Language Use on LO LO12608

Michael Lissack (lissack@lissack.com)
Wed, 19 Feb 1997 07:00:31 -0400

Replying to LO12570 --

Per Rick's Request the following is a brief excerpt from my paper on
Language USe which looked at the LO list as a major portion of its data.

Language use in general, and metaphors in particular, have the opportunity
to influence competitive positioning, behavior and strategy by an
organization and its members.

John Reed, Citicorp's chairman, while speaking at the Organization Science
1997 Winter Conference made the following observation, "the linkage
between research and practice is via people, not from reading journals."
To explore this idea further, the research question proposed was "Is there
something about the language practitioners use that is different from the
language used in academic papers and journals, and if so, what might it
be?" To operationalize the question, the focus was narrowed to active
discussants of the concept "the learning organization." The following data
was retrieved:

(1) Journal articles published during the first half of 1996 from six
journals [Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review,
Administrative Science Quarterly, Journal of Systems Management,
Organizational Dynamics and Organization Studies] with a full text
retrieval from the Dow-Jones News Retrieval system using the word search
"learning organization" -- 78 articles were retrieved, more than 500,000
words in total -- noted as J in the exhibits.
(2) Working papers from the MIT Organizational Learning Network (web
address http://learning.mit.edu) - full text retrieval resulted in more
than 100,000 words -- noted as M in the exhibits.
(3) Postings to the Learning Organization mailing list on the
Internet (web address http://www.world.std.com/~lo/) from September
through December, 1996 - 1970 messages -- noted as L in the exhibits.

Comparison among the Three Data Sets -- Discussion

An exhibit within the paper illustrates the set of congruence/difference
data among the three semantic groups examined. From this data came the
following observations:

Words with observed congruence:

Development, Government, Information, Language

Words with strong observed LO difference from the Journals:

LO less on Business and Social
LO more on Coaching, Leaders, Learning

Words with strong observed LO difference from the MIT Working Papers:

LO more on Coaching, Leaders
LO less on Changes, Company, Culture, Executive, Financial, Group,
Organizational, Performance, Process(s), Program, Rational

More than 55% of the words had strong observed difference between the
Journals and the MIT Working Papers.

Tentative conclusions:

(1)Practitioners as represented by the LO mail list participants
function in a different semantic space than that represented by either the
management science journals or the MIT working papers.

(2)The journals and the MIT working papers have even more drastic
differences in semantic space than the practitioners do with either group.

(3)The practitioners' semantic space aligns more closely to the
journal writers' space than it does to the MIT authors' space.

(4)The concepts of "leading", "coaching", and "learning" should be
more fully explored in an effort to better understand these differences.
The analysis revealed that the words "coaching" and "leading" had strong
association with each other and with the idea of change within the
semantic space of the learning organization mail list participants, yet
had no strong association in the academic literature. Thus, while one of
the LO members could write of coaching and leading as related to change:

"What is the 'subject matter' of the coaching/relationship? By which
I mean the need for us to understand the leaders role in whole system
change. What is involved for the leader personally in this sort of change?
What does he or she need to learn/do/change? What are their
feelings/problems/incentives in making the personal journey towards a new
place?"

the academic authors seem to see these words as weak metaphors to be
abused:

"The succession process must be built on "tough love" coaching and
feedback and the willingness to make the varsity cuts. The CEO must be
willing to get up close and personal with the succession candidates and
have them work in interdependent team settings where the most valuable
player gets defined as a team player."

Leading is an active verb done by a person on the LO list and a link
"leading to" something or somewhere in the academic literature.
Similarly,learning and change mean different things in these two worlds.

The overall conclusion is that John Reed's observation accurately reflects
a significant difference in the semantic space of practitioners and
academicauthors. The bridge Mr. Reed points out is "people" - who make the
translation from one semantic world to another. It not at all apparent
that the journal and working paper authors are writing about topics the
practitioners wish to discuss not that they use words which carry the same
meaning asperceived by practitioners.

The full paper is at http://www.lissack.com/writings/lexp.htm

-- 
Michael Lissack 150 West 56th St #4904 NY NY 10019
lissack@lissack.com http://lissack.com
212-245-7055 (work)   212-956-3464 (fax)
 

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>