Re: Questions LO261
kent_myers@smtplink.sra.com
Mon, 27 Feb 95 10:02:59 EST
reply to 178, 224
"but people learn, not organizations."
I once thought that I had to treat an organization as if it were
conscious, in order to gain a foothold for org learning. Otherwise,
all you have is individual learning. Then I did some checking and
found a better solution. It is important to recognize that concrete
consciousness is an attribute of an individual that emerges from the
body. Groups don't have this attribute. There are, however, "social
fields" that emerge from the interaction of concrete individuals and
the world, and these fields are subject to development. If you say
that the group is conscious, then you get into some discredited German
social theory, cults, and so forth. If you say the group is LIKE a
conscious body, then you have a lot of anthropomorphizing, which may
be helpful to find ideas, but doesn't develop the language we need for
appreciating social fields. I take this approach from Eric Voegelin,
Anamnesis, where there is much more, beyond my ability to state.
Kent Myers kent_myers@smtplink.sra.com