The interrelationship between organizational identity and learning has a number of implications for organizations and for those of us studying them. Conceiving of organizational learning as occurring subtly, at a tacit level of collective awareness, affords researchers an opportunity to gain deeper insight into a diverse range of organizational phenomena. Some of the more relevant areas for this Handbook include conceptions of the ‘learning organization,’ leadership and organizational change, knowledge management, and the specification of the type of learning being examined in future conceptual and empirical work on the subject.
The learning organization
One of the clearest implications of this interrelationship is found in discussions of the ‘learning organization.’ As one might expect, the majority of definitions of the learning organization revolve around the management literature’s individualistic approach to explicit organizational learning. Thus, some of the more traditional definitions include Pedler, Boydell, and Burgoyne’s definition as ‘an organization which facilitates the learning of all of its members and continually transforms itself’ (1989: 2); Senge’s original definition as ‘organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together’ (1990: 3—see also Calhoun’s chapter in this volume for more details); and a modified version of this definition used by Garvin as ‘an organization skilled at creating, acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its behavior to reflect new knowledge and insights’ (1993: 80).
In reviewing this literature, our general expectation was that many of the insights researchers have produced about ‘organizational learning’ ought to translate into a better understanding of ‘learning organizations,’ especially given the apparent intent to create a more macro conceptualization of collective learning. Yet, this does not seem to be the case (exceptions can be found among the contributors to this Handbook—see especially diBella’s chapter on organizations as learning portfolios). We feel, however, that the insights gained from examining the relationship between identity and learning, and the subtle learning that arises through their relationship, are directly applicable to our understanding of the learning organization. The following questions (and some answers) represent our attempt to do just that.
Perhaps the most obvious and enlightening place to start is with the observation that to become a learning organization, the organization must undergo some type of identity change. This is an implicit assumption of most treatments of the learning organization, but making it explicit provides some opportunities for discovery. For instance, must all identity changes involve formal, strategically planned efforts? No, as our discussions above have illustrated. What then happens to our notion of the learning organization if identity change, and thus organizational learning, occurs subtly and is more emergent than planned? One possibility is that the learning organization takes on a definition closer to ‘an organization that is adaptive in its capacity for change’ rather than the grand definitions most often found among practitioner writings on the subject.
One of the original intentions behind of the conceptualization of a ‘learning organization’ was to make learning explicit and to bring it to a level of awareness so that learning in organizations and by organizations could be better studied, understood, and translated into practice. Our reconceptualization of organizational learning carries with it an interesting twist: that is, to understand learning organizations properly we must account for their tacit, out-of-awareness dimensions, as well as their more explicit and evident dimensions. The upshot of this observation is that if we want to make manifest the subtlety of change and the critical role of meaning in the process, the best way to do so is to focus on the way that change occurs under the cover of stable labels.
A paradoxical question then arises: How can organizations maintain stability when stability itself is rooted in change? This paradox is evident in Barney’s (1998) description of Koch Industries, an oil exploration company, whose ostensibly stable identity was that of a changing organization. The multiple-entendre meanings ascribable to Koch’s own description of their organization (‘We are a discovery company’) vary on several enlightening levels (from the obvious ‘we discover oil,’ to the extensive ‘we discover new ways of doing,’ to the identity-reflective ‘we discover who we are,’ to the adaptive ‘we discover how to learn and how to change’). Similarly, 3M bases their stable conception of themselves on the premise that they continuously change. They continuously invent new products and continuously reinvent themselves so they can continuously invent new products. Change as both process and outcome is so frequent and so pervasive and so undramatic that it becomes part of the unnoticed landscape. Subtle identity change and learning are everywhere all the time so that changes in identity and learning are almost unremarkable, but are always occurring in tandem.
Subtle leadership
Subtle learning also occurs in organizational processes other than organizational identity change, including the planning and implementing of strategic change initiatives, the development, growth, and intra-action of teams, and even the day-to-day practices that help define an organization’s culture. All of these activities involve the sense making and sense giving efforts associated with leadership (Gioia and Chittipeddi, 1991). Using Smircich and Morgan’s (1982) portrayal of leadership as the management of meaning, it is easy to see how the existence of a meaning-based form of organizational learning would affect leadership.
One particularly promising area for insight that emerges from considering subtle learning concerns the role of leadership in organizational change. If learning does occur at the level of intersubjective meanings, and thus is subtle enough that it often is not noticed or articulated within an organization, then one important aspect of leadership is the act of noticing, articulating, or even instigating changes in intersubjective meanings. These noticing and articulation processes can serve to heighten awareness among the organization’s members that adaptive change is occurring and creates the opportunity to capture and codify valuable aspects of the change for future use. As this facet of leadership develops and progresses, subtle learning can become the basis for cultural change around learning processes, even helping the organization undergo the types of transformation necessary to become a learning organization.
There are important lessons to be learned on the other side of this coin, as well. Leaders too often presume that if change is to be successfully implemented, they must develop new labels and tout them explicitly to bring their followers’ behavior and thinking into line with the proposed new paradigm. This approach often surprisingly produces not the hoped-for commitment, but rather an unexpected, increased resistance to change. Many organization members become weary and cynical about a ‘flavor of the month club’ mentality concerning yet another planned change effort that comes complete with its own set of clever new labels. Resistance does not need to be an automatic response to change, however, as is evident in our examples of identity changes involving subtle learning.
An alternative approach building on these insights involves the leader focusing on maintaining continuity through the use of familiar and long-held labels, but subtly beginning a process of changing the meanings underlying those labels. Change that is more adaptive and subtle, as opposed to more ‘in-your-face,’ can avoid some of the usual cynicism and resistance and increase the opportunity for collective learning. (Of course, we would be remiss if we did not acknowledge the possible dark side contained in this approach to the leadership of change efforts. The subtlety of meanings confers extraordinary power to those in a position to manipulate them, so Lord Acton’s famous dictum—power corrupts, and absolute power . . . —applies even to this apparently inconspicuous realm. Most worrisome is that motivated meaning management is a stealth process with the capability to circumvent healthy debates and preferences about the character of change. It therefore plays directly to critical theorists’ worst fears that organizational elites too often manipulate the construction of reality to favor their own interests at the expense of lower level members.)
Another area where leadership’s role in the management of meaning is affected by the existence of subtle learning is the area of knowledge management. Knowledge management is often associated with organizational learning, although usually from the perspective of the information systems and procedures an organization relies on to exploit the knowledge gained through its learning. If knowledge only becomes valuable once meaning is attributed to it, however, then the management of meaning, and by extension the learning of that meaning, becomes a key aspect of knowledge management, so leaders have the responsibility to guide that process toward effectiveness. Although this dynamic is a direct outgrowth of recognizing a meaning-based form of organizational learning, it is not often discussed in current treatments of knowledge management.
On the need for specificity and clarity
Finally, our discussions of subtle learning raise important implications for future theoretical and empirical considerations of organizational learning. Perhaps one of the most important implications involves the use of the term ‘organizational learning’ itself. In many ways, this term has become so broad and now subsumes so many varied notions that its usefulness as a concept has become limited in both research and practice. Based on our own research experiences on the relationship between organizational identity and organizational learning, we feel that it is imperative for researchers and practitioners to recognize and define multiple types of organizational learning, each differing in its structure and process, each fulfilling different functions within an organization, and each resulting in different types of knowledge.
For instance, we have discussed the covert nature of subtle learning and the cultural processes involved in its occurrence. Subtle learning might also be more likely than other types of learning to lead to tacit, group-level knowledge, or what Cook and Brown (1999: 392) refer to as ‘organizational genres.’ Organizational genres represent ‘the distinctive and useful meanings a given group attaches to its various literary artifacts [as well as] to its various physical and social artifacts.’ Although ‘these genres are not explicitly learned or known,’ they represent knowledge ‘possessed or “held in common” by that group’ (ibid.) and confirmed or modified through continuing social interaction.
We believe that it is in our best interests as researchers, and in the best interests of the organizations we study and consult with, to be more specific and clear about the particular type(s) of organizational learning to which we are referring when we use this term. We hope our explication of semantic or meaning-based learning (cf. Corley and Gioia, 2003) provides the impetus for this kind of specification. Although past research has discussed issues that relate to meanings associated with learning, in this chapter we have attempted (1) to specify subtle learning in some detail; (2) to discuss its role in forming a type of learning different from more traditional notions of knowledge- or behaviorally-based learning; (3) to discuss its impact on the conceptualization of organizational learning; and (4) to label it in a fashion that allows researchers to see it as an interesting and useful domain for understanding and employing it in their work.
Although some might argue that specification of another form of organizational learning leads to further fragmentation of the concept, we feel that the inclusion of subtle learning within the spectrum of organizational learning types is a promising way for researchers to gain genuine insight into organizational phenomena related to organizational learning and to help the organizations they work with improve their learning processes. As researchers become more specific about the type of organizational learning they are describing and/or studying, our understanding of the role learning plays in organizational behavior and strategy will improve, thus enabling us as researchers to provide valuable knowledge for the organizations we study.