Power, Mastery And Organizational Learning

Abstract

The topic of power has not featured strongly in debates about organizational learning, a point that is illustrated in a discussion of influential studies of teamworking. Despite the insights that such studies have provided into the nature of expertise and collaboration they have tended not to explore the relevance of issues of hierarchy, politics and institutionalized power relations. The paper addresses the problem by exploring the links between power, expertise and organizational learning. Power is analysed both as the medium for, and the product of, collective activity. The approach emphasizes how skills and imaginations are intertwined with social, technical and institutional structures. While studies of teamworking have concentrated on situations where imaginations and structures are tightly linked, unexpected developments may occur when these relations are loosened. Such situations occur when the needs of the moment overshadow normal routines and relationships and there is no single overview or centre of control. It is suggested that organizational learning can be conceptualized as the movement between familiar and emergent activities and between established and emergent social relations. Events in a two‐year action research project are used to illustrate the approach and explore episodes of decentred collaboration.

Power in Management and Organization Science

“…However, they demonstrate how this semblance of neutrality is used to effectively justify and sanction particular relations of inequality within organizations, especially between top management and lower ranking members. As Blacker and McDonald (2000) and Vince (2001) also note in their investigations of organizational learning, for many employees, this variant of power is difficult to resist because the ideological terrain of the 'learning organization' and 'organizational knowledge' de-politicizes concrete power differentials, making them appear unquestionable and beyond debate (also see Swan and Scarborough, 2005). Domination might also be an important face of power in organizations when some kind of change program is introduced, especially if the change is expected to prompt opposition or dissent.…”

The dynamics of networked power in a concentrated business network

“…Recent knowledge about power in process theory (Thomas, Sargent and Hardy, 2010), systems theory (Blackler and McDonald, 2000) and network theory (Welch and Wilkinson, 2005) provides useful insights into the empirical phenomenon of power as well as its conceptualization in inter-organizational settings. In brief, process theories tend to give priority to creation processes over characterizations of outcomes and stable entities, for example, actor-network theory (ANT).…”

“…The power to produce predictive behaviors results from the system's constitution of relations among elements of exchange, production, consumption and distribution enabling organizational entities to change their way of handling variety and complexity (Prenkert, 2006). Blackler and McDonald (2000) suggest that power is both the result and the medium of collective systemic activity. A complex, higher order system is more able to escape from the dominance of others, and will be more able to dominate less complex and coordinated system.…”

Knowledge management technology-in-practice: a social constructionist analysis of the introduction and use of knowledge management systems

“…Such stabilised technology-in-practice would generally be considered as successfully well used technology though in CD:net's case this failed to happen and it was abandoned. It is perhaps for this reason that so many call for a strong vision and leadership within Knowledge Management (Davenport, DeLong et al 1998;Blackler and McDonald 2000;Earl 2001). (Berger and Luckmann 1966, p71).…”