Beyond the Learning Organisation: Paths of Organisational Learning in the East German Context

Citation

Borghini, S. (2001), "Beyond the Learning Organisation: Paths of Organisational Learning in the East German Context", Leadership & Organization Development Journal, Vol. 22 No. 8, pp. 402-404. https://doi.org/10.1108/lodj.2001.22.8.402.4

From the typical perspective of organisation science, this book deals with the social and embedded nature of organisational learning. The author aims to carry out the enactment theory to go beyond the limits of the early learning organisation theory that, in fact, tends to neglect the role of the social context in the learning process. This criticism toward studies of organisational learning is not radical at all, but it points out the importance of social context and institutions, the key concepts of the neo‐institutionalist perspective.

The analysis of the assumptions about the nature of organisations and learning process underlying the two perspectives is a prerequisite to demonstrate that each one lacks on some aspects of the issue. Organisational learning in the metaphor of the learning organisation is represented as “undersocialized”, while it is represented as “oversocialised” in the interpretation of the neo‐institutionalism.

The first perspective, in fact, considers organisations as continuous and reflective learning systems where organisational learning processes can be initiated, directed and controlled by skilled practitioners and managers. The second, instead, sees organisations as socially constructed and bounded to external institutions, so that significant cognition is not the result of autonomous learning by individuals, but as emanating from what is institutionally embedded in society. On the contrary, the enactment theory appears to be better because it develops a combined view, allowing a closer comprehension of the complex relationship between the process of organisational learning as a social process and the role of institutions.

Redefining the role of actors in organisations who are able to “enact” their environments, the concept of organisation is reconsidered: organisation can be seen as a “community of practices” that learns through social practices, based on interaction and participation in social relations, inside and outside the organisation.

The new emerging idea is that of “relational learning”, depending on the social tightness of the internal and external relations.

Nevertheless, the real contribution of this book is not to be found in the above mentioned combined research approach, but it lies on the analysis of the detailed case studies carried out in three East German firms during the societal transformation in Central and Eastern Europe in the 1990s. The research work is carried out as an experienced‐based project that aims to explore two different aspects. On the one hand, the analysis is conducted to compare the different ways in which actors of the three firms transformed social relations and cultural systems. On the other hand, the attention is on the nature of the organisational learning processes and the change in interpretative and interactional practices.

The critical discussion of the results tends to demonstrate the advantages of the enactment perspective and the narrowness of considering learning organisation theory or neo‐instutionalism alone. Arguing about the knowledge developed through empirical material, the author asserts, in different ways, that the typical institutional tensions in organisational learning processes have different impacts on organisations, depending on the constructionist nature of action‐based learning and the role of dissimilarities of cultural systems. In this perspective, organisational learning seems to be something different from a process of continuous improvement or perfection of organisation’s knowledge, as traditionally assumed. On the contrary, it is intended as a process of organisational sensemaking that appears from a retrospective consideration by the actors on the outcomes of their actions. With regard to this position, some readers who are more used to cognitive theories belonging to psychology, philosophy or recent research fields of business administration (situated cognition, distributed cognition, cognition in the “wild”, organisational creativity etc.) could disagree or be sceptical on the idea of the learning essentially based on retrospective reflection on the outputs of actions.

The theoretical approach proposed in the book does not consider or gives limited attention to the mental models of the actors, central in other views of the cognition of the organisation. The learning organisation theory itself points out the importance to mental models more than the critical review proposed in the book.

To conclude, the book, and in particular the empirical material presented, can be considered an opportunity to regain strength to the endless debate on knowledge and its being in the middle between its mental and factual nature.