Wednesday, January 29, 2020
The Sense in Organisational Learning, Knowing and Sense making Essay Example for Free
The Sense in Organisational Learning, Knowing and Sense making Essay Experience in Learning            Learning is the acquisition of knowledge, ideas, concepts, experience and any other kind of element that can be acquired. Learning is the retention of knowledge. It is also a skill such as using tools, creating crafts or simply driving a car. Learning involves practice. Practice is a way of retaining learning. But most of all, learning is a change in behaviour.            As far as I could remember, I learned to walk, speak and do many types of activities in the house by the acquisition of these knowledge and experiences. Either I would learn by following and mimicking gestures that the elder people would show me or I would engage into the experience of the concept. For example, I learned not to run fast down the stairs because one time that I did, I fell three flights and bumped my head. I learned how to remember the names of many relatives by repeatedly seeing them in family gatherings. Conversing with these people required me to utter their names and so that helped me remember their names and how I was related to them.            As I entered formal learning, other tools where available for me to increase knowledge and experience. Reading books was a way to learn how to know things. Before operating machines such as household appliances or laboratory machines, it is imperative to read instruction manuals so that I could transform myself into someone who did not know how to operate the machine into someone who knew how. And therefore there was a definite change in behaviour because of this. Learning things on your own is different when learning inside an organization. Experience in Participating in an Organization            There are two general kinds of participants in an organization or in a group endeavour. One can either be an active or a passive participant. Active participation involves doing different roles at different times depending on the need of the organization. In group discussions for example, one can be an initiator, regulator, informer, supporter or an evaluator. All these roles must be found in the whole group embodied by its participants in order for the group to develop and evolve its visions.            Another insight I gathered from participating in organizations is that one can learn fully if one keeps an open mind and heart. Each participant has his unique person moulded from a definitive history. Each person has his own ideas and learning style. If participants do not cooperate in the organizations, it will be harder to achieve objectives. Sometimes, participating in an organization requires one to compromise some comfort zones. There will be moments when a co-participants’ idea does not match your own. Sometimes, this will be cause of conflict. However, after the exchange and debate on the idea, conflict is soon resolved. Even at times when breakdown of the organization occurs, this will also signify that the conflict was resolved.            I cannot be half part of an organization. Participation in an organization must be whole for it to be worthwhile. Being a part of an organization means adhering to its vision, mission and goals. If a person cannot embrace the organization’s objectives, then his participation will be futile. From what I observed, when organizations have members that are half believers of the organization’s goals, their participation in the organization are half done as well. Their motivations to act on the organization’s needs are also superficial and the tendency to protect one’s self interest over the group’s interest is stronger. Four Learning Theories            Learning whether it involves an individual or a group is possible. Four theories of learning guide many teachers, managers and leaders into helping their constituents acquire knowledge and experience. The behaviourists, cognitive, humanist and situational orientation of learning are four theories that have been developed in the field of learning. The Behaviourist theory developed by practitioners of psychology believes that a person learns according to how the environment gives it instructions. Experimental procedures have been used to study behaviour in this discourse.            The Cognitive orientation does not believe so. Scholars of the cognitive theory believe that the individual learns due to its mental abilities. The process of knowing or â€Å"cognition†was the one leading the act of learning therefore learning relied much on an individual’s thinking capacity. The Humanist approach followed a certain process of growth patterned from human growth. Learning for these theorists involves a person’s evolution of needs that Maslow and Rogers have defined. The Situational orientation in learning relies on the involvement of a person to different community events and practices. Through individual’s participation to these frameworks, learning is experienced and thereby achieved. The Organization’s capability of learning, sensing and knowing            The individuals that constitute the organization bring all their learning abilities into the organization thereby helping the organization achieve goals. When organizations are able to achieve their goals, learning, sense making and knowledge achieved is not only claimed by each participant in the organization but the organization as a single entity as well.            Organizational knowing creates three kinds of knowledge. Tacit knowledge is found the experience and expertise of participants. Explicit knowledge is visualized as rules and routines that participants undergo. Cultural knowledge can be found in the organization’s assumptions, beliefs and values. The ‘corporate culture’ idiom has been coined due to the effort to package cultural knowledge of the organization so that it can be taught to employees. New knowledge is achieved by sharing and integrating these three types of knowledge. With new knowledge, the organization has the capacity to act on decisions that help the organization transform their potentials. Although new alternatives are achieved, new uncertainties are also acquired but essential to the organization’s ability to form new knowledge is the capacity of the organization to evolve facing challenges of its industry and ever changing environment. â€Å"The central argument is that any organization is the way it runs through the processes of organizing This means that we must define organization in terms of organizing. Organizing consists of the resolving of equivocality in an enacted environment by means of interlocked behaviors embedded in conditionally related processes. To summarize these components in a less terse manner, organizing is directed toward information processing in general, and more specifically, toward removing equivocality from informational inputs.†(Weick 1979:90-91)            Besides knowledge making, the organization also goes through the process of sense making. If decision making leads to decisions, sense making leads to the sense of the organizations’ existence of its decisions thereby breaking all kinds of elements that leads to ambiguity and confusion in the organizations’ processes. Sense making is essentially answering Weick’s question, â€Å"How can I know what I think until I see what I say?†. â€Å"In dealing with organizational issues, sense making requires us to look for explanations and answers in terms of how people see things rather than rather than structures or systems. Sense making suggests that organizational issues strategies, breakdowns, change, goals, plans, tasks, teams, and so on are not things that one can find out in the world or that exist in the organization. Rather, their source is peoples way of thinking.†(Universiteit Twente, 2004)            Sense making is a better tool in arriving at information for use in the workplace. Studies have proved that sense making has been successful in understanding deaf culture, in reflective thinking in the nursing practice, has been experienced in media education in classrooms with students, and proven beneficial for hard discourses such as sexism, racism and the like.            While Weick emphasize sense making in the retroactive context, Gioia and Mehra deemed the importance of prospective sense making as well. These two approaches further cement the invaluability of sense making in organizations. Each time that participants work towards a common goal, they are compelled to gather past knowledge, experience and facts, make sense out of it collaboratively to learn a new tool that will help the organization achieve their prospects that they envision in the future. Conceptualization of the future in organizations therefore is facilitated by sense making.            In this light, sense making further becomes a strategic tool that helps organizations articulate their common visions which can be called prospective ‘sense-giving’ while the tools that helps organizations decipher differences in actions so the that their selection may work well for their group can be termed as retrospective â€Å"sense-discovering†. Furthermore, the notion of sense making being partly deliberate and part emergent makes it a powerful tool for organization management, leadership and organizational learning. At best, sense making is an on-going process much like what learning is. There is no limit to learning. The fact that man has yet to use 97% of his brain capacity, that there is much need for compassion in the world tells many scholars that there is much sense in the notion of sense-making. Summary            Learning is the ability that sets man apart from the rest of the animal kingdom. Although there is learning in other animal species, organizational learning has captured man’s ability to prove himself as an intelligent animal in the social context. When a person enters and organization, he sets himself as a member of a whole. As a participant of the whole, the individual synergizes his learning capacities, styles and objectives with other members of the whole. Learning of the individual found in the whole is made possible only if the organization is able to learn first.            With the learning tools of sense making, the organization is able to form new knowledge. The knowledge formed has characteristics not found in individual learning. The knowledge formed from sense making in organizations hold both retrospective and prospective senses of the organization as a whole. Elements that form this knowledge is derived from the collective behaviour, cognition, experience and growth patterns of each individual making the collective acquire its own behaviour, experience, growth pattern and intelligence.            Reflecting on my own learning capacities including development of my own senses, I can prepare myself as I become a part of an organization. Many people enter organizations thinking that they are social institutions fully inorganic. With further understanding of sense making, I have become fully aware that organizations are alive because not only do they reproduce (forming other sub organizations, become global organizations and multinationals), react to stimulus (such as currency fluctuations, technological breakthroughs), grows (such as increase in revenue, increase in employees), they also essentially learn, produce knowledge and ultimately try to make sense in this world. References: Argyris, C. and Schon, D. 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(1995) Sensemaking in Organizations, SAGE Pub., London Universiteit Twente. 2004. Sense Making. [http://www.tcw.utwente.nl/theorieenoverzicht/Theory%20clusters/Organizational%20Communication/Sensemaking.doc/]
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