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The sociological foundations of organizational learning

January 2001

January 2001

Authors:

Silvia Gherardi

Università degli Studi di Trento

Davide Nicolini

The University of Warwick

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2The Sociological Foundations

of Organizational Learning

Silvia Gherardi, Davide Nicolini

The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate the

speci®c contribution that general sociology

and the sociology of organizations can make

to the study of organizational learning. The

®rst part provides an overview of the possible

ontological and epistemological choices avail-

able to scholars who undertake one of the

various possible readings of organizational

learning from a sociological standpoint. In the

second part of the chapter, our epistemological

choice is to see organizational learning as a root

metaphor. It is on that basis that we attempt to

determine what contribution a social construc-

tionist approach has made to the study of

organizational learning through two concepts

of participation and re¯exivity. Sociology

The concept of participation highlights the

fact that learning does not take place solely or

principally in the minds of individuals but

rather stems from the participation of indivi-

duals in social activities. Working and organiz-

ing are social practices engaged in through a set

of activities situated in speci®c contexts of

interaction. Organizational learning is learn-

ing-in-organizing, because working, learning,

and organizing are not distinct activities within

a practice. The concept of participation, there-

fore, gives access to the study of organizational

learning that takes place in action and through

action. GherardiandNicolini

The concept of re¯exivity is tied closely to

participation in that re¯exivity occurs when

the ¯ow of experience is interrupted and the

subject re¯ects on knowledge. Re¯exivity refers

to ways of seeing that act back on and re¯ect

existing ways of seeing; re¯exivity gives rise to

the institutionalization of knowledge. The

principal feature of re¯exivity is that re¯ection

produces the setting that contains its object as

well as its expected and unexpected outcomes.

In other words, re¯exivity ensures that the

social production of that area of studies

known as `organizational learning' will pro-

duce the very phenomenon that it studies.

Five Sociological Traditions

Just as is it dif®cult to mark the boundaries

around any discipline in any historical period

Ðthe watchword being `blurring disciplinary

boundaries' (Linstead 1994:3)Ðit is equally dif-

®cult to describe differentiation within them.

Numerous authors have attempted the task,

and we certainly have no intention of propos-

ing a new classi®cation. Aware of the ®ctitious

and arbitrary nature of any endeavor to recount

the history of a discipline, we refer instead to

the scheme proposed by Collins (1994) and sup-

plemented by other contributions in order to

discuss the fact that the insights into organiza-

tional learning yielded by sociology vary

greatly depending on the sociological

approach chosen. Collins identi®ed four socio-

logical traditions: the tradition of con¯ict,

This chapter is the result of an entirely collaborative effort by the two authors: If, however, for academic

reasons individual responsibility must be assigned, Silvia Gherardi wrote the second, third, and fourth

sections; Davide Nicolini wrote the ®rst section, the introduction, and the conclusions. The authors

thank Adrian Belton for editing an earlier version of the text.

which he traced back to Marx, Engels, and

Weber; the rational-utilitarian tradition begun

by Homans, Blau, Cook, and Simon; the Dur-

kheimian tradition, in which functionalism

takes the name of its outstanding theoretician;

and the microinteractionist tradition of such

authors as Peirce, Mead, Husserl, Schutz, and

Gar®nkel.

We ¯ank these four traditions with an

approach that, given its youth, cannot properly

be called a tradition but that has nevertheless

been a stimulating re¯ection on knowledge:

postmodernism.

The Tradition of Conflict

This tradition represents a line of thought that

directs attention to the structure of dominant

and subordinate interest groups, to social con-

¯ict, and to power systems. Its principal thesis

is that society is based on con¯ict and that, in

the absence of open con¯ict, a process of dom-

ination prevails. In this tradition the social

order is perceived as the outcome of a struggle

between groups and individuals seeking to

ensure that their own interests predominate

over those of others. Also, organizations are

not innocuous instruments in the hands of

their creators, and political interpretation of

organizational life can be found in Michels

(1911), Selznick (1949), Gouldner (1954), Dalton

(1959), Etzioni (1961), and Crozier (1963). For

Marxism and the Frankfurt school, the econo-

my is what determines politics, law, and

human culture; the materialistic dynamic is

what produces the inevitable contradictions

and transformations identi®ed by Hegel

(1807). Con¯ict is expressed and masked by

ideology. Every social class tends to view the

world in a particular way, and its ideas mirror

its economic interests and the social circum-

stances that de®ne those interests. As ideology,

ideas are exalted by people and are used to

cloak interests in respectable guise.

Weber's (1922/78) thought has exerted its

in¯uence on the sociology of organization

through the model of bureaucracy and its func-

tionalist misinterpretation (Clegg 1995). But the

sociological tradition of con¯ict has continued

to exacerbate the contradiction between sub-

stantial rationality (the capacity of humans to

understand that certain means lead to certain

ends) and formal rationality (obedience to

norms and written rules), a type of behavior

®rst highlighted by Mannheim (1935), then

developed by critical theory, and today theo-

rized by Beck (1992) in the concept `risk society',

a society that escapes human control because

formal rationality has supplanted substantial

rationality.

The theme of control is mirrored by the

theme of power, both within organizations

and among them. Not only has modernization

produced a society of organizations (Perrow

1991; Presthus 1978), but forms of control have

gradually changed from external control

(direct or mediated by technology) to norma-

tive control, which is internalized and based on

the control of decisional and cultural assump-

tions. In postindustrial societies, power-based

social divisions have become more rami®ed,

and, with the increasing use of knowledge for

productive purposes, the linkage between

knowledge and power has given rise to social

con¯icts that are more articulated and complex

than the property-based class con¯icts that

characterized the onset of industrialization

(Clegg 1990; Rothman and Friedman, Ch. 26 in

this volume).

The use of knowledge on a vast scale has

produced a new class of technicoscienti®c

experts, and neologisms such as `knowledge-

®rm' (Starbuck 1992) and `knowledge-workers'

(Zuboff 1988) have appeared in scienti®c as well

as everyday language. The term `organizational

learning' also belongs to this rhetoric, whose

system of persuasion is grounded in knowledge

(Alvesson 1993).

Drawing on both the interpretative tools of

sociology and the tradition of con¯ict, one can

interpret the theme of organizational learning

in three ways.

1.Organizational learning as the ideology of

particular power groups. The ideas subsumed

under the heading `organizational learning'

are extolled. As a consequence, the label `learn-

36 Gherardi and Nicolini

ing organization' has been coined to celebrate

an organizational identity and draw a social

distinction between those organizations con-

forming to a bureaucratic model and those in

which a `new' managerial philosophy is pro-

pounded (Easterby-Smith, Snell, and Gherardi

1998). This philosophy may become ®rst a

methodology, then a technique, as the pre-

scriptiveness of its contents increases, and as

its capacity to discipline members of an organ-

ization grows (Gherardi 1999). Management is

one of the social actors interested in developing

a managerial theory of organizational learning

that will give it legitimacy, but it is not the only

power group that can use this ideology to mask

its interests. Traditional occupational groups of

experts and new occupational groups that

may emerge as experts on organizational learn-

ing will also develop various versions of the

ideology in order to legitimate covert power

struggles against other communities of experts

that possess their own knowledge resources

and compete against them (Snell and Chack

1998).

2.Organizational learning as a policy of mobil-

izing power. In both organizations and society,

knowledge is a resource for social strati®cation

insofar as it gives rise to positions of relative

power that, by virtue of their intrinsic instabil-

ity, must be defended and possibly reinforced.

To create knowledge is to produce a value

resource that can be exchanged. Transmitting

knowledge involves transferring a value; utiliz-

ing knowledge entails exploiting a resource

that is offered for exchange on a political (and

economic) market. Historically, the professions

arose out of the monopolization and institutio-

nalization of sources that had the legitimacy to

produce and transmit knowledge. Within

organizations, that which individuals or

groups learn gives them power over those who

`do not know' or who `know less ef®ciently',

and it is a source of potential con¯ict (Coopey

1995). The circulation of knowledge within

organizations, its exploitation for productive

purposes, and its codi®cation as useful, good,

correct, or prescribed take place within the

micropolitics of quotidian power relationships

(Gherardi, Nicolini, and Odella 1998b). In other

words, power and con¯ict render the circula-

tion of knowledge nontransparent and conceal

the social conditions of its production.

3.Organizational learning as an attempt to

manage the tension between substantial and

formal rationality. Learning conditioned by

substantial rationality is learning acquired

through experience, with logical connections

being established between the means, the ends,

and the consequences of action, and behavior

being modi®ed on the basis of these inferences.

Put differently, substantial rationality is the

learning that people acquire in their work, but

this learning cannot automatically be trans-

ferred to the rules and regulations that govern

organizational behavior. Consequently, obedi-

ence to formal rationality gives rise to unin-

tended effects that fail to take account of

learning from experience. The literature on

how and why organizations do not learn (Hed-

berg 1981) highlights this loss of meaning

caused by the social mechanisms that repro-

duce instrumental rationality. Rationalization

is the enemy of rationality, hence of organiza-

tional learning, a term that can be regarded as

an oxymoron (Merkens, Geppert, and Antal,

Ch. 10 in this volume; Weick and Westley

1996). In fact, learning and organizing can be

de®ned as antithetical processes. The former

focuses on a disorganization and increase of

variety; the latter, on a forgetting and reduction

of variety.

The Rational±Utilitarian Tradition

Utilitarianism has distant origins in British

social philosophy, and later became a discipline

in the ®eld of economics. Collins (1994:85)

argued that the utilitarian tradition is not

sociological in a strict sense, though it has

numerous points of contact with sociology. In

the 1950s a broader intellectual movement

known as `rational choice (or action) theory'

arose, taking the name of `public choice' theory

in political science and `exchange theory' in

sociology.

Rational utilitarianism in sociology has a

great deal in common with con¯ict theory in

the sense that society, from both pointsof view,

Sociology 37

is considered to be a set of groups and indivi-

duals who pursue interests and calculate

advantages. Unlike con¯ict theory, however,

rational utilitarianism is not focused on polit-

ical con¯ict, social strati®cation, or inequality.

Instead, rational utilitarians seek to explain

society in terms of people's rational motiv-

ations and the manner in which they rationally

perform exchanges so that everything func-

tions in the best possible way.

In sociology, utilitarians have provoked a

controversy known as the micro/macro pro-

blem (Collins 1994). They conceive of society

as being held together by the actions of indivi-

duals at the microlevel, and they reject the idea

of society as a macrostructure existing above

and beyond individuals. For example, they dis-

pute the notion that culture is determined by

the actions of people. Utilitarians instead seek

to understand what motivates individuals to

act beyond their own self-interest. Accounting

for sel¯ess behavior by individuals is one of the

paradoxes that has enriched rational utilitar-

ianism, and it well illustrates the method used

in this tradition of thought: On the assumption

that individuals are rational and intent on

maximizing their interests, utilitarians analyze

the limits of rationality, as in the phenomenon

of free riding (Olson 1965), or the prisoner's

dilemma (Luce and Raiffa 1957).

A pioneer of utilitarianism in sociology

was George Homans (1950,1961). Disagreeing

with Parsons's (1951) functionalism, Homans

claimed that not only is the social system a

myth, but so, too, are the standards according

to which individuals act (the role system),

which are inculcated in them by the socializa-

tion process. Homans argued that the more

individuals interact as equals and on the basis

of reciprocity, the more they come to accept,

assimilate, and conform to a common stand-

ard. As individuals interact, cohesive groups

form and develop a shared culture and a nor-

mative system, both at the workplace and in

the neighborhood. According to Homans, the

reason for this emergence of a shared culture

and a normative system is the reward intrinsic

to the interaction, social approval, for the

group will remain united as long as its members

exchange these rewards. Other authors, such

as Blau (1964), have studied the patterns of

exchange and the exchange networks in

which individuals negotiate approval among

themselves (Cook et al.1983).

The tradition in which Homans, Blau, and

Cook et al. stand includes the premise that

power derives from the unequal exchange of

resources and that each of the parties to an

exchange adjusts its manner of negotiating

according to the resources at its disposal. This

conception of exchange has been highly in¯u-

ential in the sociology of organizations, where

the rational-choice paradigm is recognized as

one of the classical theories expounding on the

paradoxes of rationality in organizational deci-

sion theory (March 1988; Simon 1957).

This strand of studies has provided one of

the most coherent accounts of organizational

learning as adaptation (Levitt and March 1988).

The recognition of a performance gap stimul-

ates actors within an organization to search for

knowledge about alternative courses of action

that might reduce the gap between current and

desired performance. Searches may be based on

existing knowledge and existing views of the

world or on the creation of new knowledge

through formal investigations, environmental

scanning, individual experiential learning, or

armchair theorizing.

The contributions of the rational±utilitarian

tradition to organizational learning can be

summarized in three conceptualizations.

1.Organizational learning serves as a problem-

driven search when the organization's perform-

ance does not meet aspiration levels. This kind

of organizational learning is the conscious

learning that takes place within an adaptive

learning system in which a great deal of beha-

vior takes place through standard operating

procedures. The study by Cyert and March

(1963) was the landmark of this neorationalist

approach, although the most strictly sociologi-

cal contribution was made by research into

incomplete learning cycles (March and Olsen

1976; see also Berthoin Antal, Lenhardt, and

Rosenbrock, Ch. 39 in this volume). Cyert and

March (1963) pointed out where the paradoxes

38 Gherardi and Nicolini

of rationality arise, and they highlighted the

impact of ambiguity on interpretation pro-

cesses as well as the emotional and cultural

factors that mould adaptation to experience

(Kieser, Beck, and Tainio, Ch. 27; Pawlowsky,

Forslin, and Reinhardt, Ch. 35 in this volume).

2.Organizational learning serves as the activ-

ation of an exchange network that takes the

form of a market for knowledge and skills.

Knowledge is input into the production pro-

cess, and ®rms acquire it externally in the

form of people in possession of it, patents, and

the technologies that embody and produce it.

The more that knowledge is explicit, codi®ed,

and universal, the more it acquires the transfer-

able nature of a commodity. Conversely, the

more that knowledge is implicit, tacit, and

situated, the more it becomes an asset of the

people and groups that possess it and the more

it is embodied in skills and speci®c practices.

The `invisible assets' of an organization (speci-

®c skills and tacit expertise) are based on idio-

syncratic forms of knowledge (Baumard 1996;

Nonaka and Takeuchi 1995; Spender 1996a).

Workplace control has historically changed

hands in the presence of a different market:

Knowledge work-groups are characterized by

high levels of autonomy and self-management,

trust relations with customers, and uncertain

and ambiguous tasks (Butera, Donati, and

Cesaria 1998). Control becomes concentrated

in the product rather than in the process of

work.

3.Organizational learning as an ecology of

learning located within distributed, multiactor

routines rather than within individual minds

(Arujo 1998). Organizations learn by taking

inferences from past experience and encoding

them into the routines, rules, procedures, con-

ventions, strategies, and technologies that

guide behavior (Levitt and March 1988). This

approach revives Bateson's (1972) work on the

logical levels of learning, but it is also con-

cerned with the speci®c rationality of corporate

actors and the societal consequences of the

power that those actors acquire by monopoliz-

ing knowledge, institutionalizing forms of

systemic myopia, or imitating maladaptive

learning (Levinthal and March 1993). Nelson

(1991) and Tsoukas (1992) viewed ®rms as hier-

archies of routines and argued that most of the

knowledge possessed by ®rms is tacit and

resides not in the heads of individuals but in

teams of individuals with shared experiences

and with only a partial view of what constitutes

a particular routine.

The Durkheimian Tradition

Durkheim's work remains the central tradition

of sociological thought, and both sociology

and social anthropology have developed

within it. Durkheim's followers used the term

`ethnology' for empirical descriptions of tribal

societies and the term `sociology' to denote the

theoretical analysis of society. They believed

that tribal societies were simpler than modern

society and that tribal societies most clearly

evinced the `elementary forms' of social life,

by which was meant, as Collins (1994) put it,

the sentiments, emotions, morality, the sacred,

and the religious that together constitute the

essence of every society as expressed in its

symbolism.

Although Durkheim (1912) forcefully argued

for the in¯uence of `nonrational' elements in

the shaping of society, he is important to the

history of sociology as the founder of sociolo-

gical method and of sociology as the science of

the social order. Paradigmatic of Durkheim's

work is his study of suicide (1897), in which

the circumstances in which a phenomenon

occurs were compared with circumstances in

which it does not. Accordingly, suicideÐor, as

in this handbook, learningÐcan be treated as a

variable. The researcher examines the rates of

incidence of the variable `suicide' (or learning)

as well as its variations in the presence of cer-

tain factors (e.g. age, religion, civil status, and

climate), and sets it in relation to the social

structure. On the basis of empirical indicators,

therefore, alternative explanations can be sys-

tematically tested and theoretical generaliza-

tions or `laws of the social' formulated. In fact

most structuralist studies of organizational

learning follow the Durkheimian model, with

organizations conceived of as social contexts

for learning.

Sociology 39

In the Durkheimian tradition society is con-

ceived of as operating `from outside', so to

speak. Society works externally, on narrow

social groups and society as a whole, exerting

pressure, constraining social action, and shap-

ing sentiments and collective ideas. As regards

suicide, for example, members of groups with

high social density are less likely to kill them-

selves. Social density is not physical density; it

is, rather, moral density, that is, the extent to

which organic solidarity is present in a com-

munity with a `shared life', a life in which indi-

viduals take part in rituals and ceremonies that

focus the emotions of the individual onto the

group. Individuals belong to a broad society

that constrains and moulds them. But they

can also withdraw and meet together to prac-

tice those rituals of everyday life that produce

social density. Society has a nonrational

grounding in ritual, and utilitarian consider-

ations alone cannot hold it together. The Dur-

kheimian tradition therefore incorporates two

currents, one focused on the macroaspects of

society, the other on the microaspects. The for-

mer current developed through an emphasis

on the theory of the social division of labor

and scienti®c method, resulting in the func-

tionalism of Merton (1957) and Parsons (1951).

The second current concentrating on the

microaspects of society has maintained its

links with social anthropology and the analysis

of ritual through the work of Durkheim's

nephew, Mauss (1968), and then through the

work of Goffman (1967,1971) and Bernstein

(1971±1975). Analogously, organizational learn-

ing can be either analyzed as a dependent vari-

able, so that one looks for the (macrostructural)

conditions that favor or impede it, or concep-

tualized as a socialization process to speci®c

cultural codes.

In brief, in the ®rst current of the Durkhei-

mian tradition organizational learning is de®ned

as a dependent variable. Other variables (strat-

egy, structure, or culture) de®ne the conditions

that facilitate or hinder organizational learning

(Duncan and Weiss 1979; Tomassini 1993; War-

glien 1990). Learning is conceived of as one of

the functions of the organizational system,

which engenders change on some occasions

and conservation on others. The theory of

cybernetics is drawn upon both in its simple

feedback version, in which a change of state

occurs when environmental conditions alter,

and in its double-loop version (Argyris and

Scho

Èn1974,1978; Fiol and Lyles 1985), in which

parameters change by virtue of self-organiza-

tion or learning. At bottom, the functions

attributed to organizational learning explain

its dynamics and its position in the organiza-

tion. The manifest function of organizational

learning is to achieve the results that indivi-

duals consciously strive for, including adjust-

ment to changed operational or informational

circumstances and the ability to develop fresh

approaches to situations, to experiment, or to

innovate (Starbuck 1983). The latent function of

organizational learning is generated by the

social system itself, one example, being the

protection of the advantages gained through

the operation of mechanisms requiring modi-

®cation. Organizational learning can be both

explorative and exploitative (March 1996).

The second current, represented by such

scholars as Bernstein (1971±1975), Douglas

(1970), and Collins (1979), has furnished insights

that formulate a structural theory of occupa-

tional or professional cultures and subcultures.

Durkheim's legacy to the analysis of organiza-

tional cultures is immense, as Ouchi and Wilk-

ins (1985) stressed when they examined the

contribution made by sociology to the analysis

of organizational cultures.

This sociological tradition, therefore, con-

ceptualizes organizational learning as socializa-

tion to speci®c cultural codes. Socialization, in

fact, sensitizes subjects to the different orders of

society because it acts selectively on their life-

chances, creating a sense of a given social

order's inevitability and restricting the amount

of change that is permitted. The contexts

of socialization identi®ed by Bernstein (1971±

1975) can be transferred from child to adult

socialization and from an extended social con-

text to a restricted one, such as an organization.

Accordingly, in different contexts of socializa-

tion, speci®c contents of organizational learn-

ing are activated when individuals join speci®c

occupational communities within a particular

40 Gherardi and Nicolini

organization. These contexts of socialization

areÐ

.the regulatory context formed by the author-

ity relationships that sensitize individuals to

the rules of the moral order and their under-

lying structures. The social reproduction of

the hierarchy and the moral order that

regulates relationships among occupational

groups with differing endowments of know-

ledge and power are actuated in this context.

.the educational context, in which indivi-

duals are instructed on the objective nature

of objects and people, and in which they

learn various skills. This context pertains to

the reproduction of expertise.

.the imaginative or innovative context, in

which individuals are encouraged to experi-

ence the world on its own terms. This context

is internal to occupational communities in

which self-images and individual and collect-

ive identities are produced through experi-

mentation and negotiation.

.the interpersonal context, in which people

learn to know their own affective states and

those of others. This context pertains to

socialization in the appropriate social rela-

tionships that grant membership in a com-

munity. In this case, the organization is a

social structure external to the contexts of

socialization, which it structures into one

form rather than another by promoting, or

impeding learning processes.

The Microinteractionist Tradition

The microinteractionist tradition owes a two-

fold debt to philosophy: First, to Peirce's prag-

matism (1931±1935), and second, to Schutz's

phenomenology. Peirce coined the term

`semiotics' (the science of signs) and developed

the theory that individuals cannot perceive

things or think about the world without the

mediation of signs. Consequently, meaning

always exists in a three-way relationship

between the sign, the object, and the internal

referent (the thought). Peirce thus introduced a

social element into theories on the mind of the

individual because, as he explained, thought is

always realized in a community, and what the

community considers to be `true' and `object-

ive' is only what is based on habitus (the

historical product of previous individual

and collective practices). People, Peirce main-

tained, are nothing but the sum of their

thoughts, the historical accumulation of their

social experiences.

The social theory of the mind was re®ned by

Cooley (1964), who maintained that thought

consists of an imaginary conversation with

the self and that society is the mind of all indi-

viduals. Thus, society is a relationship among

ideas, and the ways in which individuals ima-

gine each other are the `concrete facts' exam-

ined by sociology. Much more in¯uential in the

sociology of thought than Cooley, however,

was Mead (1934), who posited that society is

grounded on re¯ectivity, or the ability of the

self to re¯ect upon itself. The self is a point of

view. Every individual possesses a plurality of

selves, and thought is a form of conversation

conducted by individuals with themselves.

Mead's social theory of the mind exerted a

profound in¯uence on Blumer (1969) and the

symbolic interactionist approach, which had

also assimilated insights from Dewey (1922)

and his critique of the doctrine of `rational

man'. Alfred Schutz's social phenomenology

in¯uenced Gar®nkel (1967), Goffman (1967),

and the ethnomethodological movement.

Both in symbolic interactionism and ethno-

methodology society is conceived of not as a

structure but as a process. People do not assume

ready-made roles but rather create and re-create

them according to the given situation. Social

institutions exist only insofar as individuals

come into contact with each other and jointly

construct actions.

Social action comes about because indivi-

duals project various social `me's' onto future

situations; they then assume the role of the

Other, predict the consequences, and model

their actions accordingly. This process of con-

tinuous negotiation yields `de®nitions of the

situation' and the social construction of reality

(Berger and Luckman 1966).

The concept of `de®nition of the situation'

was developed by Thomas and celebrated in his

Sociology 41

aphorism, `If one de®nes a situation as real,

then it is real in its consequences' (Thomas

1928:512). Reality is ¯uid and susceptible to

rapid changes, and if the way in which indivi-

duals de®ne a certain situation changes, then

so, too, does the type of behavior that it

induces. Social life has a peculiar tendency to

become whatever people think it is.

A microinteractionist approach is the cradle

of the concept of organizational learning as the

transmission of knowledge within occupational

communities. The theory starts from the hy-

pothesis that occupations (or professions) are

forms of interaction negotiated by subjects

engaged in work practices. Doctors, janitors,

lawyers, social workers, and so on produce not

only `work' but also social relations, identities,

and self-images. As they work, members of an

occupational community are intent on hiding

the `dirty' aspects of their work and the `dodges'

known only to initiates. They do so in order to

manipulate their public image and to increase

their bargaining power vis-a

Á-vis members of

other occupational communities or the public

in general. Studies of the noncanonical prac-

tices in professions (or occupations) shed a

great deal of light on the purportedly `transpar-

ent' transmission of knowledge (Boland and

Tenkasi 1995; Brown and Duguid 1991; Suchman

1987). This line of inquiry, in fact, is indebted to

the ethnomethodological approach (see Czar-

niawska, Ch. 5in this volume). The term

`ethnomethodology' (Flynn 1991) indicates

that this approach is an examination of social

reality through observation (ethnography) and

that researchers who use it seek to uncover the

methods that individuals employ in order to

give meaning to experience (methodology).

Learning therefore has to do with participating,

with becoming a member of a community,

because social relations are important for the

transmission of knowledge, the mastering of a

situated curriculum (Gherardi, Nicolini, and

Odella 1998a), and the relational development

of identity (Blackler 1995; Wenger 1998). Con-

sequently, learning is always situated in the

sphere of social interaction.

The social dimension of learning suggests the

existence of a `group mind' that takes the form

of cognitive interdependence centered on

memory processes. People working together

give life to a single transactive memory system,

complete with differentiated responsibility for

remembering their experiences. The behaviors

of people in organizations, like to the neuron

connections in the brain, may be spontan-

eously and tacitly activated and then intercon-

nect so that they coordinate an intelligent

action. Social learning is thus a network of col-

lective behaviors based on distributed know-

ledge (Tsoukas 1996).

The microinteractionist account of learning

as social and cultural process has also devel-

oped through studies on communities of prac-

tice (Brown and Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger

1991; Orr 1993; Stopford, Ch. 11 in this volume;

Stucky 1995; Zucchermaglio 1995). Lave and

Wenger (1991) are taken to be the represent-

atives of the so-called situated learning theory.

They de®ne a community of practice as `a set of

relations among persons, activity, and world,

over time and in relation with other tangential

and overlapping communities of practice. A

community of practice is an intrinsic condition

for the existence of knowledge, not least

because it provides the interpretative support

necessary for making sense of its heritage'

(p. 98). Working, learning, and innovating are

not distinct activities; they are, rather, closely

bound up with each other in a local practice

and in the culture of that practice.

A similar concept, that of the occupational

community, has been developed in studies of

organizational cultures (Barley 1991; Gherardi

1990; Kunda 1986; Strati 1986; Van Maanen and

Barley 1984). It focuses on the growth of local

cultures, the socialization of their members,

and the `organization' that results from nego-

tiation within communities and between the

communities external and internal to a given

organization. Both concepts share the Weber-

ian idea of the dynamic between Gemeinschaft

and Gesellschaft, which is inherent in the con-

cept of community, but they differ in the

emphasis that they place on either practice or

occupation.

The distinctive features of the microinter-

actionist tradition are its constructionist epis-

42 Gherardi and Nicolini

temology (the idea that society is constituted

in and by the interpretative practices of its

members) and its stress on the role of language

as the medium of such social construction.

Speech acts are units of language and action;

they are part of practice. They are not descrip-

tions but, rather, types of action like any other

action in a given practice. Language is not only

the expression of social relations; it is also the

medium for their creation (Czarniawska-

Joerges 1991). The previous point implicitly

highlights the impact of the `linguistic turn'

(Alvesson and Deetz 1996:205) in organization

studies. The turning point came with the

notion that language does not describe or

represent reality (language is not tied to mean-

ing or perception); rather, it constructs the

`objects' and `subjects' of reality.

The contribution of this sociological tradi-

tion is the study of organizational learning as

a label that both produces a socially constructed

reality and is produced by that reality. The label

`organizational learning' gives identity to a

scienti®c community whose social practices

are grounded in such pursuits as writing and

talking about organizational learning, organiz-

ing conferences, and founding new journals

(Nicolini and Meznar 1995; Spender 1996b).

Indeed, a wholly sociological phenomenon is

the social process by which a term, organiza-

tional learning, is coined for managerial prac-

tices; a new subjectivity is socially created;

®rms that de®ne themselves as `learning organ-

izations' appear; and social researchers pro-

liferate and, equipped with survey tools, set

off in quest of `learning organizations', deter-

mined to measure the properties of this new

`object' in the physical world (Gherardi 1999).

Words, labels, metaphors, and platitudes pro-

duce the reality that people experience as `out

there'.

The characteristic features of construction-

ism are contingency, negotiation, breakdown,

discontinuity, heterogeneity, and fragment-

ation. Accordingly, in a social constructionist

approach organizational learning is seen as

situated; knowledge is seen to stem from nego-

tiations, breakdowns, and discontinuities; and

knowing is seen as heterogeneous and frag-

mented. The process of learning can therefore

be better understood when it is located in the

domains of knowledge, language, and interpre-

tation rather than in action and its outcomes.

These features are at odds with the traditional

psychological models of learning (based on sti-

mulus±response theory), which are acritically

transferred to the study of organizational learn-

ing (Maier, Prange, and Rosenstiel, Ch. 1in this

volume; Weick 1991). Within the microinterac-

tionist tradition an antithesis to modernist

thought has thus begun to appear. In the next

section we examine the insights that such post-

modernist thought can offer.

The Postmodern Tradition?

It is only with a certain amount of irony that

one can talk of a postmodern tradition in

sociology, given that systematic criticism of

modernist thought dates back only to the late

1980s. Although postmodernism originated in

aesthetics and philosophy (Lyotard 1984; Vatti-

mo 1985), sociologists soon declared themselves

for or against this silent cultural revolution

(Clegg 1990; Giddens 1990). Preeminent in the

postmodern approach to organizations is the

in¯uence of French poststructuralism, decon-

structionism (Derrida 1971), and Foucault's the-

ory of discourses (1980) as contingent systems

of thought that inform both linguistic and

material practices through speci®c technolo-

gies of power producing speci®c forms of sub-

jectivity.

The central theme of the debate on the post-

modern, or on postmodernisms, is the critique

of that modernism which is characterized by

grand narratives, the concepts of totality and

development, and essentialism. Although post-

modernism is generally de®ned by default in

the literature, the topics on the postmodern

agenda can be summarized as

the constructed nature of people and reality,

emphasizing language as a system of distinctions

which are central to the construction process,

arguing against grand narratives and large-scale the-

oretical systems, such as Marxism, or functionalism,

emphasizing the power±knowledge connection

and the role of claims of expertise in systems of

Sociology 43

domination, emphasizing the ¯uid and hyperreal

nature of the contemporary world and the role of

mass-media and information technologies, and

stressing narrative/®ction/rhetoric as central to the

research process. (Alvesson and Deetz 1996:192)

The role of research in postmodern thought is

not that of `discovering the truth' but of chal-

lenging the conventional wisdom, routines,

static meanings, and axioms of `normal'

science, thereby exposing knowledge to non-

dogmatic forms of thought (Astley 1985; Gergen

1992).

In discussing how the topic of organizational

learning is addressed in the postmodern tradi-

tion, we consider here those issues on the post-

modern agenda that are relevant to learning:

the relationship between knowledge and

power, the central importance of language

and discourse, and fragmented identity.

The relationship between knowledge and

power is crucial, both because it challenges

the existence of any universalistic foundation

to knowledge and because learning is intim-

ately bound up with the production of know-

ledge. Every attempt to label something as

`knowledge' is made by a speci®c social com-

munity belonging to a network of power rela-

tions, and not by a world consisting purely of

ideas. Hence, no knowledge is universal or

supreme; instead, all knowledge is produced

within social, historical, and linguistic rela-

tions grounded in speci®c forms of con¯ict

and the division of labor. Power is implicit in

the language that draws distinctions, hier-

archizes terms, permits modes of reasoning

and discursive practices that, in turn, organize

the social institutions and produce one type of

subject rather than another. Therefore, in the

sense of the `narrative turn' (Bruner 1990:1),

stories told and retold in organizations become

important because memory is retained not so

much in propositions as in stories. Stories are

vehicles of organizational memory, and the

development of stories constitutes organiza-

tional learning (Sims 1999).

The obvious implication for the study of

organizational learning is that the concept

and its adoption should be situated within the

network of knowledge/power relations that

produces it. Take, for example, managerial

knowledge. It shapes the identity of a group of

people; creates a bond of solidarity, shared

interests, and a profession; establishes criteria

for selection, remuneration, membership, and

exclusion; and allocates power and resources

with which to discipline the behavior of mem-

bers and nonmembers. Townley (1993) dis-

cussed Foucault's (1977) concept of discipline,

applying it to human resource management in

order to show that this form of expert know-

ledge is used to exert control over another

social group.

As Foucault (1977) argued, a discipline can be

conceived of as a speci®c technology of power:

`Disciplinary power is exercised through its

invisibility; at the same time it imposes on

those it subjects a compulsory visibility. In dis-

cipline, it is the subjects who have to be seen. It

is the fact of being constantly seen that main-

tains the disciplined individual in his subjec-

tion' (p. 187). Foucault (1988) de®ned four major

technologies of self-understanding that enter

into the power game of truth:

1) technologies of production, which permit us to

produce, transform, or manipulate things; 2) tech-

nologies of sign systems, which permit us to use

signs, meanings symbols, or signi®cation; 3) tech-

nologies of power, which determine the conduct of

individuals and submit them to certain ends or

domination, an objectivizing of the subject; and 4)

technologies of the self, which permit individuals to

effect by their own means or with the help of others

a certain number of operations on their own bodies

and souls, thoughts, conduct, and the way of being,

as to transform themselves in order to attain a cer-

tain state of happiness, purity, wisdom, perfection,

or immortality. (p. 18)

A Foucauldian reading of the managerial use of

the concept of organizational learning is there-

fore the interpretation of the use of this con-

cept as a technology of power used to discipline

organizational members.

Although postmodern analysis in organiza-

tion studies is only in its beginnings, it has

provided signi®cant insights, as in accounting,

where terms are meaningless if isolated from

the speci®c accounting practices that sustain

them (Hopwood 1987; Munro and Mouritsen

44 Gherardi and Nicolini

1996; Power and Laughlin 1992). Other interest-

ing proposals relate to knowledge-®rms and the

production of speci®c technologies of power

that are used to control knowledge-workers

(Deetz 1996). Although there is no direct linkage

between those who produce the social object

`knowledge-®rm' by studying it and those who

investigate organizational learning and the

`learning organization', the two communities

of scholars closely resemble each other in the

social effects of their practices, effects that

deconstructionism can reveal.

In the postmodern approach the task of the

researcher is to deconstruct (Cooper 1989; Lin-

stead 1993) the so-called objects that are taken

to be objective and self-evident in organiza-

tional life. Organizational discourses do not

use language as the mirror of reality or of

mental states. Instead, language is ®gurative,

metaphorical, and fraught with contradictions,

opacities, and incoherencies (Cooper and

Burrell 1988). It is not universal but local; it is

precarious and fragmented (Linstead and

Grafton-Small 1990). Consequently, postmo-

dernism takes social constructionism one step

further: Language constitutes identity, that is,

the subject's position within a discursive prac-

tice. Rather than being focused on persons with

a unitary identity (the locus of will and self-

determination), postmodernism is a considera-

tion of the narratives of identity. Identity as a

human property and the foundation of subject-

ivity is one of the great narratives of modern-

ism. Its critique by postmodernism has

generated the concept of `identities' con-

structed by means of unstable and multiple

discourses (Czarniawska-Joerges 1995).

Whereas modernism views knowledge as a

collection of real entities located in people's

minds, with learning as the process of internal-

izing them and context as the container of

decontextualized knowledge, postmodernism

asserts that the boundary between culture and

the world has dissolved. The problem of decon-

textual and contextual knowledge is bound up

with the arguments between modernism and

postmodernism and with traditional cognitive

learning theory on the one hand and emergent

situated learning theory on the other (Fox

1997). Decontextualized knowledge is valued

because it is taken to represent the hidden

unity of the world. In cognitive theory the con-

text is conceived of as the container of decon-

textualized knowledge, and the interpretation

process is ultimately impersonal, detached,

and ahistorical. But if it is assumed that science,

too, is a cultural phenomenon and that inter-

pretation itself is a textually mediated process,

then one has to agree with Fox (1997), who

stated that `modernism, like science, hides or

represses the socially skilled craft work which

goes into producing the ``real'' with textual

materials and accounts' (p. 741).

Postmodernism is consistent with situated

learning theory's valorization of emergent

social contexts. Theory therefore becomes a

contextualized practice in which communities

of practitioners work to construct a `scienti®c

theory' or a body of knowledge out of textual

materials.

Within the postmodern tradition one may

say that organizational learning is viewed as a

discursive practice. Every discourse on organiza-

tional learning unfolds within a network of

knowledge/power relations that shapes the

subjectivity of those who participate as speak-

ers and those who are excluded and that sus-

tains concrete practices based on speci®c

technologies of power (Boje 1994). A subject

position incorporates both a conceptual reper-

toire and a location for persons within the

structure of the rights pertaining to those who

use this repertoire. A position is created in and

through conversations as speakers and listeners

construct themselves as persons: It creates a

location in which social relations and actions

are mediated by symbolic forms and modes of

being. Through practices of mutual account-

ability, speaking subjects not only make the

world more intelligible but also choose a dis-

cursive position for themselves and for others.

Because organizational learning is thus lo-

cated within the discursive practices of a scient-

i®c community, the researcher's concern is to

examine how this social object is formed and to

render this object of knowledge unstable,

incomplete, and always open to fresh inter-

pretations.

Sociology 45

The Metaphorical Nature of the

Concept `Organizational

Learning'

Accepting a postmodern stance, we ®nd that

the sociological contribution to the ®eld of

organizational learning is socially constructed

by eleven discursive positionings (or in Reed's

[1996:34] terminology, analytical narratives)

that stem from ®ve sociological traditions.

Researchers in this ®eld can choose different

ontological and epistemological positions and

thereby give different accounts of their object

of knowledge. Each account presupposes a nar-

rative capacity, an ability to narrate their

experience and that of others when making

sense of the world. Therefore, we resume our

analysis of the sociological contribution to the

study of organizational learning by examining

several narratives (see Table 2.1) that stem from

as many theoretical discourses and merge into

one conversation.

The conversation metaphor has been used

(Clegg and Hardy 1996b) to map the debate in

organization theory as `nothing less, nothing

more, nothing other than its practices of repre-

sentation' (p. 676). In conversations between

researcher and researched, both parties may

learn, and the aim of such conversations is to

open up multiple narratives with multiple

meanings, resist conventional narratives, and

avoid marginalizing narratives that do not con-

form to accepted wisdom. These conversations

are socially organized (in professions, academic

disciplines, and specialized journals), and they

organize a social process. No conversation is

more valid than any other, but all conversa-

tions offer opportunities for understanding

and action within different discursive prac-

tices, whether theoretical, practical, profes-

sional, or daily.

One discursive practice predominant in the

conversation about organization theory is the

narrative of organizational learning as learning

by an organization that, according to a more or

less cybernetic model, produces change, real or

potential, after a shift in the relationship

between thought, organizational action, and

environmental response (Tsang 1997). From

Table 2.1. Narratives of organizational learning according to five sociological traditions

Sociological traditions Narratives of organizational learning

The tradition of conflict .Organizational learning as the ideology of particular power groups

.Organizational learning as a policy of mobilizing resources of power

and conflict

.Organizational learning as an attempt to manage the tension

between substantial and formal rationality

The rational±utilitarian tradition .Organizational learning as a problem-driven search

.Organizational learning as the activation of an exchange network

.Organizational learning as an ecology of learning

The Durkheimian tradition .Organizational learning as a dependent variable

.Organizational learning as socialization to specific cultural codes

The microinteractionist tradition .Organizational learning as the transmission of knowledge within

occupational communities

.Organizational learning as a label producing and produced by a

socially constructed reality

The postmodern `tradition' .Organizational learning as a discursive practice

46 Gherardi and Nicolini

functionalism, which, according to Burrell and

Morgan (1979), is the dominant paradigm in the

sociology of the organization, organization

scholars have inherited a realistic postulate

(and a positivistic methodology) that concerns

both learning and the organization: Learning is

a `real' event that takes place in those `real'

places that are called organizations (and one

can measure learning). Both organizations

and learning are considered to be empirical

objects, and the organization came to be an-

thropomorphized as the subject of learning,

or, in order to avoid this dilemma, came to be

the container of individual and collective

learning.

By contrast, we argue that this `reality' results

from discursive practices based on the meta-

phorical use of a term, organizational learning,

which yields a particular account of organiza-

tions. Organizational learning is a metaphor

that encompasses two concepts, learning and

organization, and enables the exploration of

an organization as though it were a subject

that learns, processes information, re¯ects on

experiences, and possesses a stock of know-

ledge, skills, and expertise. This metaphor

opens the way for critical examination of the

relationship between organization and know-

ledge, between organization and the social

and cognitive processing of knowledge, and

between organizational action and organiza-

tional thought; it activates a `conversation'

that recognizes some aspects of the organiza-

tion and not others (Gherardi 1994,1996).

Metaphors can be a medium of important

elements of culture that `persuade us to see,

understand, and imagine situations in partial

ways' (Morgan 1997:348). Moreover, `metaphor

encourages us to think and act in new ways. It

extends horizons of insight and creates new

possibilities' (Morgan 1997:351). The assump-

tion that the concept organizational learning

is a metaphor implicitly allows one to start a

conversation about knowledge, knowing, and

learning in organizational processes.

The epistemological premises that allow this

transition from a realistic to a metaphorical

conception reside in the semantic shift from

the term `organization' to the term `organiz-

ing'. Organizing refers `to the embeddedness

of organizing within distinct local practices of

language, of culture, of ethnicity, of gender'

(Clegg and Hardy 1996a:4). Accordingly, we,

too, propose a semantic change. Instead of

`organizational learning', we explore the con-

cept of `learning-in-organizing'. This expres-

sion denotes a representational system, a way

of organizing a theoretical discourse on organ-

izing and organizations that eschews the

concept of organization as a uni®ed (and rei-

®ed) entity. The term, therefore, refers to a

social process inherent in the social construc-

tion of society and signi®es no recognition

of boundaries between one organization and

another or between an organization and its

environment. In the following sections we

argue that sociology has contributed two con-

cepts to learning-in-organizing: participation

and re¯exivity.

Learning-in-organizing and

Participation in a Practice

Sociologists approach learning not as some-

thing that takes place in the mind but as

something produced and reproduced in the

social relations of individuals when they parti-

cipate in society. `Learning is unhampered

participation in a meaningful situation', wrote

Illich (1971:65). Consequently, the various

forms assumed by individuals engaged in

goal-oriented activities are important for

understanding how people become members

of a community of practice and how they

come to master the speci®c knowledge

embedded in the various activities. Learning

and knowing may therefore be understood `as

competent participation in a practice' (Wenger

1998:137). The study of situated learning reveals

the intended uses of knowledge in situations

(Brown, Collins, and Duguid 1989).

The concept of learning through participa-

tion in a practice requires exploration of

practice as a concept because it is laden with

diverse traditions of thought: phenomeno-

logical, Marxist, and linguistic. These three

Sociology 47

traditions have been described (Ehn 1988)in

terms of practice-as-work (the transformation

of a given work process), practice-as-morality

(the politics and power of the different groups

or social classes involved in a given work pro-

cess), and practice-as-language (professional

language and interaction within a given work

process). We brie¯y recall them in this context

in order to illustrate how practice-based theor-

izing reshapes the concept of knowledge and

helps dissolve the arti®cial separation of levels

of learning based on the learning subject (the

individual, group, organization, and net-

works).

Heidegger (1962) and the phenomenological

school used the term Dasein to denote this

`being-in-the-world', whereby subject and ob-

ject are indistinguishable. Both subject and

object are part of a situation and exist in a social

and historical setting. An illuminating example

of the relationship between subject, object,

environment, and knowledge is found in

Winograd and Flores (1986), who used hammer-

ing as a paradigmatic instance of prere¯exive

learning, of comprehension that takes place in

situations of involvement in a practice when

subject and object are not separated. Consider a

carpenter hammering a nail into a piece of

wood. In terms of the carpenter's practical

activity, the hammer does not exist as an object

with given properties. It is as much a part of his

world as the arm with which he wields it. The

hammer belongs to the environment and can

be unthinkingly used by the carpenter. The

carpenter does not need to `think a hammer'

in order to drive in a nail. His capacity to act

depends on his familiarity with the act of ham-

mering. His use of the practical item `hammer'

constitutes its signi®cance to him in the setting

`hammering' and `carpentry'. When the car-

penter's hammering is unimpeded, the ham-

mer with its properties does not exist as an

entity. Only when some breakdown or situa-

tion of nonusability occurs will the carpenter's

activity of hammering become problematic.

The hammer exists as an entity when it no

longer works or is missing. That is to say,

when it becomes unusable. In the usable envir-

onment, the understanding of situations is a

prere¯exive activity. Re¯exive, investigative,

theoretical knowledge requires that something

that was previously usable now becomes un-

usable. The world of objects thus becomes `sim-

ply present' (vorhanden), no longer understood.

This breakdown occurs only when the carpen-

ter has already understood the hammer in

practice.

The concept of tacit knowledge is very close

to the phenomenological tradition. This af®n-

ity is what Polanyi (1962:105±6) meant when he

said that we know much more than we know

we know. He asked whether an analytical

description of how to keep one's balance on a

bicycle suf®ces as instruction to someone want-

ing to learn how to ride a bicycle? His answer:

`Rules of art can be useful, but they do not

determine the practice of an art; they are max-

ims, which can serve as a guide to an art only if

they can be integrated into the practical know-

ledge of the art. They cannot replace this

knowledge' (p. 50).

In order to convey what he meant by `tacit

knowledge' in the practice of skills, Polanyi

(1962) distinguished between two types of

awareness: focal and subsidiary:

When we use a hammer to drive in a nail, we attend

to both nail and hammer, but in a different way.We

watch the effect of our strokes on the nail and try to

wield the hammer so as to hit the nail most effect-

ively. When we bring down the hammer we do not

feel that its handle has struck our palm but that its

head has struck the nail. (p. 55; emphasis in the

original)

The focal awareness is on driving in the nail,

the subsidiary awareness is on what is felt on

the palm of the hand. The phenomenological

thinker pays close attention to these feelings

not because they are the object of one's atten-

tion but because they are the instruments of

that attention. The conclusion is that, in gen-

eral, people do not have focal awareness of the

instruments over which they have achieved

mastery. The implication for studying a prac-

tice is not how to make explicit what is tacit

knowledge but how to deal with what von Hip-

pel (1994) called `sticky information': all that is

unsayable and kept within the usable environ-

ment and the docile instruments in it.

48 Gherardi and Nicolini

To participate in a practice is to learn the

logic of that practice (what Bourdieu [1990]

called sens pratique as opposed to the logic of

discourse). Sens pratique is prere¯exive, unlike

the logic of discourse, which functions by mak-

ing the work of thought explicit in a linear

series of signs that the mind perceives as sim-

ultaneous instead. The logic of practice is

necessary for the order and continuity of an

organization because practical knowledge is

kept within the habitus, which produces his-

torical `anchors' and ensures the correctness of

practices and their constancy over time more

reliably than formal and explicit rules do (Bour-

dieu 1990).

In the phenomenological tradition, there-

fore, the concept of practice shows how com-

prehension in situations where one is `thrown

headlong into use' (Heidegger 1962:57) is prere-

¯exive and does not draw distinctions between

subject, object, thing, or environment. The

concept of practice also shows how re¯exive

understanding arises at moments of break-

down. It signi®es that organizations as systems

of practices exist in the world of tacit know-

ledge that is simply usable and that becomes

the object of re¯ection when a breakdown

occurs.

The phenomenological concept of practice

is, however, less well known than the Marxist

use of the term, which assigns to it an emancip-

ating force. Practice is a notion central to Marx-

ist epistemology, where it contrasts with the

Cartesian notion of detached re¯ection and

separation of mind and body and is at odds

with rationalism, positivism, and scientism.

Practice is an epistemological principle, and

activity theory (Engestrom 1987) draws on the

work of Vygotsky (1962,1978), Luria (1976), and

Leontyev (1981) from the Russian school of

social psychology in order to show how the

analysis of human activity must begin with

the study of material actions and contexts of

action. Human activity systems are distin-

guished from animal activity by the presence

of (a) manufactured objects and concepts that

mediate the interaction between individuals

and concepts; (b) traditions, rituals, and rules

that mediate the interaction between indi-

viduals and the community; and (c) the divi-

sion of labor that mediates the interaction

between the community and the actions of

its members. In rede®ning the study of work,

psychologists, sociologists, and cognitive

scientists are increasingly turning to an inter-

disciplinary approach to work as mindful pract-

ice (Engestrom and Middleton 1996). Analyzing

work as culturally mediated practice requires a

consideration of both the `mindfulness' of

human action (remembering, reasoning, see-

ing, learning, and inventing) and the social

relations and artifacts in which cognition and

communication are embedded.

In other words, the activity in which know-

ledge is developed and applied is not separable

from or ancillary to learning, and conceptual

knowledge shares signi®cant features with

tools. As Brown, Collins, and Duguid (1989)

explained: `they [tools] can only be fully under-

stood through use, and using them entails both

changing the user's view of the world and

adopting the belief system of the culture in

which they are used' (p. 33). This analogy

between knowledge and tools stresses the

materiality of knowledge and is also expressed

by Law's (1994) concept of relational material-

ism: `ordering has to do both with humans and

non-humans' (p. 24; emphasis in the original).

Practice is a system of activities in which

knowing is not separate from doing and situa-

tions might be said to coproduce knowledge

through activity (Blackler 1993; Hutchins 1993;

Resnik 1993; Rogoff and Lave 1984; Zuccherma-

glio 1996). If the old vocabulary of technology

as `designed', `implemented', and `impact pro-

ducing' is abandoned in favor of seeing techno-

logical systems as malleable artifacts, that is,

cultural objects leading to new routines despite

their initial purpose and design, then an inno-

vative arena for negotiating the materiality

of knowledge opens up. Take, for example,

computer-based information systems, which,

despite the characteristics usually attributed

to information technologies (standardization,

routinization of tasks, and centralization), are

open and dynamic artifacts (Ciborra and Lan-

zara 1990). Computer-based information sys-

tems are embodiments not just of data ¯ows

Sociology 49

and work routines but also of organizational

cultures and archetypes: `Computers are able

to interact with both the structural and institu-

tional arrangements associated with a given

division of labor and the assumptions, frames,

and mental images people have while enacting

and practicing routinely that division of labor'

(Ciborra and Lanzara 1990:149; emphasis in the

original). Technology, argued Latour (1991), is

society made durable.

Finally, language is a distinctive feature of

human activity systems, an observation that

brings us to Wittgenstein's notion of practice

as a linguistic game. Language is a social, not a

private, fact: Linguistic terms arise within a

social practice of constructing meaning. Parti-

cipation in a practice entails taking part in a

professional language game and mastering

and being able to use its rules. To have grasped

a concept means that one has learned to obey

the rules within a given practice. Those who

participate in the practice of a linguistic game

must share in the `life form' that makes that

practice possible: Intersubjective consensus is

more a matter of shared environment and lan-

guage than a lack of opinions (Wittgenstein

1953).

Sharing in a life form is the prerequisite for

understanding and transmitting so-called

procedural knowledge, the type of knowledge

acquired through the practical understanding

of an operation. For example, carpenters parti-

cipate in a professional language game, and

they are able to `articulate' the procedures that

they follow in making a chair. But this `know-

what' kind of knowledge that can be acquired

in this way is different from the practical under-

standing, the real operation, of making a chair.

The practical knowledge of how to make a chair

and how to describe this process is qualitatively

different from knowing how to use a carpen-

ter's plane or knowing when its blade needs

changing.

Some knowledge is transmitted through the

senses and stored in sensory maps (Gagliardi

1990) by virtue of one's familiarity with previous

situations and the re®nement of one's sensitiv-

ity. This type is the connoisseur's knowledge

(Turner 1988) and is possessed by individuals,

professional communities, and industries. The

manufacture of ¯utes is an example (Cook and

Yanow 1993). Knowing how to describe the

sound of a ¯ute is part of the practice of know-

ing how to identify a ¯ute from other ¯utes and

how to manufacture it. Practical understanding

(Strati 1986) is often inarticulate, aesthetic, and

tacit. In cases where this description of practi-

cal understanding applies to ¯ute-makers, its

pertinence does not stem from an inability to

talk about the range of sounds but to the ¯ute-

makers' capacity to talk about participating in

that language game and to the fact that this

knowledge requires the presence of the per-

son(s) possessing it. Whereas `objective' knowl-

edge is accessible through tangible artifacts

(e.g. books, ®lms), subjective knowledge is pos-

sessed by those who participate in a practice. It

is impossible to learn how to recognize the

sound of a ¯ute from other instruments solely

through books. It can only be learned by inter-

acting with other people who are skilled in the

activity.

In other words, learning-in-organizing is not

only a way to acquire knowledge in practice but

also a way to change or perpetuate such knowl-

edge and to produce and reproduce society. A

practice can be the hammering of a carpenter or

more complex practices such as organ trans-

plantation, bridge-building, or the execution

of a safety plan. If learning is understood as

participation in such practices, the arti®cial

separation of learning into levels (e.g. indivi-

dual, collective, organizational, interorganiza-

tional, institutional) dissolves because a

practice may cross all levels and link all relevant

knowing and knowledge. The empirical start-

ing point for practice as a framework is the

`logic of action' formulated and pursued by

social actors, and to accept this view of practice

is to reject the concept of organization as a

uni®ed entity (Reed 1992:115). The notion of

practice includes both the mental and the

material, the verbal and the nonverbal, the tex-

tual and the nontextual, and the human and

nonhuman as the instruments surrounding

everyone in everyday organizational life, as

the `missing masses' (Latour 1992) that are

meant whenever social actions are described.

50 Gherardi and Nicolini

Amid the diverse schools of thought about

organizational learning, the speci®c contribu-

tion that practice-based theory has made to the

analysis of the knowledge intrinsic in practice

can be summarized as follows:

1. Learning is acquired through particip-

ation in communities of practice (Brown and

Duguid 1991; Lave and Wenger 1991; Wenger

1998).

2. Organizing can be seen as an activity sys-

tem that reveals the tentative nature of know-

ledge and action (Blackler 1993,1995; Blackler,

Crump, and McDonald 1998). Incoherencies,

inconsistencies, paradoxes, and tensions are

integral to activity systems.

3. Knowledge and action are located in eco-

logies of sociomaterial relations (Fujimura 1995;

Star 1995).

4. Knowing is enacted (Weick 1979), situated

(Billett 1994; Suchman 1987), resilient but provi-

sional (Unger 1987), and public and rhetorical

(Vattimo 1985).

5. Practice involves the establishment of

alignments across human and nonhuman ele-

ments (Latour 1986; Law 1994) at particular posi-

tionings at a particular time within a network

of relations (Suchman 1998).

An emphasis on practice focuses the research

on organizational learning on the `doing' and

the materiality of social relations, detaching

it from idealist tradition and cognitive

approaches.

Learning-in-organizing and

Reflexivity

Learning-in-organizing can be de®ned as the

enactment of a practice-based knowledge and

its unfolding over time. Whereas in the pre-

vious section we stated that practice is both

the production of the world and the result of

this process, in this section we illustrate how

re¯exivity is the link between knowing in prac-

tice and knowing apractice. Learning a practice

means participating competently in the know-

ledge embedded in that practice (i.e. knowing

in practice); knowing a practice entails disem-

bedding knowledge through an act of re¯exive

logic. Re¯exivity betrays the logic of practice

because it inserts distance, re¯ection, and

separation of subject and object where there

had been no distinction between the subject

and the world because both were totally pre-

sent and caught up by the `matter at hand'. The

previous example of the carpenter hammering

a nail is an illustration of his `being in the

world' while absorbed by carpentry. And it is

also an illustration of what is meant by prere-

¯exivity in the phenomenological tradition.

Situated practices are both prere¯exive (i.e.

they depend on unstated assumptions and

shared knowledge for the mutual comprehen-

sibility of the participants) and re¯exively con-

stitutive of the situated members' contexts

from which they arise. Re¯exivity results from

the separation of or breakdown between sub-

ject and object and, for ethnomethodologists,

from the need for accountability, by which is

meant making the world comprehensible to

oneself and to the other members of a collec-

tivity: `Re¯exivity refers to the dynamic self-

organizational tendency of social interaction

to provide for its own constitution through

practices of accountability and scenic display'

(Flynn 1991:28).

Re¯exivity, therefore, is a characteristic of all

order-producing social activities. Moreover,

`the essential re¯exivity of accounts' (Gar®nkel

1967:67) is used to create a sense of orderliness

for action, but it re¯exively creates that self-

same context. The term `organizational learn-

ing' not only acquires meaning from the con-

text in which it appears but also re¯exively

creates that context.

Re¯exivity, individual and systemic, is there-

fore the process whereby the carpenter in the

previous section translates his or her practical

knowledge of hammering and carpentry into

explicit knowledge that can, for example, be

transmitted to an apprentice; codi®ed as stand-

ard operating routines, books, models, or

instruments; and used as a knowledge base for

innovation.

The concept of re¯exivity therefore com-

prises three elements: (a) self-monitoring as its

Sociology 51

cognitive element, which produces knowledge;

(b) accountability as its social element, which

creates a discursive order; and (c) institution-

alization as its normative element, which pro-

duces and reproduces the social institutions.

The term `institutional re¯exivity' (Giddens

1976:6,1990:12) refers to the fact that the insti-

tutional work of society reproduces the social

order that has produced its institutions. It does

so by means of a twofold hermeneutics, that is,

the constant reinterpretation of previous inter-

pretations.

Learning-in-organizing can only occur in

relation to re¯exivity, for re¯exivity enables

both cybernetic self-monitoring, the institutio-

nalization of knowledge, and hence change as

the result of a learning process. Both positions

are continuations of the Enlightenment tradi-

tion of modernity (Bauman 1992), and in Ger-

man sociology they are taken up, albeit with

different emphases, by Luhmann (1984), Haber-

mas (1975), and Beck (1992): Social change is a

learning process.

This conceptualization of re¯exivity in main-

ly cognitive terms differs from the notion of

aesthetic re¯exivity (Lash 1993,1994; Strati

1999), according to which re¯exivity does not

occur solely by virtue of cognitive categories

(self-monitoring) but involves hermeneutic

categories as well. That is to say, it is a process

of self-interpretation and aesthetic judgment

that involves the imagination and intuition

speci®cally.

Re¯exivity as a phenomenon typically tied to

modernity has given rise to an interesting

sociological debate (Beck, Giddens, and Lash

1994) that has engendered something akin to a

`third way' between modernism and postmo-

dernism: `re¯exive modernization'. Whether

modernity is over and done with or whether it

has entered a new phase, proponents of re¯ex-

ive modernization have asserted that `the more

societies are modernized, the more agents

acquire the ability to re¯ect on the social con-

ditions of their existence and to change them

in that way' (Beck 1994:174). Of course, what is

meant by re¯exivity, and what the subjects, the

medium, and the consequences of re¯exive

modernization are, change from one author to

the next. Be that as it may, the social construc-

tion of organizational learning by organiza-

tional scholars also contributes to the process

of re¯exive modernization and exempli®es

institutional re¯exivity.

In Giddens's terms (1994), institutional

re¯exivity means the dis-embedding and re-

embedding of industrial society's ways of life

by new ones under the general conditions of

the welfare state in a developed society based

on industrial labor. The subjects of re¯exive

modernization are organizations, institutions,

and individuals, and the medium is know-

ledge in its various forms: scienti®c knowledge,

expert knowledge, everyday knowledge. Re¯ex-

ive modernization is a theory of the ever-grow-

ing powers of social actors (agency) to shape

structure (Lash 1994). The re¯exive modernity

of the organizational learning approach lies in

its progressive liberation of the practice and

theory of organizing from the `cage' of order-

producing structure and contingency. The pur-

pose of that liberation is to create more space

for the organizational agency and its activity

of self-monitoring or self-interpreting uncer-

tainty and ambiguity.

We therefore conclude that the concept of

re¯exivity can make a twofold contribution to

the social foundation of learning. First, re¯ex-

ivity is a methodological guide for analyzing

how practical knowledge is communicated to

and institutionalized at all levels of society.

This knowledge is communicated and institu-

tionalized throughÐ

.the community of practice based upon it;

.the organizational subsystem where this

community interacts with other commu-

nities;

.the organization as a corporate actor that

possesses the power to legitimate some

forms of expert knowledge and discredit

others;

.the interorganizational network created by a

system of practices and within which they

circulate, by imitation, diffusion, or transla-

tion;

.varyingly institutionalized forms of know-

ledge reproduced by knowledge-brokering

52 Gherardi and Nicolini

organizations, such as training agencies, con-

sortia for certi®cation, and organizational

consultants; and

.the institutional environment that creates

the conditions for the reproduction (or

change) of knowledge institutionalized into

rules and regulations or granted to universi-

ties, national research institutes, and similar

institutions authorized to manage know-

ledge.

In this sense, institutional re¯exivity constitu-

tes the grounds for a rather different view of

learning than the one that underpins most of

the views of organizational learning shown in

Table 2.1. As Star (1995) argued, an alternative

view of cognition emphasizes the situated and

shared character of learning, the uncertain

and ¯uid boundaries of knowledge in formal

organizations, and the social and material prac-

tices that make up learning, knowledge, and

skills.

Second, the concept of re¯exivity enables a

community of practice (the organizational

learning scholars) to exert re¯exive control

over both the knowledge that it produces and

the social effects that arise from this production

in all their ambiguity. Learning, in fact, is a

term that is often part of a ®nal vocabulary, an

axiomatic value. The positive connotations

associated with the word induces the a priori

assumption of what needs to be empirically

demonstrated. Learning, as the founding

myth of the scienti®c community of scholars,

obscures the social construction of organiza-

tional practices that, inasmuch as they are

called `learning', produce learning (Nicolini

and Meznar 1995) in the form of discourses

that normalize and discipline the thought of

individuals. The exploitative ethos of many

discourses on organizational learning is part

of the theoretical construction of the ®eld as a

discourse of disciplining when such discourse is

preselected as a managerial technique biased

speci®cally toward systematic and purposeful

learning, improvement, and particular norms

(Gherardi 1999). These biases and othersÐ

toward individual action, environmental adap-

tation, or planned learning, for example (Huys-

man 1999)Ðconstitute a speci®c structuring of

power/knowledge that sustains and perpetu-

ates them as a discourse of power even though

other discursive positions are possible.

Conclusions

The speci®c disciplinary contribution of socio-

logy to the study of organizational learning lies

in its depiction of learning as a social process

involving social relations (shaped by social

institutions) and learning itself (a `cultural

object' created by artful practices of cultural

work). However, sociology is not a body of

incremental knowledge. Consequently, var-

ious sociological traditions have produced

many sociological discourses on learning (see

Table 2.1), which can be discerned in the

specialist and multidisciplinary ®eld of organ-

izational studies.

We have used an analytical approach that

ideally draws on a constructionist ontology.

Accordingly, we have argued that the notion

of organizational learning is like an open con-

versation and that we can contribute to this

conversation through two sociological con-

cepts: participation and re¯exivity.

The concept of participation directs the

attention of the scholar of organizational learn-

ing to the fact that learning is not an activity

distinct from other activities, organizational or

otherwise, but rather a part of becoming a

member of an organization and that it is intrin-

sic to the practices that sustain an organization.

The logic of practice does not draw a distinc-

tion between subject and object; instead, it

involves `knowing how to be competent' in a

usable environment. This concept therefore

invites the study of prere¯exive knowledge,

tacit knowledge, aesthetic understanding,

knowledge in actionÐin short, of what we

have called learning-in-organizing. By con-

trast, the concept of re¯exivity relates to a par-

ticular moment of separation between the

knowing subject and the object of its know-

ledge: the moment that produces the con-

ditions of the context. Re¯exivity directs

Sociology 53

organizational analysis to the processes of

knowledge institutionalization. It invites

investigation of the organizational network

engaged in the social process of extracting the-

oretical knowledge from practical knowledge

and then transforming it into the normative

knowledge that produces the operating condi-

tions of practical knowledge.

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In today's rapidly evolving business landscape, organizational change has emerged as a crucial aspect of contemporary business strategies. The capacity to adapt is vital for organizations to maintain their competitive edge and stay relevant. However, executing change can be challenging, and the success of change initiatives largely hinges on an organization's readiness to change and learn. Organizational readiness to change has been extensively researched in management and organizational studies. This research paper delves into organizational readiness to change and learn, scrutinizing its influence on change initiatives and emphasizing the key trends and developments in this area between 2012 and 2021. The paper presents an in-depth SciVal analysis of the growth and scholarly output in the domains of learning organizations, organizational performance, and personnel over this period. The study identifies the most pertinent keyphrases, leading institutions, countries/regions, and Scopus sources contributing to the field.

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Estudos Baseados em Práticas como uma Alternativa Teórico-Metodológica para o Estudo de Novas Formas Organizacionais

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The Sociological Foundations of Organizational Learning

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Aug 2001

In an era of far-reaching changes, issues of Organizational Learning are high on the agenda of social scientists, managers and consultants worldwide as they seek to adapt to new environments. The Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge provides a comprehensive overview of how the concept of Organizational Learning emerged, how it has been used and debated, and where it may be going. It summarizes the state of the art and provides a full account of the diverse approaches, themes, issues, and debates of the field. The handbook unites a distinguished team of international authors, who examine both the central themes and emerging issues. The coverage extends beyond the American tradition to include the experiences of Europe, Asia and the Middle East. The book opens with chapters drawing insights from various social science approaches. The following Sections examine fundamental issues concerning the external triggers, factors and conditions, agents, and processes of Organizational Learning. Subsequent chapters review the subject within a global context, looking in particular at inter-organizational collaboration. The next sections examine the development of learning practices and provides case studies to illustrate Organizational Learning and knowledge creation. The book concludes with an analysis of the state of the art and an agenda for the future. This handbook will be an invaluable reference tool for scholars and students in the social sciences, as well as for professionals involved in organizational development, learning, and change.

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ALFABETIZAÇÃO FINANCEIRA COMO INSTRUMENTO DE TRANSFORMAÇÃO: UMA ANÁLISE DA INTEGRAÇÃO ENTRE BEM-ESTAR FINANCEIRO E PRODUTIVIDADE NO AMBIENTE DE TRABALHO

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O ensaio discute a relevância crítica da alfabetização financeira nas organizações, salientando como a carência de aptidão financeira tem consequências como endividamento e stress, que repercutem na produtividade laboral. Palavras Chave Alfabetização financeira , Bem-estar financeiro, Organização que Aprende

Theoretical Background

Chapter

May 2024

Beatrice Re

This chapter offers the key theoretical concepts that provide the basis of this book. I start by providing the conceptualization of legitimacy and organizational legitimacy and offering an excursus of the theoretical contributions of recent decades. I then link legitimacy with organizational sustainability and organizational change. Subsequently, I explain the concept of organizational learning and illustrate the transition from organizational learning to learning organizations. The chapter then focuses on value co-creation theory and its evolution in the academic debate, and introduces some models of value co-creation processes as well as the emerging “circular co-creation processes”. In each paragraph, I advance the main research gaps emerging from the extant literature, while in the last paragraph, I specifically highlight those gaps addressed in this book.