On Jan 8, replying to Clyde Howell's response in LO 4660, Rol wrote,
>An organization should not ever be viewed as something which has a
>life of its own, independent of the people who are the blood, sinew,
>and brains that make things happen
But is this possible, or even desireable? I wouldn't dispute the
importance of keeping those faces fully before us as we consider the
learning that may, or not, be going on, but it seems to me that Senge and
others are implying that it is precisely the "meta-life" of an
organization which "learns." The glorious promise implied is that such
learning is _not_ solely dependent on the particular individuals who
happen to be there at any given moment. This ought not suggest that the
organization can learn _without_ a given group of learning individuals. At
the last STIA Conference, Arie deGeuss presented on the common
characteristics of very long-lived organizations. He identified their
apparent capacity to retain an organizational centre through many
transformations "at the margin." Surely, this is only possible if an
organization has developed just such a meta-life (or collective
unconscious, perhaps?) that the learning of individuals nurtures, and is
nurtured by, the organization as an ongoing, organized process. For me,
so long as I can still see the faces, I'm not at all uncomfortable with
the notion of the organization not as a separate entity, but as a
different way of recognizing and speaking about a living entity.
-- Malcolm Burson<mooney@maine.maine.edu Community Health & Counseling Bangor, Maine