Ways of Learning × 35

Alongside decision making’s oversight is the neglect of another discipline known as experiential learning, which is self-evidently the process of learning from experience and, given its actual prior employment, arguably the most practical of all learning processes. This is associated with another clutch of associated methodologies. At least 35 in total, the list is tediously long but relevant for their breadth of scale, among them authentic learning; accelerating learning; adaptive learning; anticipatory learning; appreciative learning; celleration learning; cognitive learning; collaborative learning; competency-based learning; competitive learning; concurrent learning; constant learning; cooperative learning; creative learning; single-, double-, and triple-loop learning; high-impact learning; interorganizational learning; interpartner learning; innovative learning; leading learning; mechanistic learning; organizational learning; outcome-based learning; parenthetic learning; programed learning; self-directed learning; rote learning; situated learning; strategic learning; total quality learning; transformational learning; virtual learning; and virtuous learning.

Most of them are obscure, the creation of inventive individuals, suggesting that the universal process of learning has become so fragmented into specialized branches that the practice has become disaggregated. The implication for generalists, such as managers, is that attention is drawn away from understanding the universal principles of learning and, in the case of business, of decision making. In truth, people have become so used to simply having data and information given to them that they have become unskilled at creating knowledge for themselves or their employers. Learning, and particularly the interrelated way of decision making, has gone astray, with its specializations paradoxically inhibiting its own organic development—much like the plethora of sophisticated toys now available to children, whose ability to play inventively has subsequently been degraded. If anything, academics’ and managers’ surplus of choice signifies the importance given to the process of acquiring knowledge, but their widespread neglect must also suggest a pervasive corporate confusion about which to use or their perceived ineffectiveness.

One further long-term criticism of business education is the prevalent passive approach tutors use to impart information. This observation, key to the efficient application of experiential learning, is underscored by adult teaching specialist Dr. Stephen Brookfield’s observation that teachers overlook the need for reflection. His view is that students need “interplay between action and reflection,” proposing that curricula should not be studied in artificial isolation but rather that ideas, skills, and insights learned in a classroom should be tested and experienced in real life. Formal study is thus “reinforced by some appreciation of reality” (Brookfield, 1990).

It is against this background that both business education and industry/ commerce are missing an important opportunity that involves the management of the institution-specific asset known as organizational memory (OM), the nuts-and-bolts equivalent of personal DNA. Although no single accepted definition of OM exists, its collective awareness provides the type of expertise that is both an organization’s adhesive and its lubricant—that is, it relates to all the routines and processes (formal or otherwise) that make an organization tick. Its value represents the capability of the firm and is perhaps the main ingredient of its resilience. In broad terms, it includes the individual’s understanding and accommodation of his or her’s employer’s individual corporate culture, management, communications, and decision-making style; the contacts and relationships between employees or teams of employees; the detail of job-related events; and the knowledge of tried and tested usage as it applies to the organization’s own market circumstances and special environment (so-called episodic knowledge). The qualitative application of OM is closely allied to memory, which is most commonly described as knowledge retention or the difference between having acquired knowledge and having to reacquire it. It is what is not forgotten, the reconstruction of experienced events.