05 May, 2010

Ghazali , K. Communication as a tool in developing organisational culture

Paper:        Literature Review
Abstract:    Communication as a tool in organisational learning has generated interest in academic scholars and Human Resource Development (HRD) practitioners.  Research has highlighted the various perspectives that constitute working models and directions for further development.  Schon believed that organisational learning developed from a mutually beneficial relationship between the organisation and the individual.  Critical reflection, experience and intuition are valuable assets in generating knowledge through questioning characteristics of actions and listing the effects on the group.  More effective processes can be implemented as a result of collaborative learning.  Organisation purpose is reflected in clear goals and practices.  Organisational culture expresses the identity, value and beliefs systems that drive the organisation to achieve industry market share.  When individuals are unable to sustain organisational culture, primary factors to maintaining professional commitment and efficacy are negatively affected.  Pratt indicates that there may not be a “one-size fits all” mentality, but models that use Wenger’s communities of practice (COP) can broaden perspectives through positive transformation. 


Introduction
The current era (Thite, 2001) of knowledge gathering is the fastest we’ve experienced.  Technology connects the world and drives evolution in unanticipated global directions as industry moves to define best practice models to achieve the winning edge.  The continuous process of research underscores the need in organisations to make full use of generated knowledge as a learning platform for employees.  Garavan and McCarthy (2003) indicate that project teams benefit organisational learning when collaborative knowledge is shared.  The relationship between individual and organisation has an emphasis on social constructivism (Ryle and Cumming, 2007).  The focus is on the context of activity and researchers are challenged to understand the process of social interaction that shapes collective identity.  Individual learning is valueless to understanding learning in collectives.  A shared repertoire of knowledge and resources are tacit learning methods in collectives that can be used to enhance and negotiate sense-making within the organisation.  Embedded practice through daily activities expresses information and know-how that:
  1. regulates individual cooperation with the collective; and
  2. ensues in behavioural change that is reflected in performance outcomes.
Individuals depend on each other for acquisition, recall and generation of knowledge.  Although literature has not explained how it is created, sustained or changed we understand that the collective mind is located in interaction.  The behavioural process of goal-driven adaptive capacity and strategies facilitates collective learning.  The key to social construction of meaning making lies in participation and the development of a shared perspective.

Learning in organisations leads to a development of best practice models that are supported through embedded practices.  To implement systems, processes, policies and mechanisms that promote learning, aspects of open communication, communication and dialogue, team working, empowerment and participation within the organisation must be addressed.  By engaging in discussion and reflecting on experience individuals explore reasons for differences in judgment.  Interests, ideologies, agendas, epistemologies and methodologies characterise differences.  Different cultures express different perspectives of experience and being.  By focusing on the evolution of shared meaning and understanding the collective integrated context, individuals are connected through multiple links.

Mezirow’s theory of transformation cited in Anderson (2008) uses prior interpretation of experience to build a new and revised interpretation to guide future action.  He indicates there are five interactive contexts in learning that are significant to organisational learning:
  • the frame of reference or meaning perspective in which learning is embedded;
  • the conditions of communication;
  • the process/sequence in which learning occurs;
  • the self-image of the student; and
  • the situation encountered during the process.
The reflective transformation of beliefs, attitudes, opinions and emotional reactions are sustained in a mutually beneficial relationship.  Positive outcomes are reflected in performance of the individual and ultimately in organisational achievement.  Facilitated community learning allows for better responses to challenges from the external environment.


Environmental factors that sustain interactive learning systems
Pelz (2004) indicates effective learning is sustained through lifelong learning (Hilsen & Ennals, 2007; Ala-Mutka, Punie & Ferrari, 2009) to create new links to existing philosophies.  Technology creates innovation in skills and abilities (Bennet et al., 2008) that do not relate to critical or analytical production of digital tasks.  Higher order thinking (Anderson, 2008) is supported by asynchronous communication.  The process of higher-order thinking in organisations is facilitated by engaging individuals in negotiated sense-making through collaborative social networks (e.g. professional blogs).  Anderson suggests that it is instructional learning that enhances and supports workplace collaboration through contextual interaction.  Critical aspects of learning are gained through collaboration.

Garavan and McCarthy (2003) examine the characteristics, factors and processes of learning that occur at individual, team and organisational level through interactive learning systems.  Significant indicators of organisational level learning consider routine and the role of culture while individual level learning identifies cognitive and behavioural aspects of self.  Garavan and McCarthy state the objective of organisational learning is learning to enhance company action through processes of knowledge gathering and understanding.  Action, reflection and change through the creation of new knowledge and insight are effective in organisational learning.  Negligible learning occurs when there are gaps in individual level learning.  Strategic organisational learning enhances creativity towards inter-organisational innovation and incorporates two interpretations:
  1. learning from experience (sense making as a social process); and
  2. learning that is proactive (where specific knowledge gained in real time is applied to strategic initiatives.
Feedback (Kyndt, Dochy and Nijs, 2009) from action reflects the need to adapt or improve current practices.  Poor communications between teams, poor learning or failure to adapt indicate issues in hindering organisational learning.  Team learning provides the interface between the individual and the organisation that has effects at multiple levels.  A cognitive focus sees the organisation in a process of evolution, an entity that gains positive results through shared conceptualisation.  The collective cognition is a shared worldview.  The behavioural process reflects the goal oriented and adaptive capacity of the collective.  The desired outcome is behavioural change that positively affects the collectives’ performance index.


Sustainable outcomes
Although collective learning produces functional outcomes, literature is bringing in to focus some dysfunctional outcomes.  Consistency in individual and collective goals is not sustained.  Significant to this is the relationship to power.  Negative beliefs disable contribution and open communication.  Build up of stress and anxiety affect behavioural and cognitive outcomes.  Collective learning is seen as planned, structured and organised through embedded systems that guide future learning.  It can also be seen as unplanned, organic and iterative meaning that organisations can be hard to train.  A long-term and adaptive approach is required.

Organisational culture and structure influence the context of individual learning.  Integrated contexts connect individuals through multiple links to knowledge, information and viewpoints.  Experience motivates the learning of team members, and viable open communication depends on frequency, depth and quality of dialogue.  Strategic organisational learning focuses on collective learning that can be codified and enhances the organisations learning effectiveness.  Working and learning are interrelated and compatible.  Through collective learning, the organisation is better suited to adapt to external environments.  Difficulties lie in managing the emerging nature of the collective.

HRD face certain challenges in accepting their role and function within the organisation while still creating the framework that facilitates the individuals motivation and willingness to commit.  The processes of learning are considered to be dynamic and highlight the importance of social networking.


The purpose of self-verification
Jorgensen and Keller (2008) point out HRD is a dynamic and heterogeneous discipline where outcomes are characterised by differences.  HRD practitioners construct the framework of HRD through their language.  Jorgensen and Keller suggest that particular attention to working communities of practice within HRD will greatly enhance the learning community.  What is needed to understand the practice of practice is the language that identifies tacit and informal learning.  Instead of looking at HRD activities, focus should be moved to the interplay of activities and their communities or contexts.  Emphasis is given to learning styles and histories based on real situations.  This provides the opportunity for reflection and meaning-making.

Jorgensen and Keller consider organisational learning from a perspective of identity formation.  In negotiating meaning-making, individuals negotiate identity.  Tension exists as it is recognised that from an individual level HRD works towards fulfilling personal potential.  From an organisational level HRD assumes the individual is a resource.  The contradiction faced in organisational learning is due to learning being about creating differences and organising about creating standards.  Identity works simultaneously with the individual and the collective, where the collective is seen as the identity capital – the concept that individuals identify with.  Learning through participation allows the individual to traverse from the periphery to becoming a community member.  The community is created by mutual rules of engagement and language.  Within the community, each individual contributes towards the social in mutually beneficial ways that can only be accomplished through the practices of a culturally specific framework.


Progression towards the objective
Situated learning is indicated to be identity building.  The use of symbols, artifacts and reification in a culturally given context becomes internalised and better developed through communities of practice.  Identity formation becomes a mutually consensual, integrated process of participation.  Narration adds coherence to view activities as part of a larger frame of reference.  Johansson and Heide (2008) have identified an absence of literature in HRD from the perspective of communication and its’ relationship to organisational change.  When communication is used as a tool, participating individuals feel more included, committed and in control.

Alignment occurs when individuals coordinate themselves with the culture and tradition of a community.  Communities of practice positively affect the interactions between HRD practice and modes of participation.  The informal relationship between individual and organisation is structured in Foucauldian-style power.  There is no reason or intention to remove power, as it is not concentrated in one place.  It is found embedded within a network of relationships.  Foucault’s concept of power is structured toward interplay of individuals distributed around the network whose significant characteristic is difference.  We are reminded that power is energy.  How the energy is distributed depends on how it is externalised.  The hierarchy in organisations forms a pyramid where it is directed from the top down.  Managerial discourse in literature links strategy to HRD with emphasis on company perspectives.  Power play is insignificant and invisible during conceptualisation of organisational goals and objectives.

Communities of practice have a more subtle approach where emphasis is on the individual, their backgrounds and their learning trajectories.  The possibilities in attaching communities of practice to HRD contribute to intelligent working systems.  Clashes in discourse at structural and communicative levels explain the lack of common ground on which to base dialogue.  Change that occurs at communicative levels may not similarly occur at stakeholder level.   Studies on occupational identity found overt consent to be a form of resistance.  Talking about a process while activating the opposite constitutes cooperation with management and resisting legitimate authority or shared world view.


Owing to rapid change, the concept of educating is no longer left to formal educational institutions.  Organisations have the competitive advantage through workplace learning.  Members are trained on the job which is considerably cheaper than opting for formal training.  It is said that on the job training provides specific skills not fully appreciated in formal training.  Kyndt, Dochy and Nijs (2009) describe informal learning as implicit yet unplanned with unpredictable results.  Practical experience creates an active learning environment.  In non-formal learning the individual learns through self-motivation or as a by-product of HRD activities.  Organisations facilitate learning through culture, policy and procedure.  It is the reciprocal interplay between organisation and individual that determines learning outcomes.  Emphasis is placed on conditions that make workplace learning possible.

Task-based learning structure
Gharavi, Love and Cheng (2004) propose an ecological framework as a perspective to view organisational adaptation.  Variety in organisation ensures effective change can help survival.  Natural selection is based on the most adaptable and occurs during scarcity of resource.  The environment chooses organisations that best represent the niche.  The adaptation process to include structures and forms that principally affect the population when organisations replace the old or less adapted.  Their study looks at the way the stock broking industry was revolutionised by its’ adoption of ICT.  A typical cluster structure has the stockbroker as an intermediary between the market and the organisation.  Stockbrokers evolved into gate keepers.  Individual knowledge in capacity and industry best serve market, individual and organisation.  This was driven by conscious experimentation of industry directing evolution.  Organisational evolution is not always straightforward.  Factors examined include socio-cultural, influence, values, power and coalitions.  As organisations are built on values, norms, traditions and other traits of individual members, blueprints on form in policy and procedure are established as best practice.

Corporate communications stem from the need to influence and educate the service team (e.g. stakeholder, employee, customer) to organisational values.  Success is measured through reputation and respectability.  Dhir (2006) observes the attention researchers have focused on economic effects of reputation.  Persuasive language is critical in successful influencing.  Critics have observed that while literature on organisational communication engages discursive and rhetorical analysis, there is not much written form the perspective of public relations.  Literature suggests the lack of interest is the failure in that field to adapt to the environment.  Organisations unable to effectively sustain communication internally and respond to the environment in an era of knowledge economy risk damage to their image and a cycle of decline.  Some rhetoric explores aggressive forms of militaristic style communication to remain competitive.  Standardised communication enhances efficiency, but this dehumanised approach distances individual members.  Much has been done to improve communications theoretically and technologically, but the potential to incur irresponsible corporate social behaviour suggests the need for alternative approaches.

Effective leadership
While an organisations’ main role is to function competitively in industry, protocols and understandings towards ethical practice cannot be breached (e.g. taxes, safety standards).  Tasks are allotted time according to a returns based priority.  Tasks that lack quick returns appear to reflect badly on corporate leadership.  Pace of activity may reflect consumer demand or the need to remain competitive.  Expediency and efficiency are typical and universal measures of effectiveness and success.  But it creates a bottleneck in gathering new information and knowledge, in raising learning levels and in the application of wisdom.  Human fallibility is overcome through dehumanisation processes.  Dehumanisation leads to aggressive behaviour.  Major barriers to change lie in commitment and communication levels in management.

Ferili, Basile, Di Mauro and Esposito believe that language lacks accurate description that can effectively represent the target concept in learning.  The choice of representation has a significant impact on performance.  Low level representation provides information to carry out tasks, but is only remotely related to the target concept.  General abstraction is used as a multi-strategy model introduced before the learning process begins.  When learning takes place at multiple levels, it is said to be effective which can then be compared to the language bias shift, a perspective useful in integration.


Constructive environment
Baxter, Connolly and Stansfield (2009) agree that social reality is a construct but do not agree that organisational learning is influenced and developed by social environment.  Individual and organisations learn through mutual didactic support.  Concepts and ideologies range according to interpretation and perspective on raised view points.  Language is seen as a key aspect of communication and interaction.  Communities of practice is seen to facilitate and define social practice.  The most prominent social aspect is embedded on creation as organisations are established for a particular purpose.  Values are instilled based on their foundation.  The rules and regulations consist of procedures for interaction.  This infrastructure gives the organisation the impetus to learn.  Individual and social groups support evolution.  As structural changes occur, the organisation evolves to adapt and modify behaviour, groups evolve and develop cognitively.  A mutual relationship of learning occurs.


Lifelong learning
Assimilation of new knowledge and accommodation of existing knowledge gives structure to new situations.  Learning is an ongoing cycle of a sequence of phases where concrete experiences generate an opportunity for observation and reflection.  Traditional learning theories were developed pre-ICT and consequently do not take account of a network as the basis for learning processes.  This age of information requires individuals to update knowledge through building, maintaining and using connections (Ala-Mutka, Punie and Ferrari, 2009; Brousseau, Driver Eneroth and Larsson, 1996).  Ala-Mutka, Punie and Ferrari use Communities of Inquiry (COI) as a framework to develop online collaborative learning processes.  Reflective discussions are required when developing approaches to real inquiries.

While the individual is not motivated to join a community from a desire to learn, transformation occurs from meaning-making processes.  Connection to others provides strong emotional and cognitive support that increases effectiveness.  Studies indicate novices with low prior knowledge improve when given structure.  Moderated discussion facilitates knowledge construction.  Knowledge that supports identity and practices of the community are more likely to be adopted than knowledge that challenges.  Methods of assessment should include understanding competencies.

Conclusion
Organisational learning and organisational commitment are co-dependent.  Psychological and emotional attachments depend on the strength of employee identification with the goals and values of the organisation (Fornes, Rocco and Wollard, 2008).  Work performance and the internalisation of organisational values affect the self-esteem and self-image of the individual.  Team commitment is derived from individual identification and sense of cohesiveness.  It is enhanced through social involvement and ties between individual and organisation.  Career commitment depends on how deeply motivation, attitude, affect, belief and behavioural intention are embedded in individual identity.  Wengers’ conceptualisation of communities of practice integrates project-initiated knowledge to add to collective learning.  Mentoring and coaching are examples of induction and social networking that facilitates collaborative learning.  It is suggested that HRD create infrastructures, systems and resources to serve collective learning.


References
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