Cognitive mapping the topic of organizational learning

Cognitive mapping the topic of organizational learning

Joseph Kim-keung Ho

Independent Trainer

Hong Kong, China

Abstract: The topic of organizational learning in the subject of Business Management is complex. By making use of the cognitive mapping technique to conduct a brief literature review on the organizational learning topic, the writer renders a systemic image on the topic of organizational learning. The result of the study, in the form of a cognitive map on organizational learning, should be useful to those who are interested in the topics of cognitive mapping, literature review and organizational learning.

Key words: Organizational learning, cognitive mapping, literature review

Introduction

As a topic in Business Management, organizational learning is complex. It is thus useful to employ some learning tool to conduct its study, notably for literature review purpose. For a teacher in research methods, systems thinking and management, the writer is specifically interested in finding out how the cognitive mapping technique can be employed to go through a literature review on  Organizational learning. This literature review exercise is taken up and reported in this article.

On the cognitive mapping exercise for literature review

Literature review is an important intellectual learning exercise, and not just for doing final year dissertation projects for tertiary education students. On these two topics of intellectual learning and literature review, the writer has compiled some e-learning resources. They are the Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page and the Literature on literature review Facebook page. Conducting literature review with the cognitive mapping technique is not novel in the cognitive mapping literature, see Eden and Simpson (1989), Eden, Jones and Sims (1983), Open University (n.d) and the Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page. In this article, the specific steps involved in the cognitive mapping exercise are as follows:

Step 1: gather some main points from a number of academic journal articles on Organizational learning. This result in the production of a table (Table 1) with the main points and associated references.

Step 2: consolidate  the main points from Table 1 to come up with a table listing the cognitive map variables (re: Table 2).

Step 3: link up the cognitive  map variables in a plausible way to produce a cognitive map (re: Figure 1) on the topic under review.

The next section applies these three steps to produce a cognitive map on organizational learning.

Descriptions of cognitive map variables on the organizational learning topic

From the reading of some academic articles on Organizational learning, a number of main points (e.g., viewpoints, concepts and empirical findings) were gathered by the  writer. They are shown in Table 1 with explicit referencing on the points.

Table 1: Main points from the organizational learning literature and referencing

Main points from the organizational learning literature	Referencing
Point 1: "The core idea behind 'learning organization' is that organizations of all kind will not survive, let alone thrive, if they do not acquire an ability to adapt continuously to an increasingly unpredictable future".	Sun, H.C. 2003. "Conceptual clarifications for 'organizational learning', 'learning organization' and 'a learning organization' Human Resource Development International 6(2), Routledge: 153-166.
Point 2: "Learning is active and constructive. Learners are not passive recipients of information. They are sense makers who actively construct their knowledge and skills through interaction with their environment and through reorganization of their own mental structures.... Learning is goal-oriented. Effectively and meaningful learning is facilitated by an explicit awareness of orientation toward a goal. Learning is cumulative, which stresses the important  impact of learner's formal and informal knowledge. Learning is self-regulated".	Sun, H.C. 2003. "Conceptual clarifications for 'organizational learning', 'learning organization' and 'a learning organization' Human Resource Development International 6(2), Routledge: 153-166.
Point 3: "...'a learning organization' is a 'living' representation of the image of 'learning organization'. If something is a representative of something, it does not need to contain all the characteristics of it, but, rather, it possesses some major characteristics or features of it, or even what might be possible in our own organization".	Sun, H.C. 2003. "Conceptual clarifications for 'organizational learning', 'learning organization' and 'a learning organization' Human Resource Development International 6(2), Routledge: 153-166.
Point 4: "Systematic assessment of the strategic management literature suggests an interesting dilemma: Although there exists widespread acceptance of the notion of organizational learning and its importance to strategic performance, no theory or model of organizational learning is widely accepted".	Fiol, C.M. and M.A. Lyles. 1985. "Organizational Learning" Academy of Management Review 10(4): 803-813.
Point 5: "... Simon (1969) defined organizational learning as the growing insights and successful restructurings of organizational problems by individuals reflected in the structural elements and outcomes of the organization itself".	Fiol, C.M. and M.A. Lyles. 1985. "Organizational Learning" Academy of Management Review 10(4): 803-813.
Point 6: "....the ultimate criterion of organizational performance is long term survival and growth. To achieve this, organizations align with their environment to remain competitive and innovative.... Alignment implies that the firm must have the potential to learn, unlearn, or relearn based on past behaviors".	Fiol, C.M. and M.A. Lyles. 1985. "Organizational Learning" Academy of Management Review 10(4): 803-813.
Point 7: "A central concern of studies of adaptive process is the relations between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties.... Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation. Exploitation includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, execution..... maintaining an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation is a primary factor in system survival and prosperity".	March, J.G. 1991. "Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 71-89.
Point 8: "Organizations store knowledge in their procedures, norms, rules and forms. They accumulate such knowledge over time, learning from their members. At the same time, individuals in an organization are socialized to organizational beliefs. Such mutual learning has implications for understanding and managing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation in  organizations".	March, J.G. 1991. "Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 71-89.
Point 9: "An entity learns if, through its processing of information, the range of its potential behaviors is changed. This definition holds whether the entity is a human or other animal, a group, an organization, an industry, or a society. The information processing can involve acquiring, distributing or interpreting information".	Huber, G.P. 1991. "Organizational Learning: the contributing processes and the literatures" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 88-128.
Point 10: "... more organizational learning occurs when more of the organization's components obtain this knowledge and recognize it as potentially useful".	Huber, G.P. 1991. "Organizational Learning: the contributing processes and the literatures" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 88-128.
Point 11: "...more organizational learning occurs when more organizational units develop uniform comprehensions of the various interpretations. What is uniform here is not necessarily the perceived value or validity of the interpretation, as would be the case in "groupthink".... Rather, what is uniform are the understandings across units of the possibly different interpretations".	Huber, G.P. 1991. "Organizational Learning: the contributing processes and the literatures" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 88-128.
Point 12: "A learning organization is far more than the sum of a set of "learning people". Teams can learn, communities can learn, functions and projects can learn, just as individuals can learn.... Ultimately, the goal is for the organization to become "unconsciously competent". This means that new knowledge is embedded into standards, processes and procedures".	Knoco, N.M. 2008. "Exploring the concept of organizational learning" KM Review, Melcrum Publishing: 8-13.
Point 13: "A smart organization needs to know what it doesn't know before it can develop a plan to fill the knowledge gap".	Knoco, N.M. 2008. "Exploring the concept of organizational learning" KM Review, Melcrum Publishing: 8-13.
Point 14: "Although it is well recognised that knowledge management aims at accelerating organizational learning..., theoretical links between the two fields are few and both streams  of research seem  to avoid the terminology used by their counterpart".	Michailova, S. and E. Sidorova. 2011. "From group-based work to organisational learning: the role of communication forms and knowledge sharing" Knowledge Management Research & Practice 9, Operational Research Society: 73-83.
Point 15: "Theorising in the domain of organisational learning revolves around three fundamental questions: what is knowledge? Where is  it located? How is it generated? Two main perspectives on the nature of knowledge view it as either static or dynamic".	Michailova, S. and E. Sidorova. 2011. "From group-based work to organisational learning: the role of communication forms and knowledge sharing" Knowledge Management Research & Practice 9, Operational Research Society: 73-83.
Point 16: "The ontological perspective on where and how knowledge is embedded in organisations frames the view of organisational learning as either a collective or individual phenomenon".	Michailova, S. and E. Sidorova. 2011. "From group-based work to organisational learning: the role of communication forms and knowledge sharing" Knowledge Management Research & Practice 9, Operational Research Society: 73-83.
Point 17: "Formal knowledge, closer to our notion of deliberate learning, has one or more of the following  attributes: - prescribed learning framework, - an organized learning event or package, - a designated teacher or trainer, - qualification or credit awarded, and - the external specification of outcomes".	Halachmi, A. and A.M. Woron. 2013. "Spontaneous inter-organizational learning" International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 16(2) Summer: 135-164.
Point 18: "Tacit knowledge resulting from informal and unplanned learning can greatly impact an organization's ability to address new problems, while avoiding recycling old solutions and encouraging  the development of new answers to old problems. Yet, managers and organizations have little guidance in generating or mobilizing this valuable component of institutional knowledge management".	Halachmi, A. and A.M. Woron. 2013. "Spontaneous inter-organizational learning" International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 16(2) Summer: 135-164.
Point 19: "Huber (1991)  divided the literature of organizational learning into four categories: (1) knowledge acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information interpretation, and (4) organizational memory. Huber described the literature (up to 1991) on knowledge acquisition and information distribution as substantial, while that concerning information interpretation and organizational memory remained in need of study".	Halachmi, A. and A.M. Woron. 2013. "Spontaneous inter-organizational learning" International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 16(2) Summer: 135-164.
Point 20: "According to Senge (1990), organisational learning  is the fruit of the process whereby the organisation learns,  stimulating the image of people and work groups to improve intelligence, creativity and organisational capacity".	Haase, H., M. Franco and M. Félix. 2015. "Organisational learning and intrapreneurship: evidence of interrelated concepts" Leadership & Organization Development Journal 36(8), Emerald: 906-926.
Point 21: "Franco and Ferreira (2007) offered underlying dimensions of a learning organisation as an action imperative model to help individuals and teams within organisations to view the organisation through a learning perspective, in order to identify practices that advance the learning process and make arrangement to change the impediments that prevent or slow down organisational learning. The conceptual model proposed by these authors include four main dimensions characterising organisational learning: organisational culture, organisational structure, information/knowledge sharing and leadership".	Haase, H., M. Franco and M. Félix. 2015. "Organisational learning and intrapreneurship: evidence of interrelated concepts" Leadership & Organization Development Journal 36(8), Emerald: 906-926.
Point 22: "By activating learning processes, leaders can also influence and stimulate the intrapreneurial behaviour of their subordinates".	Haase, H., M. Franco and M. Félix. 2015. "Organisational learning and intrapreneurship: evidence of interrelated concepts" Leadership & Organization Development Journal 36(8), Emerald: 906-926.
Point 23: "Organisational learning seems to develop competencies that are valued by the clients,  hardly imitable, and, as a consequence, they contribute to the competitive advantage of the firm. However, the organisational learning process remains a "black box" to all researhers... It is difficult to identify fits and consequent misfits between the organisation learning and the organisational design".	Curado, C. 2006. "Organisational learning and organisational design" The Learning Organization 13(1), Emerald: 25-48.
Point 24: "March (1991) presents us in his paper the concept of mutual learning, considering that both, the individual and the organisation learn: the organisational knowledge is leveraged through  the individuals, in different ways, as instruction, doctrine, or exemplification. Simultaneously, according to March, the organisational code adapts itself to the beliefs of the employees. This way the mutual learning produces results on the individual and organisational levels".	Curado, C. 2006. "Organisational learning and organisational design" The Learning Organization 13(1), Emerald: 25-48.

With a set of main points collected, the writer produces a set of cognitive map variables. These variables are informed by the set of main points from Table 1. These variables are presented in Table 2.

Table 2: Cognitive map variables based on Table 1

Cognitive map variables	Literature review points
Variable 1: Drivers of interest in organizational learning	Point 1: "The core idea behind 'learning organization' is that organizations of all kind will not survive, let alone thrive, if they do not acquire an ability to adapt continuously to an increasingly unpredictable future".
Variable 2: Improve intellectual understanding of organizational learning	Point 2: "Learning is active and constructive. Learners are not passive recipients of information. They are sense makers who actively construct their knowledge and skills through interaction with their environment and through reorganization of their own mental structures.... Learning is goal-oriented. Effectively and meaningful learning is facilitated by an explicit awareness of orientation toward a goal. Learning is cumulative, which stresses the important  impact of learner's formal and informal knowledge. Learning is self-regulated". Point 3: "...'a learning organization' is a 'living' representation of the image of 'learning organization'. If something is a representative of something, it does not need to contain all the characteristics of it, but, rather, it possesses some major characteristics or features of it, or even what might be possible in our own organization". Point 5: "... Simon (1969) defined organizational learning as the growing insights and successful restructurings of organizational problems by individuals reflected in the structural elements and outcomes of the organization itself". Point 7: "A central concern of studies of adaptive process is the relations between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties.... Exploration includes things captured by terms such as search, variation, risk taking, experimentation, play, flexibility, discovery, innovation. Exploitation includes such things as refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection, implementation, execution..... maintaining an appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation is a primary factor in system survival and prosperity". Point 8: "Organizations store knowledge in their procedures, norms, rules and forms. They accumulate such knowledge over time, learning from their members. At the same time, individuals in an organization are socialized to organizational beliefs. Such mutual learning has implications for understanding and managing the trade-off between exploration and exploitation in  organizations". Point 9: "An entity learns if, through its processing of information, the range of its potential behaviors is changed. This definition holds whether the entity is a human or other animal, a group, an organization, an industry, or a society. The information processing can involve acquiring, distributing or interpreting information". Point 10: "... more organizational learning occurs when more of the organization's components obtain this knowledge and recognize it as potentially useful". Point 14: "Although it is well recognised that knowledge management aims at accelerating organizational learning..., theoretical links between the two fields are few and both streams  of research seem  to avoid the terminology used by their counterpart". Point 15: "Theorising in the domain of organisational learning revolves around three fundamental questions: what is knowledge? Where is  it located? How is it generated? Two main perspectives on the nature of knowledge view it as either static or dynamic". Point 16: "The ontological perspective on where and how knowledge is embedded in organisations frames the view of organisational learning as either a collective or individual phenomenon". Point 17: "Formal knowledge, closer to our notion of deliberate learning, has one or more of the following  attributes: - prescribed learning framework, - an organized learning event or package, - a designated teacher or trainer, - qualification or credit awarded, and - the external specification of outcomes". Point 19: "Huber (1991)  divided the literature of organizational learning into four categories: (1) knowledge acquisition, (2) information distribution, (3) information interpretation, and (4) organizational memory. Huber described the literature (up to 1991) on knowledge acquisition and information distribution as substantial, while that concerning information interpretation and organizational memory remained in need of study". Point 20: "According to Senge (1990), organisational learning  is the fruit of the process whereby the organisation learns,  stimulating the image of people and work groups to improve intelligence, creativity and organisational capacity". Point 21: "Franco and Ferreira (2007) offered underlying dimensions of a learning organisation as an action imperative model to help individuals and teams within organisations to view the organisation through a learning perspective, in order to identify practices that advance the learning process and make arrangement to change the impediments that prevent or slow down organisational learning. The conceptual model proposed by these authors include four main dimensions characterising organisational learning: organisational culture, organisational structure, information/knowledge sharing and leadership". Point 24: "March (1991) presents us in his paper the concept of mutual learning, considering that both, the individual and the organisation learn: the organisational knowledge is leveraged through  the individuals, in different ways, as instruction, doctrine, or exemplification. Simultaneously, according to March, the organisational code adapts itself to the beliefs of the employees. This way the mutual learning produces results on the individual and organisational levels".
Variable 3: Effective organizational learning practices	Point 6: "....the ultimate criterion of organizational performance is long term survival and growth. To achieve this, organizations align with their environment to remain competitive and innovative.... Alignment implies that the firm must have the potential to learn, unlearn, or relearn based on past behaviors". Point 11: "...more organizational learning occurs when more organizational units develop uniform comprehensions of the various interpretations. What is uniform here is not necessarily the perceived value or validity of the interpretation, as would be the case in "groupthink".... Rather, what is uniform are the understandings across units of the possibly different interpretations". Point 12: "A learning organization is far more than the sum of a set of "learning people". Teams can learn, communities can learn, functions and projects can learn, just as individuals can learn.... Ultimately, the goal is for the organization to become "unconsciously competent". This means that new knowledge is embedded into standards, processes and procedures". Point 13: "A smart organization needs to know what it doesn't know before it can develop a plan to fill the knowledge gap". Point 18: "Tacit knowledge resulting from informal and unplanned learning can greatly impact an organization's ability to address new problems, while avoiding recycling old solutions and encouraging  the development of new answers to old problems. Yet, managers and organizations have little guidance in generating or mobilizing this valuable component of institutional knowledge management". Point 22: "By activating learning processes, leaders can also influence and stimulate the intrapreneurial behaviour of their subordinates".
Variable 4: Learn from organizational learning practices	Point 4: "Systematic assessment of the strategic management literature suggests an interesting dilemma: Although there exists widespread acceptance of the notion of organizational learning and its importance to strategic performance, no theory or model of organizational learning is widely accepted". Point 23: "Organisational learning seems to develop competencies that are valued by the clients,  hardly imitable, and, as a consequence, they contribute to the competitive advantage of the firm. However, the organisational learning process remains a "black box" to all researhers... It is difficult to identify fits and consequent misfits between the organisation learning and the organisational design".

The next step is to relate the cognitive map variables to make up a cognitive map on organizational learning. The cognitive map and its explanation are presented in the next section.

A cognitive map on organizational learning and its interpretation

By relating the four variables identified in Table 2, the writer comes up with a cognitive map on organizational learning, as shown in Figure 1.

These cognitive  map variables, four of them altogether, are related to constitute a systemic image of organizational learning. The links in the cognitive map (re: Figure 1) indicate direction of influences between variables. The + sign shows that an increase in one variable leads to an increase in another variable while a -ve sign tells us that in increase in one variable leads to a decrease in another variable.  If there no signs shown on the arrows, that means the influences can be positive or negative.

Concluding remarks

The cognitive mapping exercise captures in one diagram some of the main variables involved in organizational learning. The resultant cognitive map promotes an exploratory way to study organizational learning in a holistic tone. The experience of the cognitive mapping exercise is that it can be a quick, efficient and entertaining way to explore a complex topic such as organizational learning in Business Management. Finally, readers who are interested in cognitive mapping should also find the article informative on this mapping topic.

Bibliography

1.      Curado, C. 2006. "Organisational learning and organisational design" The Learning Organization 13(1), Emerald: 25-48.

2.      Eden, C. and P. Simpson. 1989. "SODA and cognitive mapping in practice", pp. 43-70, in Rosenhead, J. (editor) Rational Analysis for a Problematic World, Wiley, Chichester.

3.      Eden, C., C. Jones and D. Sims. 1983. Messing about in Problems: An informal structured approach to their identification and management, Pergamon Press, Oxford.

4.      Fiol, C.M. and M.A. Lyles. 1985. "Organizational Learning" Academy of Management Review 10(4): 803-813.

5.      Haase, H., M. Franco and M. Félix. 2015. "Organisational learning and intrapreneurship: evidence of interrelated concepts" Leadership & Organization Development Journal 36(8), Emerald: 906-926.

6.      Halachmi, A. and A.M. Woron. 2013. "Spontaneous inter-organizational learning" International Journal of Organization Theory and Behavior 16(2) Summer: 135-164.

7.      Huber, G.P. 1991. "Organizational Learning: the contributing processes and the literatures" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 88-128.

8.      Knoco, N.M. 2008. "Exploring the concept of organizational learning" KM Review, Melcrum Publishing: 8-13.

9.      Literature on cognitive mapping Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/Literature-on-cognitive-mapping-800894476751355/).

10. Literature on literature review Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/literature.literaturereview/).

11. Managerial intellectual learning Facebook page, maintained by Joseph, K.K. Ho (url address: https://www.facebook.com/managerial.intellectual.learning/).

12. March, J.G. 1991. "Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning" Organization Science 2(1) February, The Institute of Management Sciences: 71-89.

13. Michailova, S. and E. Sidorova. 2011. "From group-based work to organisational learning: the role of communication forms and knowledge sharing" Knowledge Management Research & Practice 9, Operational Research Society: 73-83.

14. Open University. n.d. "Sign graph" Systems Thinking and Practice (T552): Diagramming, Open University, U.K. (url address: http://systems.open.ac.uk/materials/T552/) [visited at April 10, 2017].

15. Sun, H.C. 2003. "Conceptual clarifications for 'organizational learning', 'learning organization' and 'a learning organization' Human Resource Development International 6(2), Routledge: 153-166.