Images of Organizations and Learning

Organizations as learning portfolios

Howard Gardner (1993) and Daniel Goleman (1995) have shown that understanding the learning capability of individuals requires more than just testing for IQ. Learning and intelligence are multi-dimensional concepts that cannot be determined with a single measure. Reliance on single measures simplifies reality but, more critically, devalues ways of learning and forms of intelligence that deviate from social norms.

Much as individuals learn in different ways (Kolb, 1979), so too is the case with organizations. To some extent these differences are a function of the diverse environments in which organizations must operate. For example, in stable environments with established products like ketchup or cement, what and how organizations learn will be very different from what occurs in industries that are volatile and involve new products or evolving technologies, such as computer hardware and software. Learning differences between organizations also occur as a result of differences in history, culture, size, and age. New, entrepreneurial firms are apt to learn differently from larger, established firms. This creates opportunities for firms, like Apple’s chance in the 1970s and 1980s to take market share away from IBM. However, more critically the social complexity of organizations supports multiple cultural realities or segments (Van Maanen and Barley, 1985), and how learning occurs in one segment will differ from how it occurs in another (DiBella, 2001).

Organizational learning style is a function of how organizations learn as represented by the different learning activities that they undertake (DiBella and Nevis, 1998). An organization’s pattern of learning activities reflects its learning style (Shrivastava, 1983). Such styles do not indicate how well an organization is learning nor judge the value of what is learned, but they do indicate a great deal about what is learned and how learning takes place. In aggregate, a complex organization is bound to support numerous learning practices that represent different learning styles. These practices and styles constitute the raw elements of an organization’s learning portfolio. By recognizing a range of learning styles within an organization, we can focus on how certain styles are matched to work demands and provide complementary or strategic advantages.

Learning styles represent an organization’s acquired capability. To use that capability for competitive advantage, organizational members must first recognize what that capability consists of. Identifying current capabilities provides a starting point for strategic action to change, augment, or enhance one’s style or portfolio of styles. Rather than presume no existing competence and dictate its development top down, managers work with, and from what already exists.

Research has revealed that some organizations have a dominant learning style, while many more use a variety of styles, each of which provide some learning capability (DiBella et al., 1996). Companies with a large portfolio of styles are apt to have multiple competencies and a greater capacity to adapt to change than companies that rely on a single learning style. By focusing on a company’s learning portfolio in its entirety, learning advocates re-orient themselves from wondering whether the company has the right learning style (or is, or is not, a learning organization) to considering the complementarity of its styles. Instead of evaluating the style of a particular part of a company, the learning advocate takes a systems view to consider synergistic possibilities. Recognizing the presence of multiple styles within a company can also explain inter-group conflicts and barriers to learning. If different parts of a company learn in different ways, then it is highly unlikely that knowledge will be transferred across functional or project boundaries. Once we recognize such differences, they can be managed as a potential source of competitive advantage.

One possible reason why managers often ignore existing capabilities is their attention to the plea that organizations must first unlearn before they can learn (Hedberg, 1981; McGill and Slocum, 1993). However, to develop learning capability organizations must distinguish between unlearning what they know and do and how they learn as represented by their learning portfolio. Managers can then make more informed assessments about how present capabilities realize or inhibit learning and whether barriers to improved performance exist because of what is being learned versus how learning takes place.

Table 9.1 contains a set of characteristics about learning and organizations. I start with the major presumption that learning is an essential process of all organizations. From this core, a set of related characteristics can be derived.

Table 9.1 Organizations as learning portfolios

All organizations learn

Rather than face a bi-modal world consisting of organizations that learn and those that do not, I make the presumption that all organizations learn. Hence the notion of the learning organization is as redundant as the notion of hot steam or a breathing mammal. Organizations don’t have to be developed so they can learn, they already do.

Source of learning

Learning occurs through the natural social interaction of people being and working together (Brown and Duguid, 2000). Organizations as contexts for social interaction naturally induce learning. Learning occurs through the very nature of organizational life.

Learning is rooted in culture

As cultures, all organizations have embedded learning processes. For example, acculturation, which every organization must have to integrate new employees (Van Maanen and Schein, 1979), is an embedded learning process. As organizational culture evolves so too does the nature and process of learning.

Organizations are differentiated structures

Different organizational units promote different behaviors and forms of interaction. There is differentiation in behaviors and social interaction both vertically and horizontally in organizations (Trice and Beyer, 1993). Types and forms of learning vary between these different units. The cacophony of differences is consistent with a view of complex systems as organized anarchies (Cohen et al., 1972).

Learning styles

Organizations learn in divergent ways. There is no one way to learn or better ways for organizations to learn. Learning styles will vary across an organization that may house multiple styles in different organizational units.

Managerial focal point

Managers need to understand the nature of social interaction in their organizations and how existing behavior and routines engender learning. Once management understands how their organizations learn, they can direct those learning processes towards what is strategically desirable.

To understand the distinctiveness of the ‘organization as learning portfolio’ metaphor or framework, I now review the quite popular view of the learning organization. Those who advocate for the learning organization carry, like the rest of us, a set of presumptions about learning and organizations (Edmondson, 1996). These are infrequently stated and may be subconscious but can be deduced from the nature of their writing and its implications.

The ‘Learning Organization’

In the 1990s, the learning organization became synonymous with long-term success. As elaborated by Arie deGeus (1988) and Peter Senge (1990), the learning organization is a template for an organization that continually creates its future by adapting to environmental change and pro-actively shaping its environment. The learning organization is a powerful vision and metaphor for change (Calhoun and Starbuck, 2003), but what does this juxtaposition of the words ‘learning’ and ‘organization’ represent?

Table 9.2 contains a set of characteristics derived from some of the writing on learning organizations. The key point is that presumptions may be derived from the connotations of the term itself.

Table 9.2 The learning organization

Bi-modal world

By conceiving of ‘learning organizations’ and advocating for their creation or development, theorists effectively bifurcate the world of organizations. When learning is used as an adjective to describe a particular type of organization, one underlying assumption is that some organizations learn and others do not. Such a division suggests that learning is optional and not indigenous to the life of organizations.

Source of learning

Why do some organizations learn and others do not? Learning, as a mechanism to foster organizational improvement, does not occur through chance or random action but through the development and use of specific skills. Without disciplined action or intervention from their leaders, organizations fail to learn due to the impact of the many forces that constrain learning. For example, Senge (1990) states that it takes five component technologies or disciplines to establish a learning organization—personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking. What distinguishes learning organizations (from non-learning organizations) is their mastery or focus on these five disciplines. Another normative modeler (Garvin, 1993) claims that learning organizations are skilled at systematic problem solving, experimentation, learning from their own experiences and from others, and transferring knowledge.

Culture and learning

For organizations to learn, they must have the right culture, a learning culture. Mayo and Rick (1993) claim that a learning organization can be recognized by the interdependence of language and culture. In a similar manner, Beckhard and Pritchard (1992) discuss building a learning organization by creating a culture that values learning and rewards progress not just results.

Organizations as homogeneous, structured systems

Duncan and Weiss (1979) explain that learning occurs when organizations match their structures to their environments in order to maximize the understanding of members of action–outcome relationships. Purser and Pasmore (1992) claim that learning is dependent on the design of knowledge work. To maximize learning, the design of knowledge work must be formalized and aligned with the influence of decision makers. These theoreticians base their argument on the presumption that becoming a learning organization is predicated on having the right organization structure or design. Adler and Cole (1993) argue that this is so empirically as well. They claim that the work design at NUMMI Motors, the Toyota-GM joint car manufacturing venture, provided greater learning opportunities than did the design of Volvo’s Uddevalla plant. Through standardization of work methods, NUMMI was able to identify problems and areas for improvement that led to learning.

Learning style

An oft-cited theoretical distinction in learning styles is Argyris and Schön’s (1978) familiar contrast between single- and double-loop learning. More recently, ‘triple-loop learning,’ learning about learning, has been identified as yet another learning style (Bartunek and Moch, 1987; Torbert, 1994). Learning organizations promote double- and triple-loop learning since those styles are considered more advanced.

Managerial focal point

Learning disabilities occur due to the fundamental ways in which individuals have been trained to think and act (Argyris and Schön, 1974, 1978; Senge, 1990) and from organizational barriers to discover and utilize solutions to organizational problems (Tucker et al., 2002). Snyder and Cummings (1992) identify the problems of amnesia (lack of organizational memory), superstition (biased interpretation of experience), paralysis (inability to act), and schizophrenia (lack of coordination among organizational constituencies). Watkins and Marsick (1993) address three barriers to learning—learned helplessness, truncated learning, and tunnel vision—with the latter paralleling Senge’s call for a systems perspective. To avoid or solve learning disabilities, organizational leadership must establish the normative conditions essential for learning to take place. The focus may be on enhancing competencies of individual members or teams, changing the organizational culture, or redesigning structure or systems (Edmondson, 1996).