Creating a Learning Organisation
| Published date | 01 May 1990 |
| Date | 01 May 1990 |
| Pages | 24-28 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/EUM0000000000779 |
| Author | Mark Easterby‐Smith |
| Subject Matter | HR & organizational behaviour |
Creating a
Learning
Organisation
Mark Easterby-Smith
24
PERSONNEL REVIEW
19,5
O
ne of the main messages about
organisational learning is that it is not
easy to understand as a concept.
Introduction
In the late 1970s the USA finally woke up to the fact that
Japanese companies were rapidly replacing American
companies in many key markets. American authors
reacted with characteristic energy and produced several
well-known attempts at explaining the success of Japan
Inc.
[1,2].
One of the key reasons for the superior
performance of Japanese companies then was felt to be
the high degree of commitment of their
employees,
which
seemed to be achieved through very strongly shared
beliefs and "corporate cultures". This led to a spate of
books extolling the value of strong corporate cultures,
including
Peters and
Waterman's
In
Search
of Excellence[3].
But
much has
changed since
1982.
Many of the companies
identified as top performers have since fallen from grace,
and this has prompted many authorities, including Peters,
to search for alternative explanations and models. There
are other reasons for holding reservations about the
centrality of organisational culture. Many people find the
control exercised on individuals through strong cultures
distasteful. Others argue that corporate cultures simply
cannot be manipulated at the whim of top management,
nor
can
they be transposed from
one
national/social culture
into another. This has led to some more careful
examinations of the reasons for relative corporate success
or failure. One of the more promising lines is advanced
by
Nonaka and
Johansson[4],
where they argue that
a
key
feature in the success of Japanese companies is not only
their ability to adapt quickly, but also their ability to
learn
rapidly from their experiences. This view has received
much support from
others,
although
it has
not yet achieved
the prominence of the "culture" movement.
In this
article
I intend to review some of the more important
contributions to organisational learning, and to consider
from a practical point of view what principles can be
adopted
by
organisations wishing
to increase
their capacity
to learn.
Why is Organisational Learning Important?
The trouble is
that
they've
been enormously successful
and
they have no incentive to change!
(Overheard on the 6.05 London to Barrow train)
Past successes not only reduce the incentive for
companies to change, they also are one of the reasons
why companies lose a sense of urgency about learning
to improve their performances in the future. But there
are many other reasons, and Nancy Foy's[5] account of
the fall from grace of STC provides a good illustration.
In the STC case, according to Foy, a combination of a
"power" culture and highly centralised controls, with
rigidly designed systems and procedures, produced
behaviour amongst managers that made learning almost
impossible. In particular the tendency to make scapegoats
out of those who made mistakes led to
a
general aversion
to taking risks, and managers, afraid of being punished
as harbingers of bad news, tended to concentrate on
providing only the "good" news to their superiors.
The problem for STC was that their system of
management had been rather successful at a time when
contracts were plentiful and well-assured. But it was
woefully inadequate when their
cosy
business environment
was disrupted
by
changes such as the separation of British
Telecom from the Post Office, and the emergence of new
competitors. Moreover, the original management style
almost ensured that senior management
could
not possibly
become aware of where they were going wrong.
Many other organisations have Suffered, and will suffer,
similar fates to
STC.
No doubt the inability to learn is not
the only reason why they get into difficulty, but it certainly
compounds the problem, and it
is
possible that if they had
been
capable
of learning they
would have
been
able
to avoid
the worst consequences of what befell them.
What is Organisational Learning?
According to Fiol and Lyles[6] organisational learning
means "the process of improving actions through better
knowledge and understanding". Just what this "action"
is depends both on the situation of the organisation and
the way that its members habitually tend to learn. Many
organisational changes and adaptations are simply knee-
jerk reactions to new
crises.
Little is done to understand
why
the crisis was allowed to arise in the first place, or
I would like to thank Mike Gowlett, Sarah Mann, Gerry Moult
and Arthur Pickering for the various contributions they have made
to this article.
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