Daphne Donaldson wrote:
>I would like to raise a specific question, and would appreciate your
>thoughts and comments. I have become interested in the role of Intranets
>in organizational learning. Although Intranets are often described as a
>system which will reduce paper/printing costs and ensure up-to-date
>information for employees, I wonder if organizations are using this tool
>in innovative ways to enhance organizational learning? It ties in with a
>comment made by Senge in "The Fifth Discipline" with respect to the
>principle of the system boundary (page 66).
--snip--
>Can an Intranet be a useful mechanism for encouraging interactions and
>fostering organizational learning (i.e. breaking down some boundaries)?
>How would this be different from using email and a corporate Web Site
>(i.e. on the Internet)?
This note refers to your query about Intranets and Organizational
Learning. The fundamental question is if the use of 'enabling' technology
in fact 'enables' organizational learning! Various articles on OL and
intranets have been published in several practitioner publications (see
for instance the last years issues of CIO on knowledge management; some
recent cover stories in Information Week, Business Week, etc. You can find
a selection of such stories at the following URL:
http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/EmergOrg.htm#Intranet )
It is being realized that most companies that have introduced similar
group interaction enabling technologies have not been necessarily
successful in 'enabling' group interactions. The more fundamental problems
relate to those of the extant cultural issues: information sharing,
appreciation of diverse perspectives, a healthy view of questioning
deep-roted assumptions, etc.
Even in case of intranets, industry case studies show at least two
distinct models: one in which the companies are encouraging employees to
explore new models of information creation and sharing; other in which
companies are trying to straitjacket ('standardize') these processes thus
resulting in premature convergence of the learning processes.
As noted elsewhere, the 'democratic' culture that has unleashed creativity
in the unbounded domain of the Internet may not necessarily exhibit
similar results when straitjacketed within organizational command and
control structures.
References:
CIO issues of 1995, especially those of July and Nov. '95
Cortese, A. "Here Comes the Intranet," Business Week,
February 26, 1996, pp. 76-84.
Thyfault, M.E. "The Intranet Rolls In," InformationWeek, 564,
Jan. 29, 1996, pp. 15, 76-78.
More recent stories on Intranets at:
http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/EmergOrg.htm#Intranet
Stories on Role of Technology in Organizational Learning at:
http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/OrgLrng.htm
particularly the recent stories by Manville and Foote.
Related research on technology and organizational learning:
Gill, T.G. "High-Tech Hidebound: Case Studies of Information Technologies
that Inhibited Organizational Learning," Accounting, Management and
Information Technologies, 5(1), 1995, pp. 41-60.
Orlikowski, W. J. "Integrated Information Environment or
Matrix of Control?: The Contradictory Implications of Information
Technology," Accounting, Management and Information Technology,
1(1), 1991, pp. 9-42.
-- Yogesh
-- Yogesh Malhotra E-Mail: malhotra@vms.cis.pitt.edu Ph.D. Program, Editor/Publisher, A Business Researcher's Interests University of Pittsburgh http://www.pitt.edu/~malhotra/interest.htmlLearning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>