Week 4: 22nd -28th May (Activity: 2.8)
Ideas about how organisations learn are often discussed under the umbrella of ‘organisational learning’ (OL). The main focus of this section is on 'learning organisations', but the field of organisational learning is much wider than this, and at the end of this section you will read an article which gives you an overview of this wider field.
The learning organisation
The term ‘learning organisation’ was coined by Peter Senge in a highly influential text (Senge, 1990). By this description, he means an organisation in which individuals know how to learn and to manage their learning and are willing and able to work with others to create learning. For this to happen, Senge (1990) argues that the system’s structures and processes must be designed to support continuous learning and members of the organisation must be committed to continuous learning, both individually and in teams, and all would be working towards a shared vision of the organisation’s future.
Senge (1990, 2006) argues that learning organisations need to practise five disciplines:
- Personal mastery – i.e. individuals need to be able to manage and direct their own learning.
- Mental models – these need to be surfaced and challenged to make way for new ideas and thinking.
- Building shared vision – to be successful, organisations need a genuinely shared vision of their future, and the principles which inform their practice.
- Team learning – enabling teams to overcome barriers to learning so that team members learn together.
- Systems thinking – in which organisations are regarded as a system in which all parts are interrelated. This raises the importance, for instance, of considering the influence of the whole system when making changes in specific areas of practice within the organisation and vice versa. This discipline is the one that holds together the other four.
Senge defines learning organisations as ‘places 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’ (Senge, 2006, p. 3).
The idea of ‘double-loop learning’ (drawn from the work of Argyris, 1999) is often associated with learning organisations. This is the idea that learning from experience in the workplace should not by simply about reflection on what happened (single-loop learning), but should also mean challenging the assumptions underpinning the action, making it possible to alter the paradigm of thinking within which actions are decided on. This will be covered in more depth in Unit 4.
There was great enthusiasm for Senge’s ideas about the learning organisation, particularly in the 1990s. In another influential text, Arie de Geus (1997), previously corporate planning director at Shell, wrote of the importance of organisational learning if companies were to survive:
New technologies come on the scene, markets shift, interest rates fluctuate, consumers’ tastes change, and the company must enter a new phase of life. In order to stay in sync with the outside world, it must be able to alter its marketing strategy, its product range, its organizational form, and where and when it does its manufacturing. And once a company has adapted to a new environment, it is no longer the organization it used to be; it has evolved. That is the essence of learning.
There is an assumption, though, in writing about learning organisations that there is a positive relationship between creating an environment conducive to individual and group learning and improved productivity, and critics point out that this assumption is problematic and has not been demonstrated. It is also argued that the unitarist approach assumed by the idea of a shared vision does not take into account the complexities of interests and viewpoints of different individuals in the organisation. You will learn more about these ideas, too, in Unit 4.
Knowledge management
Running alongside these perspectives on learning is the related discipline and practice of knowledge management. Within many contemporary organisations, this highlights an emphasis on capturing, managing and leveraging the information, experience and knowledge held by the firm’s employees for the organisation’s benefit. From this perspective the development of the individuals is somewhat incidental; rather, emphasis is placed on knowledge itself. There is a key concern with the difficulties of managing different types or forms of knowledge with much consideration given to the notions of tacit and explicit knowledge. Based on Polanyi’s writing (e.g. 1962; 1969), explicit knowledge is that which can be easily codified, articulated and shared; whereas tacit knowledge is personal, practical and context-specific, and therefore difficult to formalise or communicate. Many classifications of knowledge have been developed from this basis. For example, Lam (2000) provides a four-way classification that takes account of both the tacit/explicit categorisation of knowledge and whether it is individual or collectively owned. This results in a definition of knowledge as embrained (individual/explicit), encoded (collective/explicit), embodied (individual/tacit) or embedded (collective/tacit).
From categorisations such as this the aim of knowledge management thus becomes to identify, capture, store and share these forms of knowledge effectively within an organisation, ensuring knowledge can flow freely across different roles and functions but critically preventing its escape to, for example, competitors. There is particular emphasis on the means by which knowledge might be ‘transformed’ between different types so as to ease or prevent its sharing. Nonaka and Takeuchi’s (1995) ‘knowledge spiral’ is one of the most influential models of knowledge processes (Spender and Scherer, 2007). Outlining the processes of transition between explicit and tacit, this model is firmly orientated towards managing knowledge to achieve competitive advantage.
However, there are many critics of such approaches to knowledge management who highlight issues of separating a concern with knowledge from a concern with people, alongside an over-reliance on technological means of capturing and sharing knowledge. HRD practitioners often find themselves working in parallel to such knowledge management programmes, which may have different aims and priorities from learning and development strategies within an organisation.
Approaches to organisation learning
The ideas of the learning organisation and of knowledge management represent different approaches to organisation learning. Helen Shipton (2006) provides a useful typology featuring these and other organisational learning (OL) approaches, which is demonstrated in Figure 2.3. It classifies theories about organisation learning as follows:
The vertical axis distinguishes between descriptive theories (what OL is) and prescriptive theories (what it should be).
The horizontal axis distinguishes between OL perspectives that focus on the organisation as an entity and those that focus instead on individuals and individuals within their communities.
The concept of learning organisations falls in quadrant 1, having a focus on the individual within the organisation and a prescriptive perspective, while literature on knowledge management falls in quadrant 3, having a focus on the organisation rather than the individual and an explanatory perspective.
You will read more about this typology and each of the approaches to organisational learning in Activity 2.8.
Activity 2.8: Organisational learning (120 minutes)
Conclusion
In this unit you have read about profound changes in ideas about learning itself both at the individual and the organisational level, and about how learning could be supported both at the individual and the organisational level. This raises important questions about how HRD professionals can contribute to strategic thinking about learning and also about the interventions which can best support learning. You will read more about these in Units 3 and 4 respectively.
Suggested additional resources
You may like to explore in more depth some of the ideas presented in this unit and associated readings. If so, here is a list of suggested readings (these are excellent resources but are not compulsory reading for this unit):
Burnes, B., Cooper, C. and West, P. (2003) ‘Organisational learning: the new management paradigm?’, Management Decision, vol. 41, no. 5, pp. 452–64.
A critical evaluation of the need for organisational learning across the board. Makes the point that this will depend on factors such as industry, structure and culture of the organisation.
Cheung-Judge, M. Y. and Holbeche, L. (2015) Organization Development: A Practitioner’s Guide for OD and HR, 2nd edn, London, Kogan Page.
Explains OD in theory and practice, provides tools and techniques to analyse organisations’ needs and to enable change and development.
Coffield, F., Moseley, D., Hall, E. and Ecclestone, K. (2004) ‘Learning styles and pedagogy in post-16 learning: a systematic and critical review’, London, Learning and Skills Research Centre.
A thorough report on the low reliability and validity of the learning styles most widely used by HRD practitioners can be found here.
Fleming, N., Dunn, J., and Bonwell, C. (2015) ‘VARK: a guide to learning styles’ [Online]. Available at http://vark-learn.com.
The official website of the VARK questionnaire.
Knowles, M. S., Holton, E. F. and Swanson, R. A. (2007) The Adult Learner: The Definitive Classic in Adult Education and Human Resource Development, 6th edn, Burlington, MA, and London, Elsevier.
Includes Knowles’ original ideas and adult learning theory while adding new contributions from the rest of the author team to the field.
O’Donnell, D., McGuire, D. and Cross, C. (2006) ‘Critically challenging some assumptions in HRD’, International Journal of Training and Development, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 4–16.
A more critical review of the relationship between HRM and HRD is offered in this paper.
