Intro -- Tony Kortens LO7442

Tony Kortens (tkortens@stmarys-ca.edu)
Wed, 15 May 1996 11:02:46 -0700 (PDT)

I recently self taught myself to get onto this list. It was not as
easy as it appeared! I am a 36yr old New Zealander, currently living in
the San Francisco Bay area in the U.S. I left my land of mountains and
small freeways to complete my doctoral degree with the Fielding Institute
in Human & Organization Systems. I have owned and run my own OD practice
(Envision International) for the last 8 yrs, working in NZ, Australia &
the U.S.A.
My dissertation explores the intersection between organization
socialization and organization learning (OS & OL). It appears that neither
theory or known practise actually integrates these two constructs (OS &
OL) in a way that addresses many of the inherent contradictions and
confounding assumptions buried within the history of OS. I will be doing
an ethnographic study of a few individuals in order to uncover some of the
critical incidents that shape whether a person is facilitated in their
ability to innovate, think generatively (or in a double loop fashion),
their freedom to contribute their unique perspective as they are
socialized to the organization - and /or how the forces of conformity and
organization culture might otherwise shape or mitigate this.
I am currently seeking an organization that is acting
strategically and consciously to evolve towards its learning potential in
order to complete my study. This may well be in the bay area, as we have
several such corporations nearby. If anyone is interested in this study
and or has ideas about a potential corporate site I would welcome your
input.
P.S. I have already enjoyed reading the list and look forward to
reading more of the free flow of ideas and connections. My appreciation
goes to the people who maintain and fund this site.
-- 

Tony Kortens <tkortens@stmarys-ca.edu>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>