This is in response to your question on 1/4 about developing a living,
participatory case study...
Peter and I attended the Systems Thinking in Action '94 conference in San
Francisco last November. I went to a session called "Learning About
Organizational Learning: Creating a Learning History" by George Roth,
Research Director, and Art Kleiner, Consulting Editor, Center for
Organizational Learning, MIT. George and Art are doing a learning history
for Ford's Lincoln Town Car project.
A few highlights from my notes:
>From their perspective, learning histories combine principles from
ethnography, action research, and oral history. A learning history includes
multiple stories, voices, and interpretations, rather than a single
descriptive account. As they say, it's a jointly told tale...
They contrast a "learning history" from a knowing history." A knowing
history is a set of answers, while at the end, a learning history leaves you
with a better set of questions.
Their process involves several phases. The information gathering phase
includes interviews (both at the moment and retrospective), perspectives,
notes, journal entries, transcripts, photos, films, and anything else that's
useful. Then after some reflection, that mass of stuff is sorted, refined,
tabulated, and turned into a series of documents, each of which might go to
a different audience and have different content. Those are then shared with
everyone concerned for their reactions.
The documents are generally created by a team that writes the learning
history so it's interesting, compelling reading.
Possible components of a learning history:
* curtain raiser
* "nut graf" (thematic center)
* principles learned
* notable results
* assumptions and meaning behind the results
* exposition (what happened, when, and how)
* rationale (why the events in the exposition?)
* plot
* jointly-told tale
* conclusion: message to the audience
* what we have learned
They're in the middle of the project with Ford.
For more information:
Art Kleiner is a professional writer and a consulting editor at the MIT
Organizational Learning Center. He served as a consulting editor for _The
Fifth Discipline_ and editorial director and co-author of _The Fifth
Discipline Fieldbook_. His email address is: art@well.sf.ca.us
George Roth coordinates research activities at the MIT Organizational
Learning Center, 30 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02139. (617) 253-1575
-->> Host's Note: George Roth email = groth@MIT.EDU
Both Art and George are participants on this learning-org list
-- Rick Karash, rkarash@world.std.com, host
Best wishes for your living case study!
Trudy Johnson-Lenz
Awakening Technology
695 Fifth Street
Lake Oswego, OR 97034
(503) 635-2615 (voice)
(503) 636-0106 (fax)
Email: p+t@awaken.com