Stephen Billing’s Blog

I posted earlier about thinking being a silent conversation one has with oneself, and this is an inherently social way of viewing the process of thinking. It is inherently social because it is viewing thinking as a process of silent interaction.

There is another, less obvious way in which this view of thinking is radically social. It is in the make up of the participants in the silent conversation that consitutes thinking.

Who is talking to whom in this silent conversation I am having with myself? Who is doing the talking, and who are they talking to? Please bear with me and see if I can answer this question, drawing on George Herbert Mead and Ralph Stacey.

The answer is that different aspects of the self are talking to each other. "I" am talking to "me." The aspect doing the talking is "I" as the subject, doer or initiator of action.

The aspect being spoken to is "me" as the object, the recipient of the action.

The "I" as the subject doing the talking is the individual in the present moment responding to the "me."

Mead pointed out that as humans we have the capacity to take on the attitude of the other person. In other words, you can perform an imaginative feat in which you experience what it would be like to be in the other person’s place. Mead said that it is because we can imagine ourselves in the other person’s shoes that we have human consciousness.

You imagine yourself in the other person’s shoes based on your experience of many social interactions over time – the results you received from these interactions and what they meant to you. These imaginings are therefore socially based because of the social experience you have had. For example, I moved around a lot when I was growing up and so would often have to leave my friends behind and make new ones. If you were brought up by different parents or in a different culture you would have different experiences and so your view of what the other person would be making of you would be different.

Humans also have a tendency to generalise.

The "me" taking part in the silent conversation of thinking is a generalisation that represents your generalised view of what society thinks of you. Society in this case is that group of people whom you identify with.

In a process that utilises both our human tendency to generalise and also our capacity to take on the attitude of the other, we imagine what others think of us. Our imagining of what others think of us is the "me" that is participating in our silent conversation.

This conversation between "I" and "me" is never resolved. It is a conversation in which "I" am constantly responding, in the present moment, to "me." In other words I am constantly responding to the generalised view that I think others have of me.

There, simple eh?

My previous post about whether you can learn by reading prompted comments from Andre Ling and Chris Rodgers. My thanks to you both.

Earlier I said that learning is an activity of interdependent people. I wrote in my previous post that reading is a social activity and therefore people can learn by reading.

I suggested that one of the ways in which reading is a social activity is that the reader is interacting with the author. Andre Ling in his comment pointed out that in fact the interaction is between the reader and the text, not between the reader and the author. I stand corrected and agree with this, my previous post was not correct in this respect.

I should have said that one way in which reading is a social activity is that there is an interaction between the reader and the text (not the author).

Chris Rodgers pointed out that the written text can be viewed as a gesture from the author, and that the responses of the reader will determine what meaning is made as a result of this interaction.  To me, this builds on the notion that there is an interaction between the reader and the text. The text is written by the author, who cannot know how the reader will respond to what is written. As Chris points out, this is similar to the CEO doing a roadshow, giving a speech.

The CEO cannot know how the themes of the speech will be taken up in the organisation. Will the CEO’s sentiments be mocked, or will they constitute a point of view that the employees relate to differently, stimulating them to respond differently and helping to change the patterns of interaction taking place in the organisation and hence changing the organisation itself?

To ask whether organisations can learn is to ponder on the very nature of organisations themselves.

The previous post identified the difference between organisational learning – people learning in an organisational context, and learning organisations – where the organisation itself is seen as being able to learn.

Let’s take the latter argument that organisations can learn. If organisations can learn, then this is saying that an organisation is a living organism that has a mind that can think and learn from its experience. If an organisation is to be thought of as a living organism, then you would have to be able to point to its body and its consciousness.  

While one might argue that the top managers of the organisation do the thinking (in the form of strategy) for the organisation it is surely not accurate to say that an organisation is living in the sense that it has consciousness and can think for itself.

After all, an organisation has no physical body (an organisation is only a convenient legal construction) and no mind of its own. The decisions of the organisation are made through interaction between people, such as debate amongst the senior managers.

So, to me, saying that an organisation can learn, i.e. "Let’s create a learning organisation," amounts not only to saying that an organisation is a thing in itself, but to anthropomorphise the organisation – to give it the characteristics of a human being.

But an organisation is neither an inanimate thing, nor is it a physical living being with consciousness, choice and will.

The alternative of thinking that only individuals can learn within organisations is not very appealing either. It implies that individuals make independent autonomous decisions in isolation of others and ignores the impact of social influence and processes.

Hmmm, there must be an alternative.

I am grateful to Ralph Stacey for the stimulus of these ideas in his article "Learning as an Activity of Interdependent People" (subscription required) 

Much of my work recently has been helping people to learn to do things that will be helpful in their jobs. For example, I have been teaching managers such topics (I hesitate to use the word skills!) such as delegation, planning, and problem solving. I am also helping a group of staff to learn effective procedures and how better to handle customers. Additionally I am part of the off-campus faculty team for NZ’s Open Polytechnic, so am currently involved in organisational learning (or learning organisations) from a number of perspectives.

This has led me to think about learning in organisations and a distinction made by Easterby-Smith and Araujo between organisational learning and learning organisations. I am grateful to professor Ralph Stacey for making me aware of this.

The organisational learning school of thought concentrates on individual and collective learning within organisations. It concentrates on understanding the nature and processes of learning, according to Easterby-Smith and Araujo. The learning organisation school on the other hand is thinking about the organisation as a whole and how it can learn so that in the future it is better placed to anticipate and respond to its changing environment than it was previously.

So, this raises the question then, is it possible for organisations to learn? Or is it only possible for individuals to learn within organisations? 

What do you think?