Changing and Learning

Traditional teaching and learning can be a very weak experience compared to the immediate here-and-now feedback that occurs when groups diagnose their own process and members give each other face-to-face feedback (Schein 2006a). In this regard, learning is an inevitable consequence of daily work, processes of feedback and interaction within organisations (Orr 1990). Although not all organisational change is the consequence of learning, individual and collective learning can be a substantial driver of organisational change. Furthermore, organisational learning can be affected by the way members are invited to participate actively in the process of changing (Tsang 1997) what managers say and do (Vera and Crossan 2004). However, most often learning is a by-product of decisions made and actions that are taken for other purposes (Lines et al. 2011). For example, participative collective leadership as introduced in the last Chapter, can be introduced in order to boost employee morale, but simultaneously it can affect what is learnt, as well as the rate at which learning occurs (Lines 2005). What these remarks show us in general is that the concepts of learning and change are interrelated: where it says ‘changing’ it could also say ‘learning’ and vice versa.