Power Relations, Sentiment and Learning Organisation: A Conceptual Framework - Essay Example

Power Relations, Sentiment and Learning Organisation: A Conceptual Framework In this paper I formulate and demonstrate a conceptual framework for identifying and understanding learning organisation. Current developments in the investigation of organisational learning, specifically a political and social point of view on learning organisation, present a conceptual foundation for strategic learning. The term ‘learning organisation’ specifically stands for the intellectual dimension of strategic learning. On the other hand, strategic learning is a more wide-ranging concept, which connects the scholarly investigation of learning organisation to the ideas, judgments and actions of managers as well as other practitioners who are interested in learning and development (Vince 2004). I examine thoroughly the difference between organisational learning and individual learning in an organisation. This, I think, is a relevant distinction for the reason that if the focus of strategic learning is on transformations in “the sense-making and knowledge management structures of an organisation” (Vince 2004: 38), in that case it is the growth of analysis of learning in an organisational level that is most likely to help in visualising what such transformations are, and also how they could be engaged upon. Lastly, I argue that a focus on the learning of the individual within an organisation and its potential decisive effect on the organisation as a structure is not likely to direct to the development of organising structures. As an alternative, I chose organisational dynamics, which is formed from the relations between power and sentiment, that establish the political and social perspective wherein learning and organising occur. Applying a combination of ideas on the politics of organising and psychodynamic theory I formulate the insight that organisations are learning when the ‘organisation’ that is being formed through the basic processes of organising can be spotted out and seriously evaluated (Pribram & King 1996). I believe that this fusion of politics and psychodynamic theory is a significant contribution to recent knowledge on the relationship between the processes and structures of learning and organising. Furthermore, the study of power and emotion is not only important to the principle and practice of learning organisation, it is also valuable in understanding how the terms ‘learning’ and ‘organisation’ relate, or definitely go against each other. Maybe the concept of learning organisation is a personification error that results in an erroneous representation of the notion of organisation. In a nutshell, organisation can be viewed as ‘more than the sum of their individual or collective parts’ (Vince 2004: 38). Learning in an organisational level has been viewed as essential because it confines the components of strategic arrangement. Nevertheless, the argument of my framework is that every organisation has the capacity to learn. There are fast- and slow learners but the former is more likely to survive than the latter. The task of managers in organisations is to establish the needed situations for the organisation to possess a successful learning skill. Specifically, managers have to make strategic decisions and initiate definite interventions to guarantee that learning can take place. For instance, setting up methods to allow knowledge transfer between work groups and creating a broadly shared goal recognised by employees can affect the learning competency of an organisation. Conceptual Framework: Toward a Learning Organisation The conceptual framework I formulate and demonstrate is based on the relationship between power, sentiment and organisational processes. The framework is intended to encourage thoughts on the real nature of learning organisation, thus helping to explain what the term ‘organisation’ implies in the expression ‘learning organisation.’ Such idea is valuable to scholars and other practitioners for the reason that it tries to provide accuracy as to what makes up an organisational level of analysis. Further, it is valuable to other practitioners in taking into account how organisational processes are developed and communicated through individual and collective conduct and action, and hence in measuring the potentialities and boundaries of learning in a particular organisational setting. There are three arguments that support my idea of learning organisation: (1) learning dynamics are closely mediated by politics or more specifically power relations, (2) sentiment determines the prospects and restrictions of learning and organising, and (2) organisational processes, which are ‘more than the sum of individual or collective learning’ (Vince 2004: 38), exist. There are two specific features to the idea behind the argument that learning dynamics are closely mediated by politics or power relations. One is theoretical and the other is practical. A political point of view, as a theory, broadens our grasp of the processes that compose learning within organisations. It realises this by dealing with how employees interact with or relate to practices and creations of reality in the organisation, to the structural aspects that position them in situations of inequality or incapacity. It deals with the interaction between structure and action, and demonstrates how these interfaces generate and determine distinct power relations and management. Politics, from this perspective, is neither a dilemma to be evaded, nor an array of clashes of interests. Instead, it provides a critical standpoint on the intricacies of power relations within which the process of organising occur (French & Vince 1999). Hence, the term ‘politics’ concerns the power relations that control how learning as well as transformation does or does not take place within organisations. A political point of view, as practice, demands critical thinking on what top management believes they have knowledge upon and how they gain this knowledge within an organisational setting. Management can locate means to question neglected theories, and learn through their capability to doubt and to share with the particular system that they and the organisation have collaboratively constructed. The political efforts in organisations with regard to practice are commonly represented in the lack of enthusiasm managements have toward communicating leadership honestly and publicly (Coghlan et al. 2004). The means in which managers are capable in initiating leadership processes and open up decision making to others and to disclose instead of evading power relations will be essential for strategic learning; the management safeguards against the effect of socially determined power relations due to the worries that struggles with concerns of power, influence and duty to motivate. Nevertheless, addressing such concerns can offer substantial prospects for learning about the political, emotional and relational dynamics involved in organising and managing. The disclosure of how power is conveyed and enforced in organisations provides opportunities to progress beyond relationships that are established from the defensiveness of the manager and towards novel structures and processes of interaction and communication (Mohr & Dichter 2001). The second argument, that sentiment determines the prospects and restrictions of learning and organising, is inspired by psychodynamic theory. The issue of sentiment in organisations has a well-documented literature, demonstrating a social-constructionist perspective and the psychodynamic analysis of sentiment at work (Pribram & King 1996). Both models examine the means in which sentiment in organisations have been limitedly viewed, as well as an inclination to take for granted the effect that sentiments have on organisational growth and system. There are two features of psychodynamic theory that are specifically essential to the understanding of sentiment and organisation. Primarily, there is the notion that learning and transformation are unavoidably related to anxiety. At a conscious and an unconscious point, the organisation of learning is the organisation of anxiety and of struggle emerging from that anxiety. Moreover, this indicates something about the function of a leader or a manager: that such a function entails an emotional relationship to the anxiety emerging from the character of work (Vince 2004). As numerous scholars have emphasised, anxiety is an essential component in managers’ knowledge of learning in organisations, with regard on how learning takes place and how it is avoided. Furthermore, Bain (1998, 414) has recognised the ‘absence of attention to unconscious processes influencing individual, group and organisational functioning’ in the literature on learning organisation. The second function that psychodynamic theory fulfils in this framework is with the ‘relatedness’ theory or the ‘unconscious and unconscious emotional levels of connection that exist between and shape selves and others, people and systems’ (French and Vince 1999, 7). Individuals in organisations are unavoidably entities of each other drawn in a shared course of becoming that confuses as much as it underlines the concept of an independent self (Rowden 2001). Relatedness indicates an array of emotional stages of relationship across borders of individual, function and organisation, which highlights the relational character of organising. Therefore, in applying the term ‘emotion’ we are pertaining to emotions such as fear, joy and guilt that are taken for granted or prevented and the manner these consciously and unconsciously influence organising (Vince 2004). In other words, I am arguing that the concept of sentiment is political in nature. The third argument is that organisational dynamics are present. These are further than the ‘sum of individuals learning and more than learning in a collective context’ (Vince 2004: 38). The concept of organisational dynamics indicates the system or more accurately the organisation that is unconsciously constructed from organising. In applying the term ‘organisation’ plus the notion of ‘system’, we are attempting to locate a means of conveying the significance of politics to knowledge of learning organisation (ibid). Organisation, in contrast to family, community, or collective effort, is meaningful to the relationship between power, sentiment, learning and organising. The notion that organising paves the way to organisation is significant in two ways: primarily, it links to ideas about the means in which an internal organisation is constructed and maintained within the inner worlds of individual. Briefly saying, the manner organisational power relations and individual psychology unite to construct the short-term realities that strengthen the acting out of individual roles, as well as views regarding individual roles. Next, it involves a controlling factor, which is unavoidably brought to hold insights and experiences so as to control them. Organisation is acknowledgement of a strategic interaction between learning and organising. Partly and largely by accident, organising entails the control of learning in order for it to become integrated into present organisational power relations, with the intention of exploiting learning as much as exploring it (Coghlan et al. 2004). This suggests that the combination of learning and organisation is advantageous, provided that it is learning that can be managed or controlled. Organisational dynamics are constructed from the interaction between, usually unconscious, emotions and present or developing power relations created through organising. We are making use of the expression ‘organisational dynamics’ to illustrate the organisational features that are unconsciously constructed from individual and shared experience and behaviour in the organisation in general. The concept exists as an instrument to concentrate on an analysis in the organisational level. To involve such processes both evades the dilemma of personifying an organisation, and recognises that as sentiments and politics interrelate they generate dynamics that have an effect and authority beyond the people that visualised them, and beyond the particular group settings that created them. References Bain, A. (1998), Social defenses against organizational learning, Human Relations , 413-429. Coghlan, D. et al. (2004), Managers Learning in Action, New York : Routledge. French, R. & Vince, R. (1999), Group Relations, Management and Organization, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Goh, S. C. (1998), Toward a Learning Organization: The Strategic Building Blocks, SAM Advanced Management Journal , 15+. Kohl, R. M. & Shea, C. (1992), Observational Learning: Influences on Temporal Response Organization, Human Performance , 235. Meen, D. E. & Keough, M. (1992), Creating the Learning Organization, The McKinsey Quarterly , 58+. Mohr, N. & Dichter, A. (2001), Building a Learning Organization, Phi Delta Kappan , 744. Pribram, K. H. & King, J. (1996), Learning as Self-Organization, Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Rowden, R. W. (2001), The Learning Organization and Strategic Change, SAM Advanced Management Journal , 11. Slaats, H. (1992), Policy Making and the Organization of Learning, International Studies of Management & Organization , 77+. Vince, R. (2004), Rethinking Strategic Learning, New York: Routledge . Read More