News Of Difference: Developing A Diagnostic Framework For Organisational Learning And Survival

Working Paper

Langley, Dawn

Abstract

This paper uses a modified version of Gregory Batesons (2000) levels of learning to review data from an ethnographic study of three arts organisations that faced financial crisis in order to develop a multimodal approach to organisational learning. It will argue the need for a framework for organisational learning which sees emotions, aesthetics, embodiment, and the analytic as interlinked, interactive and interdependent.

Such a proposition starts to explode the myth of rationality in organisations and approaches which propound an objective and universal interpretative key to organisational life. (Strati, 2000: 14) What is needed is a framework that enables us to understand organisational learning appropriately as multi-dimensional, paradoxical and aesthetic. (Tosey, 2006)

The paper explores three ethnographic case studies from my PhD research in terms of the embodied, the emotional, the aesthetic and the analytic in order to illustrate how such a framework for organisational learning might be utilised in practice. It suggests the importance of organisational frames and the impact they have on an organisations ability to respond to news of difference in its context.

Background

This research looked at three arts organisations that faced the threat of imminent insolvency; TheatreCo[footnoteRef:2] (a regional English Theatre), Constructa (a contemporary gallery) and Screenworks (a digital arts centre). Each of the organisations concerned in this research are/were registered charities and companies limited by guarantee and took part in Arts Council Englands Recovery Programme[footnoteRef:3]. A company is insolvent if it is unable to pay its debts as they fall due as defined by the English Insolvency Act 1986, section 123. [2: All the names are pseudonyms to respect confidentiality] [3: This was a lottery funded programme designed for arts organisations in financial difficulty which were defined as strategically important. The process consisted of four phases: application; stocktake and solvency review; Recovery Plan development; implementation]

Potential insolvency is a crunch point for any organisation, it will either survive or it will not. There is no middle ground. A review of forty seven corporate turnaround studies found that simple questions focussing on easily available and measurable data have been asked most often whilst more complex questions requiring difficult to obtain and messy data have been avoided.(Pandit, 2000: 38)

In part this guided my decision to undertake an ethnographic study and to work with these organisations to understand in-depth their experience of learning during a period of change and financial crisis.

Organisational Learning

The field of organisational learning is diverse and has grown exponentially, a domain of volcanic activity in which multiple foci of interest co-exist all the time (Bapuji & Crossan, 2004:397). Themes and discussions have emerged, abated and re-emerged in different forms.

It is a field characterised by different debates and domains (Easterby-Smith, Crossan, & Nicolini, 2000). Debates that have focused on whether learning is based in the cognitive or behavioural domains; whether learning contributes to incremental or revolutionary change; whether it is continuous or discontinuous; whether it always leads to individual or organisational improvement and if it is process or product.

There are a number of underlying assumptions informing the field and this research responded to two in particular. Firstly, that learning has tended to be regarded as a purely cognitive activity, with little attention paid to the fact that we are emotional (Antonacopoulou & Gabriel, 2001; Vince, 2002), embodied (Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1993) beings. Such notions of rationality imply a high degree of intention on the part of the learner. Learning becomes something which is consciously sought, analysed and applied and can be achieved through highly rational action steps. (Irgens & Hernes, 2008).

Secondly, there has been a view that there is an optimal approach organisations should take towards learning and as such it becomes hierarchical. This can be seen in Argyris (1999) notion of single and double-loop learning in that the implication appears to be that double loop learning is superior to single loop and this is what an organisation should aspire to. This approach proposes that learning could be said to have occurred under two conditions:

When an organisation achieves what it set out to achieve, that is there is a match between planned action and the outcome achieved.

when a mismatch between intentions and outcomes is identified and it is corrected(Argyris, 1999: 67) Double loop learning happens when an organisation reviews different possibilities and implications before action is taken to ensure a mismatch is avoided.

Concerns have been raised about double-loop learning in that it neglects the aspects of adaptive behaviour, context and relationship that were central to Batesons original formulation of deutero learning. (Visser, 2007: 659).

Learning should take account of behavioural adaptation to patterns of conditioning at the level of relationships in organisational contexts, (Visser, 2007: 660), in this form learning is:

Continuous, behavioural-communicative, and largely unconscious

Not responsive to direct management or organising

Not guaranteed to lead to organisational or individual improvement, especially in its pathological, double binding form

This sits in contrast to the more purposive from of learning implied by single or double loop learning, the characteristics of which are more likely to be:

Discontinuous, cognitive and conscious

To a large extent amenable to steering and organising

Directed at organisational and individual improvement

The experiences of the organisations I studied were closer to Vissers continuous behavioural-communicative characteristics which led me to explore Batesons (2000) levels of learning. His theory of `levels of learning has been influential in organisational learning (Argyris & Schon, 1978; Bartunek & Moch, 1994; Engestrm, 2001; French & Bazalgette, 1996; Tosey, Langley, & Mathison, 2010; Visser, 2006). The levels have two key characteristics: it is not a stage theory of learning, by which one advances from lower to higher levels. `Higher orders of learning are neither necessarily superior to, nor more desirable than, lower levels. He also placed a strong emphasis on the notion of context in learning.

Table 1: The levels of learning, adapted from Bateson (2000: 293)

Learning IV

`would be change in Learning III, but probably does not occur in any adult living organism on this earth.

Learning III

is change in the process of Learning II, e.g., a corrective change in the system of sets of alternatives from which choice is made.

Learning II

`is change in the process of Learning I, e.g., a corrective change in the set of alternatives from which choice is made, or it is a change in how the sequence of experience is punctuated.

Learning I

`is change in specificity of response by correction of errors of choice within a set of alternatives.

Learning 0

`is characterised by specificity of response, which right or wrong - is not subject to correction.

Batesons theory implies that organisational learning is created by change in patterns of behaviour that emerge from changes in context (including changes in the interpretation or perceived significance of context). This follows from his critique of the extent to which intentional action can produce the desired effects in human or natural systems. It contrasts with the view that actors learn new understandings and skills first, and then enact these in order to generate new organisational capabilities.

Three Case Studies

In considering learning during an organisational turnaround what appeared to be needed was an approach to investigating turnarounds that should at least aim to unpack the important elements of content, context and process. Better still, it is hoped that some studies will...systematically investigate relationships between the three categories.(Pandit, 2000: 52) I therefore undertook participant observation with the three organisations over a three-year period. As an approach ethnography has a concern with the context in which the experiences take place and the description necessary to try and convey the lives of others. Ethnography offered an approach that could take account of the collective experience, the importance of understanding culture, especially in relation to change efforts of all kinds, is the cornerstone of applied ethnography as it has emerged in modern society. (Patton, 2002)

In relation to the event of facing imminent insolvency the three organisations demonstrated different levels of learning. Screenworks seemed unable to recognise and interpret the patterns that denoted changes in context and in the absence of being able to do so their learning was mostly concerned with business as usual in order to use responses and behaviours which were in the most part automatic.

Of the three organisations the data suggested that Screenworks staff believed they had the least power or control over the organisations future. While a number of factors differentiated the three organisations scale, causes of crisis, artform and location what appears to have united Constructa and TheatreCo was the hope, energy, drive and enthusiasm to change their circumstances. Screenwor