Organisational thinking LO3307

Nickols@aol.com
Thu, 19 Oct 1995 22:25:58 -0400

Replying to LO3235 --

In LO3235 Michael McMaster writes:

>Jan says "organisations don't think". She says that only people do
>that. I challenge the assumption that organisations don't think.
>What is "to think" that organisations can't and/or don't do?

<snip>

>How can we talk about organisational learning, for instance, if we
>can't talk about organisational thinking? And if we are going to
>talk this way, surely we should be able to say what we mean when we
>use the term.

I'll side with Jan. Organizations don't do anything; people do. That
said, we can still talk about organizational behavior, organizational
learning, and even organizational thinking -- as long as we are careful to
say what we mean and as long as we don't fall into the trap of attributing
to organizations qualities that only people possess. I do not, for
instance, think of a business organization has having motives, purpose, or
even a mission. People possess those qualities or attributes and then
project them onto organizations.

I think of a learning organization as one in which new knowledge is
quickly diffused and in which lessons learned (by individual members) are
also quickly diffused. I do not think of an organization as learning in
the same way I think of human beings as learning.

--
Fred Nickols
nickols@aol.com