>jack@his.com (jack hirschfeld) in LO9443
>Michael McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk> in LO9446 & LO9449
>"Mary E. Apodaca" <mapodaca@carbon.cudenver.edu> in LO9442
>"William Welsh" <wilycat@infi.net> in LO9456
>arthur battram <apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk> in LO9455
Having watched the debate on 'unlearning' for a while, couldn't
resist invoking the concept as discussed by Hedberg more than
fifteen years ago.
[Hedberg, B. "How Organizations Learn and Unlearn," In Handbook of
Organizational Design, P. Nystrom and W. Starbuck (Eds.), Oxford
University Press, New York, 1981, pp. 1-27.]
"Unlearning is a process in which learners discard knowledge.
Unlearning makes way for new responses and mental maps. How capable
then are organizations to unlearn old behaviors and world views
and to relearn when they face new situations?" (p. 18)
"Success reinforces organizations' theories of action... and
makes unlearning difficult. There are times when organizations
should treat their memories as enemies... Unlearning poses
particular problems to organizations that travel from stable,
benevolent environments into unstable, hostile ones..." (p. 18)
"Organizations learn and unlearn via their members. Unlearning
in the human mind is a cumbersome and energy-consuming process...
People who are able to perceive reality in different terms can
redefine their problems, unlearn old behaviors, and replace them
with new responses almost instantaneously..." (p. 18).
"Organizations that face the double problem of learning both new
questions and new responses cannot unlearn overnight. Their
unlearning takes time and resources, and in the meantime they are
quite disoriented or paralyzed... Organizations that have been
poisoned by their own success are often unable to unlearn
obsolete knowledge in spite of strong disconfirmations..." (p. 19).
Hedberg's interpretation comes close to Battram's explanation:
>Oops, a little slide here, from 'discard old learnings' to 'discard
>historical knowledge'! IMHO, they aren't the same. For me, it IS about
>unlearning something, letting go of something: but that something is the
>old pattern, the old schema, the old set of connections between bits of
>knowledge . Which is not the same as throwing away knowledge. The brain
>doesn't erase memories, it changes the connections, renewing some, letting
>others fade away, under a form of selection. When we remember we recreate
>memories, based on those strengthened or weakened connections. In order to
>recast our knowledge, we have to throw away the old pattern.
Hedberg relates his interpretation of 'unlearning' to George Kelly's
theory of personal constructs which posits the model of 'human as a
scientist' who construes 'reality' in order to anticipate the future.
Sincerely,
Yogesh Malhotra, A Business Researcher's Interests
malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu , http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.html
--Yogesh Malhotra <MALHOTRA@vms.cis.pitt.edu>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>