Hello everyone, reentering the conference after a few days. A few notes on the issue of organizational learning, or perhaps better collective learning. Chris Argyrys wrote his foundational books on organizational learning many years ago. I am afraid though that the relationship between individual learning and collective learning is still an unresolved matter. Individuals learn (or are able to learn) and only under the right circumstances a collective (being a group, an organization or a community) is able to learn. This depends on the individuals within the collective (their learning capacity) as well as the various structural circumstances (as enablers of learning) of the collective. This note is not meant to be negative, I just believe it is important to acknowledge the crucial role of individuals for making collective learning possible, that makes that "Human systems are different" (see Vickers, ..). We all might have experienced situations in which a leaving individual results into the collapse of a functioning group (or even an organization) and the other way around: an entering individual into the revival of a collective. Having said all this, I see the at least two issues/dilemma's for collective learning: - First, the dilemma of making a collective 'individual-proof': the learning capacity of a collective depends on both the indepence of individual capacities _and_ the susceptibility/responsiveness to individual capacities. - Second, (in relation to the first) the endurability of collective learning. Perhaps sustainability is a better word in this context: how to make collective learning sustainable. I was really impressed by all the tools and methods that are offered here, but even if a method works great in contributing to collective learning: what should be done to make it (more) sustainable? Does this perhaps mean that instruments/tools have a 'best-before date' in a collective? regards, Janita
-- Dr. Janita F.J. Vos Faculty of Management and Organization University of Groningen The Netherlands E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Tel. +31 50 363 7161 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/pipermail/intsci_learningforsustainability.net/attachments/20060307/a97bfea2/attachment.html _______________________________________________ IntSci mailing list [email protected] http://mail.learningforsustainability.net/mailman/listinfo/intsci_learningforsustainability.net
