In my view, organizational learning often gets outflanked.
Roxanne said
> But my experience has shown that the great majority of layoffs and
downsizings are for the sole purpose of organizational survival and to make
more money for executives and stockholders.
Is it even *organizational* survival or purely about "winning" by a small
number of players? For example, isn't there a similar set of assumptions
at play common to reengineering/downsizing as with mergers and
aquisitions? Isn't it as simple as "My stability, continuity, benefit,
profit (etc) is more important than yours (theirs) ? (and who are you
anyway?) I can do what I want, I'm the power player here. Watch me. See?
Yea, we've *got* x manufacturing plants, x million in inventory, x
employees, etc. Tomorrow, I'll change it if it pleases me. You buy, you
sell, you throw away - that's business!". Ditto for lack of concern for
impact on the biological or cultural environments - they also are in the
category of "other" and don't show up on the radar screen either as worthy
of attention.
A related thought - is not the fundamental basis of a Corporation the
formal, legally sanctioned, avoidance of personal liability? Seems to me
this is a ground floor disconnect and as a disallowal of
directors/managers being personally tied to consequences, really sets the
stage for everything built upon it to contain this subject-object split,
NON-sytemic way of seeing. Seems that, among other things, incorporation
means a liscence to put *others* (employees and other non-incorporated
people) at risk.
So *who* is the organization that "learns"?
Charles Parry
INTERNET:74150.236@compuserve.com
Specialized Resources International
-- Charles Parry <74150.236@compuserve.com>Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>