The Learning Organization Needs No Apology

The Learning Organization Needs No Apology The demise of the learning organization has seemingly been enacted: Google Trends chronicles the worldwide waning of the search-term "learning organization" from the high of 100 in April 2004 to 10 in June 2018. This prĂŠcis means to talk down trends in management ideas whose particularized if not proprietary vocabulary largely explains why what is in vogue one day is antiquated the next.

Olivier Serrat 29/06/2018

1 In Whatever Happened to Knowledge Management? Davenport (2015) surmised that the rise of Google, a new focus on analytics, and various organizational and cultural challenges each played a part in the discipline's declining popularity.

The Ornithomancy of Trends And now, the numbers are in: Google Trends, a real-time public web facility of Google Inc. that draws from Google Search, records the near-extinction of "knowledge management" as a search-term—relative to the total search-volume—from the maximum of 100 points worldwide in April 2004, the first year for which Google Trends makes results available, to just 8 in June 2018.1,2 The demise of the learning organization has seemingly also been enacted: Google Trends chronicles the worldwide waning of the search-term "learning organization" from the high of 100 in April 2004 to 10 in June 2018. ("Organizational learning" has fared poorly too: the search-term fetched a score of 9 in June 2018 from the maximum search interest of 100 in April 2004.) In comparison, the search-term "big data" struck 100 worldwide on Google Trends as recently as March 2017 after minimal interest in the range of 4–6 over the period April 2004– 2011 began to grow exponentially from October 2011.

Figure: "Knowledge Management", "Learning Organization", "Organizational Learning", and "Big Data"—Interest Over Time, Worldwide

Google Trends 1

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The data is indexed to 100 points, where 100 is the maximum search interest for the period and location selected and 0 the lowest; a value of 50 means that the term is half as popular; a score of 0 means there was not enough data for the search-term.

Quotation marks were used around the search-terms to retrieve the exact terminology and exclude similar terms or derived words.

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Is Relevance an Algorithm?

If relevance, in the sense of social applicability, is an algorithm, a digital product, the results of Google Trends-based search analysis for the "learning organization" confirm that the concept was in the 1990s and early 2000s what "excellence" was in the 1980s; look, the numbers say, "The world has moved on" (Pedler, 1995). But, who—or rather what, pace Google Trends—is to say excellence (and by extension knowledge management, the learning organization, and organizational learning) is no longer a going concern? Were these disciplines and topics mere apparitions, figments of our imagination? Thankfully, the aphorism says, "Not everything that can be counted counts, and not everything that counts can be counted". Much noise is inherent in any behavioral and time-series data and it (the noise) will get louder: every day, the internet creates 2–3 quintillion bytes of data. So, what with the information glut and the poverty of attention it causes, this précis means to talk down trends in management ideas whose particularized if not proprietary vocabulary largely explains why what is in vogue one day is antiquated the next. Infobesity should neither adjudicate how well a vision helps understand, categorize, and interpret (and thus at the second-remove influences practice) nor suggest a lack of results when the vision, self-confessedly, only aims to crystalize thinking. Who could possibly disagree with the following statement? "The future is likely to belong to those organizations that never stop asking 'How can we better organize and manage ourselves?'" (Galbraith, Lawler, & Associates, 1993, p. 299). But, never mind yesterday: in the competitive world of today it is curious that enthusiasts of the learning organization should be made to pass—when they are not forced to serve—as apologists: after all, if knowledge is the strategic resource of a 21st century that is so markedly beset by economic, environmental, and social challenges,3 to name the main transects, how can "… 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" (Senge, 1990, p. 3) ever be thought outmoded or, Heaven forfend!, undesirable?

Doubting Thomas Is Alive and Well Senge (1990), with whom the ideal of the learning organization is closely associated even if the term had occurred before, offered a no-nonsense rationale: "The organizations that will truly excel in the future will be the organizations that discover how to tap people's commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in an organization" (p. 4). Obligingly, Senge (1990) catalogued the attributes of learning organizations as personal mastery, shared vision, mental models, team

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In a globalizing world, our population of 7.6 billion people—that will reach 8.5 billion by 2030—must alleviate poverty; mitigate and adapt to climate change; end abuse of natural resources and the environment; clean up environmental pollution; deal with natural disasters; counter medical challenges, e.g., pandemics; encouraging disarmament; coping with security threats; accommodate nonstate power; handle failed states; tap capacity for social action; allay frustration among minorities; confront violence; formulate global rights; build a global rule of law; evolve regulatory and institutional frameworks to contain global financial and economic crises; optimize international trade; manage mass migrations; employ human resources better; and—for its own sake but also toward resolution of the foregoing—identify, create, store, share, and use knowledge (Serrat, 2010).

3 learning, and systems thinking (the fifth discipline that integrates the other four).4 Command of these attributes, that Senge (1990) knew were exacting preconditions to the realization of the ideal, would empower organizations to add generative learning to adaptive learning,5 which promotes organizational health:6 as a result, organizational performance would be high. But, The Fifth Discipline could not calm disquiet: the heart of the problem—as Senge et al. (1994 sagely conceded—was that the learning organization could not be explained in detail: each organization had to nurture its own version of the ideal (p. 15). Their appetites whetted, academics and practitioners alike demanded clarity: if no learning organization can be like another, the absence of a roadmap would surely discourage those wishing to make the journey.

Doubting Thomas is alive and well. Yes, there have been proposals to the effect that "… the idea of the learning organization should be abandoned on the grounds that it was an imaginative idea that has now run its course" (Grieves, 2008, p. 1). For sure, critical thinking challenges people to question assumptions and provocations spur debate. "It is by doubting that we come to investigate, and by investigating that we recognize the truth," thought Pierre Abélard. Nonetheless, in the manifest absence of humane alternatives to the learning organization, should we not multiply our efforts to craft our own answers to the far more rewarding question: "Why not have a learning organization?"

Blessed Is He Who Expects Nothing, for He Shall Never Be Disappointed Twenty to thirty short years after their conceptualization, as new publications avow, neither the learning organization nor knowledge management ought to be pronounced dead (or even short of breath): on the contrary, both were in the greater scheme of things well ahead of their time; in the harsh light of worldwide challenges, both may actually be in the vanguard of developments for profound behavioral change at the global level (Serrat, 2017). A knowledge advantage is a sustainable advantage that provides increasing returns as it is used; however, building a knowledge position is a long-term endeavor that requires foresight and planning, which explains disappointments. Quite commonly, strategic reversals are failures of execution: a strategy is abandoned out of impatience or because of pressure for an instant payoff before it has had a chance to take root and yield results. Or, its focal point is allowed to drift overtime (Serrat, 2009a). Above all, as noted earlier, it is the absence of a template for success that has held

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According to Senge (1990), personal mastery hangs on clarifying personal vision, focusing energy, and seeing reality. Shared vision is built by transforming personal vision into common vision. Mental models are put together by unearthing internal pictures and understanding how they shape actions. Team learning grows from suspending judgments and fostering dialogue. And, systems thinking fuses the first four disciplines to create a whole from distinct parts. Engagingly, Senge (1990) depicted the core learning capabilities of organizations as a three-legged stool—a stool that would not stand if any of its legs were missing: the legs represent aspiration (personal mastery and shared vision), reflective conversation (mental models and team learning), and understanding complexity (systems thinking).

Adaptive learning focuses on incremental change: that type of learning solves problems but ignores the question of why the problem arose in the first place. (Adaptive learning is about coping.) Generative learning concentrates on transformational change that changes the status quo: this type of learning uses feedback from past actions to interrogate the assumptions underlying current views. (At heart, generative learning is about creating.)

The notion of organizational ill-health is easily understood and needs little explanation. Long ago, Bennis (1962) warned that organizational ill-health affects coherence of identity, the ability to perceive the world correctly, and adaptability. The point here is that organizational learning can make a necessary and valuable contribution to organizational health by advancing the shared values, clarity of purpose, institutionalized leadership, technical capability, open and honest channels of communications, and ability to deal constructively with conflict.

4 back the faint of heart. "Blessed is he who expects nothing, for he shall never be disappointed," said Alexander Pope, surely meaning something else.

Milk the Cow, but Don't Pull off the Udder Notwithstanding issues of dimensions, measurement, and validation (Yang, Watkins, & Marsick, 2004), Örtenblad (2002) saw that "organizational learning", "learning at work", "learning climate", and "learning structure" are distinct types of understanding—each of which wholesome and potentially complementary—that emerge from Senge's three-legged stool metaphor; the term "learning organization" ought not, therefore, confuse academics and practitioners: it can find practical expression depending on opportunity and demand. Örtenblad, Hsu, and Lamb (2015) saw also that to materialize the four types of understanding into action their instrumental use should be considered from the perspectives of stakeholders, namely, the employer perspective, the employee perspective, and the societal perspective. Moving forward, never mind stimulating but ultimately unprofitable arguments that "Organization and learning are essentially antithetical … To learn is to disorganize and increase variety. To organize is to forget and to reduce variety" (Weick & Westley, 1996, p. 190). Milk the cow, but don't pull off the udder! Plainly, everything depends on how organizing and learning are conceptualized.7 In any case, organizing is a key activity in life and organizations are its most visible manifestation. An organization happens when people come together and match up with commitment and trust.

Apart from the anticipated cultural, economic, political, and social benefits of cooperation, a principal stimulus of organization is competition; all things considered, if resources were unlimited the need to organize would be minimal (Serrat, 2013).

An Inspiring Language of Change Interest in excellence, knowledge, and learning will perdure: considering this, it is an eminently vivid and agreeable vision of what the learning organization says is possible that naysayers attack. For sure, initiating and sustaining change is a more daunting task than The Fifth Discipline's upbeat presentation intimated: over and above the incontestable difficulty of change, this is because (if they are to change) big companies need to stop thinking like mechanics and start acting like gardeners8 (Senge et al., 1999). In almost synchronous parallel to eloquent proposals that organizations should move beyond strategy, structure, and systems—the corollary of scientific management—to a framework built on purpose, processes, and people, the ideal of the learning organization gives us an inspiring language of change that all kinds of organizations can embrace. In the face of digital Taylorim and multiplying warnings such that " You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot—and Sooner Than You Think", the learning

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To their credit, Senge et al. (1999) described in detail what obstacles can stall momentum toward the learning organization: they are (a) the challenges of initiating (e.g., "We don't have time for this stuff!"; "We have no help!"; "This stuff isn't relevant!"; and "They're not walking the talk!"); (b) the challenges of sustaining transformation (e.g., "This stuff is ________!"; "This stuff isn't working!"; and "They don't understand us!"; and (c) the challenges of rethinking and redesigning (e.g., Who's in charge of this stuff?"; "We keep reinventing the wheel!"; and "Where are we going? What are we here for?"). Senge et al. (1999) submitted also how organizations might build the personal and organizational capabilities needed to overcome each obstacle.

To stay relevant, your company and employees must keep learning, the chorus has it; but, we find it difficult to practice what we preach. The reasons why organizations do not learn are too numerous to list but fixed mindsets, overreliance on past performance, and fear of failure loom universally large (Gino & Staats, 2015). Serrat (2009b) enumerated several roadblocks to learning: identifying and defining roadblocks, however numerous they may be, is half the battle to removing them.

5 organization offers a vision of humane workplaces (Bartlett & Ghoshal, 1994, 1995; Ghoshal & Bartlett,1995). Think otherwise if you dare.

Why Not Create Learning Organizations?

Why are we here? What are we really trying to create? Why does any of this matter to us?

Creation, according to Merriam-Webster, is the act of bringing the world into ordered existence.

Creative orientation lies at the heart of the learning organization. Specifically, amidst the hurlyburly of daily busyness, how can one help people both deal with the reality they face and maintain an orientation toward where they want to go? Whatever critics may say, The Fifth Disciple remains one of the most influential management books on systems thinking for organizational learning. Eschewing easy recommendations for management practice, Senge (1990) offered a way to view, understand, and manage what influences and interactions impact organizations in their environments: this makes his message widely applicable and evermore relevant. The figure below provides matter-of-fact, multidisciplinary arguments for why one might want to strive toward the ideal of the learning organization; each affirmation hints at what values one might then want to defend and promote, both instrumentally and symbolically, even if the learning organization senso strictu—meaning, Senge's (1990) definition—may never find concrete expression in the real world. The message of the figure is that diverse motivations can drive attempts to build a learning organization; they need not restricted to, or even include, organizational effectiveness. By the same token, the domains that might inform approaches to the learning organization need not be restricted to, or even include, knowledge management, organizational learning, or big data; they might include, say, change management, complexity thinking, diversity and inclusion, emotional intelligence, futures studies, information and communication technology, institutional analysis, leadership studies, participative management, and social network theory. All roads lead to Rome but some may on occasion take you there faster than others.

Figure: Why Create a Learning Organization?

To produce a wide range of solutions to organizational issues To clarify vision, purpose, values, and organizational behavior

For client relations

To reduce the likelihood of repeated mistakes

To balance the demands of stakeholders

To reconcile the pressures of long-term effectiveness and short-term efficiency

For innovation For an energized committed workforce

For superior organizational performance and competitive advantage

To understand risks and diversity more deeply

To expand the horizons of who we are and what we can become

For independence and liberty To increase ability to manage change

To engage in community For awareness of the critical nature of interdependence To avoid decline

Note: This figure was inspired by section headings in Senge et al. (1994, 9–12).

6 References Bennis, W. (1962). Toward a "truly" scientific management: The concept of organizational health. General Systems Yearbook, 7, 269–282.

Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (1994). Changing the role of top management: Beyond strategy to purpose. Harvard Business Review. November–December, 79–88 Bartlett, C., & Ghoshal, S. (1995). Changing the role of top management: Beyond systems to people. Harvard Business Review. May–June, 132–142.

Davenport, T. Whatever happened to knowledge management? (2015, June 24) The Wall Street Journal.

Galbraith, J., Lawler, E., & Associates. (1993). Organizing for the future: The new logic for managing complex organizations. San Francisco, CA: Jossey‐Bass Publishers.

Ghoshal, S., & Bartlett, C. (1995). Changing the role of top management: Beyond structure to processes. Harvard Business Review. January–February, 86–96.

Gino, F., & Staats, B. (2015). Why organizations don't learn. Harvard Business Review.

November–December. 110–118.

Grieves, J. (2008). Why we should abandon the idea of the learning organization. The Learning Organization (15) 6, 463–473. Örtenblad, A. (2002). A typology of the idea of learning organization. Management Learning, 33(2), 213–230. Örtenblad, A. (2004). The learning organization: towards an integrated model. The Learning Organization, 11(2), 129–144. Örtenblad, A., Hsu, S-w., & Lamb, P. (2015), A stakeholder approach to advising on the relevance of fashionable management ideas, in A. Örtenblad (Ed.), Handbook of research on management ideas and panaceas: Adaptation and context. Cheltenham, UK and Northampton, MA, USA: Edward Elgar Publishing, 380–396.

Pedler, M. (1995). A guide to the learning organization. Industrial and Commercial Training, 27(4), 21–25.

Senge, P. (1990). The fifth discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Double Day. Senge, P., et al. (1994). The fifth discipline fieldbook: Strategies and tools for building a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday.

Senge, P., et al. (1999). The dance of change: The challenges to sustaining momentum in a learning organization. New York, NY: Currency Doubleday.

Serrat, O. (2009a). From strategy to practice. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Serrat, O. (2009b). Overcoming roadblocks to learning. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Serrat, O. (2010). Sparking social innovations. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Serrat, O. (2013). On networked organizations. Manila: Asian Development Bank.

Serrat, O. (2017). How would you motivate interest in knowledge management? Unpublished manuscript.

Weick, K., & Westley, F. (1996). Organizational learning. Affirming an oxymoron. In S. Clegg, C. Hardy, & W. Nord (Eds.). Handbook of organization studies. London, UK: Sage Publications.

Yang, B., Watkins, K., & Marsick, V. (2014). The construct of the learning organization: Dimensions, measurement, and validation. Human Resource Development Quarterly, 15(1), 31–55.