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Besides exploring issues of organizational learning in the worlds of
business, government and academia, other conference sessions explored
notions long considered to be “facts of life” on organizations, but ones
which might actually be put to constructive use. So how can organizations
better leverage such facets as diversity, time, emotion, power and fashion?
 The increasing
diversity in a global firm is something that needs to be managed as both an
asset and a liability, suggests
Prof. Meinolf Dierkes.
“Well-managed diversity is the best way to survive and prevail in the coming
decades. Especially at times of change, organizations need a diversity of
people in communities and subcultures and need to be open to a diversity of
perceptions and values,” he says. “In fast-changing environments, diversity
leads to learning processes that help develop survival strategies. The more
people are looking, the more angles you can see.”
However, Dierkes adds, “Like information, you can overload on diversity if
it is disorganized or unmanaged. It can even be dangerous.”
Diversity must be embedded in the structure of the organization to be
socially fruitful. Those structures have to include the ability of
leadership to end a discussion and make decisions without disaffecting those
whose ideas were not chosen. “Diversity, as raw material for organizational
learning, needs to be kept alive despite the need for organizations to
choose a single strategy to pursue,” he explains. So how do you structure
organizations to reap the benefits of diversity without getting in political
gridlock? Diversity needs a framework, he says, similar to the regulatory
framework in productive markets. You need structure, culture and leadership
that encourages inquiries and ideas, especially at the edges where internal
networks interface with outside groups, individuals and ideas.
Prof. Joseph LaPalombara, Arnold
Wolfers Professor of Political Science and Management at Yale University,
suggests that conflicts are often the essence of all organizational
behavior. “An organization’s goals, its rules of the game, the means for
goal achievement, the norms and standards used to recruit, train, reward,
promote or separate those who make up the organization are themselves
reflections of ongoing struggle, conflict and power-seeking,” he says.
 Consider
how political learning might be applied to the public sector. Nowak and
Donoughue alluded to the deftness of “political” skills that must be
employed internally in a political organization. LaPalombara observes not
only that public sector managers are developing far more skill at managing
the social capital necessary for effective action in their own sphere, but
also that such skills will be in greater demand in the private sector as
globalizing corporations adopt more federalized structures.
“The real challenge for modern organizations is how to best manage the
diversity that describes the global firm, without losing too much in terms
of short-term efficiencies and productivity,” he explains. One inevitable
answer, he notes, is the federal organization structure favored by
governments.
Centralized, homogenized forms of organization don’t work well in situations
where size is large and diversity is great. The local culture, local leaders
and local units of larger organizations demand more autonomy. In turn, new
skills will be required of private-sector managers—skills that come
naturally to public-sector managers.
“These are the skills of
learning to respond to and manage different constituencies, many of which
lie outside the organization,” LaPalombara says. “They are skills of
negotiating, bargaining, compromising and persuading in settings where you
cannot fire people at will and where authority is really much more flat than
hierarchical.” |
