The Continuity of Action and Thinking in Learning

In recent years, there have been many attempts at defining learning as a social phenomenon as opposed to an individual and primarily psychological matter. The move towards understanding learning as social processes has also altered the concept of knowledge as a well-defined element stored in books, brains, CD-Roms, disks, videos or on the Internet. Instead, knowledge has been perceived as a social and context related construction. The roots of the social angle within theories on learning and knowledge are much older than the current literature suggests. This paper illustrates how these theories can be traced back to pragmatism as a philosophy and foundation for an educational approach introduced by the American, John Dewey, more than one hundred years ago. The paper also suggests that Dewey avoids some pitfalls that have come with the new theories, particularly the strong division between individual vs. social and school vs. everyday life learning

The Continuity of Action and Thinking in Learning

In recent years, there have been many attempts at defining learning as a social phenomenon as opposed to an individual and primarily psychological matter. The move towards understanding learning as social processes has also altered the concept of knowledge as a well-defined element stored in books, brains, CD-Roms, disks, videos or on the Internet. Instead, knowledge has been perceived as a social and context related construction. The roots of the social angle within theories on learning and knowledge are much older than the current literature suggests. This paper illustrates how these theories can be traced back to pragmatism as a philosophy and foundation for an educational approach introduced by the American, John Dewey, more than one hundred years ago. The paper also suggests that Dewey avoids some pitfalls that have come with the new theories, particularly the strong division between individual vs. social and school vs. everyday life learning.</p

Pragmatism : a lived and living philosophy. What can it offer to contemporary organization theory?

In the past, critics have dismissed American Pragmatism as intellectually naïve and philosophically passé, but in this chapter we argue that it still has much to offer the field of organization studies. Pragmatism is especially relevant to those organizational scholars who are concerned with understanding the dynamic processes and practices of organizational life. The chapter lays out the historical development of Pragmatism, recognizing the originating contributions of Peirce, James, Dewey and Mead. Although each of these writers developed unique philosophical positions, their ideas are all permeated by four key themes: experience, inquiry, habit and transaction. The interplay between these themes informs a temporal view of social practice in which selves and situations are continuously constructed and re-constructed through experimental and reflexive processes of social engagement. We then use organizational learning theory as an example to illustrate the relevance of these four themes, contrasting the anti-dualistic stance of Pragmatism with the work of Argyris and Schön. Finally we turn to consider Weick’s organizing and sensemaking, suggesting that Pragmatism offers three potential foci for further development of these theories, namely: continuity of past and future in the present; the transactional nature of social agency; and reflexivity in social practices. Similarly we see potential for Pragmatism to productively inform the theorizing of other organizational practices such as identity work, strategy work, emotion work and idea work

Organizations as arenas of social worlds; towards an alternative perspective on organizational learning?

Abstract This paper introduces Social Worlds Theory as an alternative perspective on organizational learning. Social Worlds Theory has close resemblance with the practice perspective on organizational learning but contributes to this tradition by focussing on tensions and conflicts as well as processes of segmentation and intersection as a result of different commitments of social worlds to organizational activities. The paper starts with a discussion on the history of organizational learning and the latest practice-turn in particular the communities of practice perspective on learning. This will be followed by a critique on the communities of practice perspective, in particular the absence of conflict and agency. We will illustrate the potentials of using this perspective on organizational learning by means of two case studies on learning within and between two communities stemming from different social worlds. We close our paper with a discussion whether Social Worlds Theory perspective offers an alternative framework to study collective practice-based learning processes while at the same time looking at agency and conflict

In praise of holistic scholarship: A collective essay in memory of Mark Easterby-Smith

This collective essay was born out of a desire to honor and remember Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, a founder of the Management Learning community. To do this, we invited community members to share their experiences of working with Mark. The resulting narratives remember Mark as a co-author, co-researcher, project manager, conference organizer, research leader, PhD supervisor, and much more. The memories cover many different aspects of Mark’s academic spectrum: from evaluation to research methods to cross-cultural management, to dynamic capabilities, naming but a few. This space for remembrance however developed into a space of reflection and conceptualization. Inspired by the range and extent of Mark’s interests, skills, experiences, and personal qualities, this essay became conceptual as well as personal as we turned the spotlight on academic careers and consider alternative paths for Management Learning scholarship today. Using the collective representations of Mark’s career as a starting point, we develop, the concept of holistic scholarship, which embraces certain attitudes and orientations in navigating the dialectical spaces and transcending tensions in academic life. We reflect on how such holistic scholarship can be practised in our contemporary and challenging times and what inspiration and lessons we can draw from Mark’s legacy

On the Notion of Organizational Learning

In my paper I wish to present two perspectives on the notion of Organizational Learning. The first one I call a Design perspective and the other a Participation perspective on organizational learning. The two perspectives differ, I argue, with respect to the notion of learning (purpose, content and process of learning), the individual or individuality, and the organization (sociality) as well as the relation between the individual and the organization. The first perspective is represented in literature dealing with the concept of the Learning Organization whereas the second perspective is dispersed in literature that toils with the understanding of learning as more than individual cognition