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My research shows how organizational learning is deeply embedded in organizational culture. To learn, an organization needs to understand how to evolve its culture.
I propose a model of how organizational culture evolves, including implications for leadership and change management.
Specifically, change doesn't occur in individuals, but in groups. What people see enacted by groups and leaders not only reflects the culture, but recreates it continually.
This is especially important for leaders. Leadership is a reflection of the culture but also defines the essence of the culture, whether for good or bad.
California School of Professional Psychology at Alameda
A model is developed that describes organizational learning at the organizational level rather than as an aggregate of individuals' learning. Following Cook and Yanow (1993), organizational culture, rather than cognition, is the medium of organizational learning. Because organizational culture is usually defined in terms of "sharing", which is ambiguous as to level, the level of analysis for organizational culture and learning remains uncertain. Process emergence is proposed as a dynamic explanation for the relationship between the individual and group levels. This explanation takes into account the emergence of the group from the individual level and the part-whole relationship between levels. An emergent level is an autonomous process that learns. Three criteria for process emergence, of which the emergence of the group level is an example, are developed based on Bateson's (1979) work on mind. The group emergent level is described as an autonomous process produced in the interaction of processes at the individual level. Stochastic process is proposed to model how process emergence can occur. Stochastic process, of which biological evolution is an example, is defined in terms of selection by consequences. Models of cognition based on stochastic process are adapted to the process emergence of the group level from the individual level. The distributed self-representation (DSR) model is offered, which is based on the stochastic interaction of components of a distributed self-representation of the organization. As representations held by individuals interact and differentially endure, the population of these representations (the organizational culture) evolves (learns) analogously to biological evolution. Cook and Yanow's case is re-examined to elaborate the DSR model as an explanation of learning by an organizational culture. Several areas of implications are developed. A new perspective on the emergent group level allows better understanding of the homogeneity and diversity within an organizational culture, and sheds light on the group level aspects of autonomy and leadership. Strategies for intervention at the organizational level as well as configurationist models for understanding the group level are supported. The risks of Cultural Taylorism, wherein management takes exclusive responsibility for organizational culture and learning, are discussed.© Lewis L. Mills, 1997
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