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Summary Levitt & March 1988: Organizational Learning
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Organizational learning – levitt (1988)Framing = the perception of an event. Frames allow us to make sense of the reality.
Example: someone is closing one eye
- Physical frame: closing one eye
- Social frame: winking
Abstract
Introduction
Learning from direct experience
Interpretation of experience
Organizational memory
Learning from the experience of others
Ecologies of learning
Learning as a form of intelligence
Abstract
Organizational learning is routine-based, history-dependent and target-orientated.
Organizations learn by encoding experience into the organizational memory through routines
that guide behaviour. Organizations lean from
- Direct experience
- Experience of others
The paper discusses how organizations encode, store and retrieve lessons from history in the
memory.
Introduction
Organizational learning is based on three observations form the behavioural studies:
- Behaviour is based on routines -> it is appropriate instead of it is best
- Actions are history dependent -> routines focussed on the past instead of future
- Organizations are oriented to targets -> failure or success steers behaviour
Routines = rules, procedures, tech, strategies, conventions, forms through which
organizations operate. Also, culture, structure of beliefs, frameworks, codes, paradigms and
knowledge that underlie, elaborate and contradict the formal routines.
Routines are independent of the individual actors.
Experimental lessons of history -> routines -> transmitted -> collective memory -> changed
as a result of new experience
Learning from direct experience
Routines and beliefs change in response to direct experience through 2 mechanisms:
- Trial and error
- Organizational search
Learning by doing: Repetition makes better (user experience)
Competency traps: Use of favourable inferior system and specialize in this system
o Lockout superior procedure or system
1
, Organizational learning – levitt (1988)
Organizations adapt routines. These routines are seen as fixed, but change at the same time
they are learned.
Multi-level learning is when a routine comprises of other routines and learning takes place at
several nested levels. Organizations learn to:
- Discriminate among routines
- Refine routines by learning with them
Example is an organization that learns to use a new software system rather than others by
refining skills on that system and by doing so the efficiency of any particular procedure
increases (the fact of learning something improves other procedures). As a result, the
difference in success with different systems/procedures does not only has to do with the
potential of the system/procedures, but also with the competencies of the organization with
the system/procedures.
Multi-level learning leads to specialization. Specialization is advantageous, but can lead to
competency traps: using inferior system because of the expertise with it.
Organizations have trouble unlearning old behaviours/procedures/competencies. But if the
new procedure is much better than the old one, it is unlikely the organization keeps the old
competencies.
The likelihood of falling into a competency trap is sensitive to learning rates:
- Risk higher @ fast learning among alternatives is
- Risk lower @ fast learning within alternative routines
Also, there are social and evolutionary aspects of competency traps: learning to use a system
produces increasing returns to experience, leading organizations to use systems far from
optimal. Example of a competency trap is the typewriter keyboard. The configuration of the
keyboard is almost by chance, although now widely used because people (and all the
systems) are experienced with it. A
Interpretation of experience
Lessons of experience are drawn from small observations. Although events are not always
clear, outcomes are classified as good or bad.
Lessons are subject to interpretation, and thus human error, by:
- Overestimate the probability of events
- Over attribute
- Use of simple linear and functional rules
- Associate causality with spatial and temporal continuity
- Assume big consequences have big causes
= systematic biases in interpretation
Organizations try to develop a collective understanding of history. These interpretations of
experience depend on the frames within which events are comprehended. They are translated
into and developed through story lines that will come to be shared.
Because storylines are developed through subjective frames, the lessons from history saved
into the organizational memory depend vary based on these frames.
Organizations will discard ineffective interpretative frames in the long run, but its difficult to
intelligently discriminate amount paradigms using history.
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