Re: Virtual Learning Organisations LO1495

Michael McMaster (Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk)
Fri, 2 Jun 1995 07:14:57 +0000

Replying to LO1467 --

I have been working in the North Sea Oil industry for the past 5
years. This has provided the opportunity to observe a transformation
of an industry with varying rates of individual company learning and
adaptation. I can recommend to you and approach to your study that
might be useful.

Take as your system the industry and consider it to be a complex
adaptive system, or a learning system, or an intelligent system in
its own right. Calling it a "virtual organisation" I think brings a
far more exotic implication than useful or necessary. What you have
is an economic unit which is itsefl complex operating in a
marketplace as well as being a marketplace.

In this approach, the changes of any one of the elements - including
governments and legislation, for instance - changes the whole system
and yet it remains an emerging or evolving system in its own right.

The elements of the system, in most important aspects, are
self-organising and they either learn or resist learning at different
rates - but change occurs anyway. The interesting point, for me, in
such an observation is that you have a fairly unique "case study"
happening in which you can observe many alternative approaches and
both their impact on the system and their success. (In some cases,
those that impact the system permanently will not survive the changes
that they have initiated.)

I recommend this approach if you are interested in the research as
well as intervening. You can intervene and have that be part of the
research. No action stops while the research is being conducted
_and_ you have multiple examples operating at the same time. I
particularly recommend this approach if you want the participants to
begin to see the impact of their action not only on the other players
but also the unexpected impact on their own future.

I particularly recommend this approach if you are interested in
adaption, evolution and emergence rather than the narrower aspect of
that called organisational learning.

--
Michael McMaster
Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk