The processes by which organizational members learn to change is intimately intertwined with their assumptions about who they are as an organization. Indeed recent research has found organizational identity to be a critical though relatively under-recognized factor that not only influences what is learned, but more importantly how members learn to respond to strategic change imperatives (Nag, Corley, and Gioia, 2003, 2007). In this chapter we consider the nature of the learning–identity interrelationship and attempt to draw out some of the consequent implications for both concepts, as well as implications for theorists and researchers who study both phenomena.
Although an overused catchphrase in today’s society, the notion that ‘change is everywhere; change is everything’ still holds powerful sway over the modern organization. Because of fast-paced market changes confronting most industries, ever-accelerating technology cycles, insatiable desires for up-to-the-minute business news, and gyrating capital markets, as well as capricious terrorism, organizations are faced with tumultuous environmental relationships that require constant mindfulness and adaptability. Change is, in fact, everywhere in organizations and, to some extent, everything as well, in the sense that organizational well-being and even survival depend on organizational adaptability (Tsoukas and Chia, 2002).
Our research has discovered new ways in which organizational identity relates to transformational change. In our earlier conceptions we treated organizational identity as perceptions or implicit theories shared by organization members about ‘who we are as an organization’ (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Gioia, 1998; Stimpert, Gustafson, and Sarason, 1998). Recent research has urged us to enrich this conception of identity by appreciating a more situated, action-oriented, and pragmatic view of the concept (Carlsen, 2006, 2009; Nag, Corley, and Gioia, 2007). Issues of organizational identity arise not only as the members of an organization attempt to answer the question ‘Who are we?’ but also the questions ‘How do we do things?’, ’Why do we do those things?’, and ‘Who should we be in the future?’ Attempting to answer these questions also prompts the question ‘Who do others think we are?’ which means that identity is closely interrelated with how insiders think outsiders perceive the organization (labeled as ‘construed external image’ by Dutton, Dukerich, and Harquail, 1994) and how outsiders actually perceive the organization (or reputation, see Fombrun, 1996).
Researchers have argued that because organizational identity involves answers to such fundamental questions, it is inherently stable and resistant to change (Albert and Whetten, 1985; Brown and Starkey, 2000). Our research has demonstrated that this is not necessarily the case, however, and that, quite to the contrary, organizational identity can change over relatively short periods of time (Corley and Gioia, 2004; Corley, Gioia, and Fabbri, 2000; Gioia, Schultz, and Corley, 2000; Gioia and Thomas, 1996). The underlying means by which identity change is possible while appearing to have endurance or continuity is that organization members maintain consistent labels for elements of their identity over time, but the meanings and practices associated with these labels change to accommodate emergent needs (Gioia, et al., 2000; Nag et al., 2007).
One major upshot of our theoretical and empirical efforts is the realization that processes of organizational learning are essential to the social construction and reconstruction of organizational identity in the now-common context of a fast-changing environment. In a general sense, identity construction and reconstruction are intertwined with a continuous process of organizational learning because an organization must continuously ‘relearn’ its identity as its enacted environment recursively influences further meaning making and action taking.
As our research has progressed, however, we have come to recognize that the type of learning involved in this dynamic process differs from the organizational learning typically described in management research. The predominant approach to studying learning in and by organizations is one of tracking overt change or tangible outcomes (Wilson, Goodman, and Cronin, 2007). Contrary to this approach, we find that learning associated with organizational identity change tends to be more discreet and based in changes to intersubjective meanings and underlying social practices as compared to the overt, knowledge- and behavior-based changes fundamental to the individual-level origins of the psychology and management perspectives on organizational learning (Easterby-Smith, 1997; Huber, 1991; Miller, 1996). This emerging distinction has forced us to explore more deeply the relationship between organizational identity and organizational learning and, as a result, to reconsider organizational learning as a theoretical concept.
The basic premise of this chapter is that processes of organizational learning are more closely interrelated with organizational identity than previously presumed, and that this relationship is adaptive for the organization. This interrelationship is most evident in the milieu of organizational change, where both identity and learning play key roles strategically and contextually. The intersection between the two phenomena not only provides a powerful set of implications for the continued study of organizational change, but also produces a number of significant insights for re-conceptualizing aspects of organizational learning that include:
- the formal recognition of a heretofore underspecified form of organizational learning based in intersubjective meanings and practices, which we term subtle learning;
- the appreciation that this form of learning provides the potential for organizational learning to be more inconspicuous, and its effects more covert, than previously presumed; and
- the pragmatically important insight that the influence an organization’s identity has on learning processes can facilitate adaptability for the organization (as opposed to previous work depicting it as a constraint on adaptability).
We have two main purposes in writing this chapter that follow from these observations: (1) to act as interested outside observers who see value in bringing an identity perspective to the study of organizational learning (by highlighting and detailing the adaptive relationship between organizational identity and organizational learning); and (2) to explicate the argument that it is difficult to provide a definitive definition of organizational learning because learning takes so many different forms. Our contention here is parallel to Cook and Brown’s (1999) argument that we should distinguish between different types of knowledge (and in our case, learning).
The remaining sections of this chapter explore more fully these expansions and reconsiderations of organizational learning, as well as exploring other implications of the interrelationship between organizational identity and learning. We begin with a discussion about the nature of organizational learning, followed by a more in-depth examination of how identity and learning are related at the organizational level. The chapter concludes with a discussion of both the theoretical and practical implications of this interrelationship, with particular attention paid to those implications involving organizational change.