发帖
雷达卡
Authors:
Fiol, C. Marlene1
Source:
Organization Science. Aug94, Vol. 5 Issue 3, p403-420. 18p. 2 Diagrams, 1 Chart, 1 Graph.
Document Type:
Article
Subject Terms:
*ORGANIZATIONAL learning
*ORGANIZATION
*FINANCIAL institutions
*KNOWLEDGE management
*EXECUTIVES
*INNOVATIONS in business
*DECISION making
*ORGANIZATIONAL change
CONSENSUS (Social sciences)
LINGUISTIC analysis (Linguistics)
NAICS/Industry Codes:
522291 Consumer Lending
Abstract:
Organizational learning, like individual learning, involves the development of new and diverse interpretations of events and situations. Unlike individual learning, however, collective learning also involves developing enough consensus around those diverse interpretations for organized action to result. Traditional measures of organizational consensus are unable to capture the multiplex nature of collective agreement that encompasses both unity and diversity. Traditional wisdom thus suggests that to achieve unity in groups, one must sacrifice diversity. This study breaks the notion of consensus into two component parts: consensus around interpretations embedded in the content and in the framing of communications. Communicated content consists of the labels people use to convey their "pictures" of reality, e.g., pictures of issues as threats or as opportunities. The framing of communications refers to the form people use to construct a picture, regardless of its content, e.g., rigid or flexible perceptions of an issue. People may hold very different pictures of reality and still agree on the way they frame them. It is thus possible for groups to simultaneously agree and disagree, an essential component of collective learning. Simultaneous agreement and disagreement is especially important in corporate innovative efforts. Successful corporate innovation requires that decision makers develop a collective understanding that incorporates the new and the different. This paper describes the changing pictures and frames communicated in a new-venture development process in a large financial institution over a two-year period. Several linguistic analyses show how the venture team members developed unified ways of framing their arguments, while at the same time maintaining diversity through differences in the content of team members' interpretations. The results reveal one way that organizations manage to combine the unity and diversity needed for collective learning. The ... [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
ISSN:
1047-7039
Accession Number:
4434742
Database:
Business Source Premier
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