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Open Bartell Dissertation.Pdf The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School School of Public Affairs RELEARNING THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION: A META THEORETICAL ANALYSIS A Thesis in Public Administration by Sherrie Myers Bartell © 2007 Sherrie Myers Bartell Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2007 The thesis of Sherrie Myers Bartell was reviewed and approved* by the following: Robert F. Munzenrider Associate Professor of Public Administration Thesis Advisor Chair of Committee James T. Ziegenfuss Professor of Management and Health Systems Michael C. Kenney Assistant Professor of Political Science and Public Policy Neil Boyd Assistant Professor of Behavioral Science and Education Steven A. Peterson Professor of Politics and Public Affairs Director of the School of Public Affairs *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School. ABSTRACT The learning organization (LO) is a misunderstood concept. The related literature reveals a fractured knowledge domain racked by definitional diversity, a lack of cumulative work, and polarized camps of scholars who clash over the topic’s core theoretical assumptions. Consequently, the LO idea is often speciously downgraded in its importance as an atheoretical concept, a management fad, a form of hegemonic programming, idealistically naïve, and/or otherwise untenable in reality. These perceived problems are the genesis of this study, which develops a metatheoretical framework sufficiently plastic to: (1) determine the theoretical lineage of the LO construct; (2) analyze and understand more fully the current state of LO theory and practice; (3) “test” the veracity of the aforesaid criticisms; and (4) explore the LO’s potential for implementation in organizations. In effect, this dissertation seeks to “relearn” the LO, a response to the proposal by many scholars within the social sciences that “a process of unlearning” the LO take place due to its flawed assumptions about organizations and worklife. Contrary to this emerging perspective, this project embraces a different thesis, one that derives from a belief that a given construct is only as robust as the ideas that inform it, and a hunch that the LO paradigm has an evolutionary aspect to it that echoes the sum development of organization theory. The starting point for this study is Peter Senge’s conception of the LO, which is recast in this work as an ornate cloth made from manifold threads of theories and thoughts about organizations. Then, by reweaving extant strands of knowledge with new yarns of insight, a fresh understanding of the LO and the inherent difficulties of operationalizing its meaning is made possible. This dissertation is strictly an abstract work. It makes its chief contribution by presenting a new way to understand the notion of the LO via its theoretically grounded processes of concurrent deconstruction and re-invention. This work’s most important finding is that the LO idea is conceptually robust and theoretically powered; the result of an impressive scholarly pedigree that reflects the dialectical process of knowledge development within organization theory/organization studies field. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES. .......................................................................................................... ix LIST OF TABLES.............................................................................................................. x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS. ................................................................................................ xi Chapter 1. INTRODUCTION............................................................................................. 1 Definitional Issues. ........................................................................................................ 4 Operationalization.......................................................................................................... 6 Lack of Theoretical Analysis......................................................................................... 9 Structure, Learning And Design. ................................................................................... 9 Purpose......................................................................................................................... 11 Research Methodology ................................................................................................ 11 Unraveling the Threads of the Learning Organization. ......................................... 13 Rationale ..................................................................................................................... .19 Organization of the Paper. ........................................................................................... 19 Scholarly And Practical Contributions. ....................................................................... 22 Notes. ........................................................................................................................... 25 Chapter 2. THE SYSTEMS THREAD............................................................................. 36 Origins of GST............................................................................................................. 37 Sociotechnical Systems Thinking................................................................................ 39 Cybernetics. ................................................................................................................. 41 Law of Requisite Variety............................................................................................ .43 Environmental Texture ................................................................................................ 44 Organizational Adaptation and Contingency Theories................................................ 45 Limitations ................................................................................................................... 49 Conceptual Concerns .............................................................................................. 51 Definitional Difficulties.......................................................................................... 55 Implications of Complexity .................................................................................... 57 Summary...................................................................................................................... 60 Notes ............................................................................................................................ 63 iv TABLE OF CONTENTS (Cont.) Chapter 3. THE HUMAN RELATIONS THREAD......................................................... 71 Hawthorne Experiments............................................................................................... 72 Human Motivation and Personal Mastery ................................................................... 73 Group Processes and Team Learning .......................................................................... 76 Limitations .................................................................................................................. .83 Personal Mastery: Assumptions and Impediments................................................. 84 Team Learning: Assumptions and Impediments .................................................... 91 Summary...................................................................................................................... 93 Notes ............................................................................................................................ 95 Chapter 4. THE CULTURE THREAD .......................................................................... 105 Introduction................................................................................................................ 106 OC Origins and Current Popularity ........................................................................... 108 Towards a Definition of Learning Culture................................................................. 108 Evolving a Learning Culture and the Transformational Leader ................................ 115 An Organization-As-Culture...................................................................................... 115 An Organization has Culture ..................................................................................... 117 Finding A Middle Ground (Leadership, Mental Models, and Shared Vision) .......... 118 Limitations ................................................................................................................. 121 Summary.................................................................................................................... 122 Notes .......................................................................................................................... 125 Chapter 5. THE LEARNING THREAD ........................................................................ 131 Introduction: Setting the Stage................................................................................... 132 Hasn’t It Always Been About Learning?................................................................... 135 The Bequest of Learning’s History............................................................................ 137 Learning History’s Challenge Number One .............................................................. 139 Learning History’s Challenge Number Two.............................................................. 140
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