Organizing, Learning, and Strategizing: From Construction to Discovery

Abstract A reader of contemporary management books might conclude that organizational learning is the normal state of affairs. Students of the Fifth Discipline (Senge 1990) learn to handle tools in order to implement learning procedures in their companies, and]apanese companies excel in continuous learning, or Kaizen. Consultants sell learning through total quality management (TQM) in an ongoing and rather low-key effort, or through business process reengineering (BPR), promising radical restructuring of strategic business processes. Who dares admit that they run narrow-minded (although profitable) enterprises with little intention of learning? Still, inability to learn characterizes many organizations. Successful organizations find it difficult to unlearn and relearn when times change and failures occur. Organizational inertia stabilizes organizational development both when stability is functional and when it is dysfunctional. To unlearn previously successful strategies and to learn new ways to direct behavior is often very difficult. What Argyris and Schon (1978) called double-loop learning is often referred to, but rarely reported, at least not as far as learning at strategic levels in organizations is concerned.