Organisational learning in organisational change

Abstract

The paper is an analysis of an organisational change process in an enterprise in which change is viewed as an organisational learning opportunity. The case is an enterprise from within the medico industry. We ask whether organisations become either inert by too much consensus and ’bottom-up’ management or create insecurity by pure ’top-down’ initiated organisational changes. Or is there a way in which it is possible to be both innovative and seeking consensus? Inspired by pragmatist philosophical thinking we propose that a focus upon organisational learning founded upon an interpretation of learning as inquiry into concrete tensional tales and wrestling voices is a possible way to move forward. The contribution for research is to show that opportunities for learning occur as clashes between different stories about the content, purpose, management and organising of the enterprise in both time and space. We show that organisational learning opportunities occur in ‘tensional tales’ about a before, now and after, and as concurrent ‘wrestling voices’ in an enterprise. The contribution for practice is to indicate the contours of a model to think with if management and employees want to work with organisational learning in organisational change.