". Unfortunately,
that term seems to have been captured by those who want to increase firm's
responsiveness to their shareowners.
Sorry for the long post,
Doug Merchant (dougm@eclipse.net)
--"Doug Merchant" <dougm@eclipse.net>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>