dy of the commons, or overusing a limited resource; and growth and underinvestment.
Chartering Strategic Dilemmas: management teams unravel when confronted with core dilemmas. Charles Hampden-Turner details a process to cope with common dilemmas.Eliciting the dilemmas, or identifying opposed values from most obvious; mapping, or locating opposing values as two axes as a visual representation; processing, or getting rid of nouns for positive conceptualization; framing/ contextualizing, or thinking in terms of each side of the structure; sequencing, or breaking hold of static thinking; waving/cycling, or knowing cycles were both values will worsen over a period; and synergizing, the ultimate goal of improving along all axes.
“Left-Hand Column”: Surfacing Mental Models: An exercise developed by Chris Argyris illustrating how people move from data to generalization without testing the validity of these generalizations.
|Developing Leaders and Learning Organizations (303)
||Marshall Sashkin and N. Warner Burke emphasize the importance of developing leaders who can also develop organizations. Management will focus on roles, skills, and tools for leadership in learning organizations.|
Additional Information to Chew on....
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|Organizational Learning vs The Learning Organization
Our class activity of identifying the similarities and differences between organizational learning and the learning organization helped differentiate the two. At first glance, Adrianna Kezar's description of the learning organization places it out of reach as she refers to it as a "fad", "a contested area", and "an idealized model." After writing down the differences, Kezar's version of the learning organization is clearer. She holds the title to a very high standard and set of activiites; well beyond those seen in organizational learning. After reading Morgan as well, however, we see a different set of standards for the learning organization. Morgan eludes to double-loop learning as moving toward "learning to learn," while Kezar views it as just another method employed in organizational learning.
|From theorist to theorist, there appears to be overlap in the principles and definitions for organizational learning and the learning organization. It's no wonder the terms conjur up confusing gray areas. Could it be that the learning organizaion is still making its transition from an "idea" to a "reality?" How well defined were such concepts as space exploration or the internet, until we could see it and use it?|
|Katz and Kahn Grafitti Activity
It is difficult to view any organization, let alone an active college setting, as an “open system.” The terminology used by Katz and Kahn to describe an organization is lifeless and foreign when compared with more recent metaphorical images. The nine characteristics outlined in the article have a scientific nature and might gladly have been ignored had it not been for this exercise in class. The informal setting of the activity allowed us to write examples and descriptions at our own pace, as we became comfortable with each characteristic. Intermittent small group discussions moved many of us toward a better understanding of such characteristics as “negative entropy” and “coding process.” The examples we wrote for each characteristic were varied depending on the writer’s perspective. So, this activity served two purposes in the end. It provided realism and clarification to Katz and Kahn’s organization as a system. It also emphasized the reality that members of any group have varied perspectives in viewing an organization and all its parts. Even one of the simpler characteristics, "output," elicited a wide variety of responses.
|Example: The Output|
What product(s) are exported into the environment from an institution of higher education?
Loyalty to institution
Great art and waste are both output
Creation of new ideas/problems
|The proposed curriculum change is under a barrage of attacks, particularly from The Society of The College, an independent voice for alumni, students, faculty and friends 