From `Learning Organization' to `Teaching-Learning Organization'?

Abstract

The influence of the idea of learning as a fundamental organizational process has been remarkable, as has the speed of its development and spread. `Organizational Learning' and `the Learning Organization' are well established in the literature on organizations and increasingly in use within organizations too. They offer important insights for all those involved in work with organizations and their management. The questions raised in this paper, however, concern the `other side' of learning, as a human activity, namely: teaching. We argue that all organizations include experiences and activities which can be described as `teaching' and `learning', but despite being as intrinsic to and as firmly embedded in organization as learning, teaching has been ignored as an organizational process and needs attention in its own right, if the picture is to be complete-hence the title of this paper.

Gregory Bateson on deutero‐learning and double bind: A brief conceptual history

“…Defined very briefly as, respectively, "learning to learn" and "pathological deutero-learning," the concepts have become influential in the work of the so-called Palo Alto and Milan schools in psychiatry and psychotherapy (Abeles, 1976;Bateson, Jackson, Haley, & Weakland, 1956;Burbatti & Formenti, 1988;Burbatti, Castoldi, & Maggi, 1993;Haley, 1963;Koopmans, 2001;Ruesch & Bateson, 1951;Sluzki & Veron, 1971;Watzlawick, Bavelas, & Jackson, 1967). In more recent years, the concepts have gained prominence in the fields of organization and policy science as an integral part of "organizational learning" (Argyris & Schön, 1978Dopson & Neumann, 1998;French & Bazalgette, 1996;Hennestad, 1990;Hirschhorn & Gilmore, 1980;Huysman, 2000;Schön, 1975;Sinkula, 1994;Wijnhoven, 2001).As often occurs when concepts are transferred to other fields than their original ones, their meaning changes and becomes more diverse. This is especially true for the fields of organization and policy science where theoretical diversification and "paradigmatic" proliferation seem to be the rule rather than the exception.…”

The origins and conceptualizations of ‘triple-loop’ learning: A critical review

“…While Bateson did not apply this framework to issues of organisational learning himself, it is referenced widely in articles on organisational learning and related topics (e.g. Bartunek and Moch 1994, French and Bazalgette 1996, Huysman 2000, Nielsen 1993, Roach and Bednar 1997, Schein 1999, Tosey and Mathison 2008, Visser 2003, Wijnhoven 2001, and Yuthas et al 2004). …”

“…Authors such as Contu et al (2003) and Huysman (2000) are among the few to identify a value-laden rhetoric in the field of management, such that 'learning' and `the learning organisation' are seen as unequivocally good things; even (as noted by French and Bazalgette 1996) as some kind of holy grail. This would appear to be a projection of the type of instrumental, goal-orientated mind-set that Bateson criticised as epistemologically flawed, and in his view likely to lead to disaster.…”

Once upon a time … tales of organisational learning

“…One moral of this story is `be careful what you wish With few exceptions (e.g. Contu, Grey, & Örtenblad 2003;French & Bazalgette 1996) learning organisations are seen as desirable, and `learning' as universally a good thing. There is a sense in which such thinking is in denial because it ignores the shadow side of learning, and the many ways in which behaviour and ideas are regulated in organisational structures.…”