Keeping things mindfully on track: Organizational learning under continuity

Abstract

We take a critical look at the widespread assumption that organizational learning is associated with a mismatch between expectations and outcomes. While mismatch is central to studying organizational learning, we argue that continuity is equally important. Learning under continuity requires an investment of effort, mindfulness and preparedness for change, even if no perceptible change occurs. Although the organizational literature has to some extent dealt with learning under continuity, putting it more firmly on the organizational learning agenda is necessary. A central element of a more explicit focus on learning under continuity, we argue, is to take a temporal view of organizational learning that includes agency at organizational level. We discuss how, from a temporal view, learning under continuity entails the (1) assessment of present courses of action; (2) exploration of future courses of action; and (3) re-interpretation of past courses of action.

Keywords

Agency leadership mindfulness organizational learning process view temporality

Introduction

Since the early 20th century, views of individual learning, and consequently organizational learning, have been underpinned by two different assumptions about adaptive behaviour. One view sees the achievement of a stable state as a result of learning. One example is Lewin’s (1951) three-stage model, unfreeze – change – refreeze, which reflects a view of organizations as operating in quasi-stationary social equilibria where change depends on the relative impact between opposing forces (Lewin, 1952). Such thinking owes much to systems perspectives on learning (Ashby, 1960; Bateson, 1972; Beer, 1981), with an underlying assumption that a system will persist with routine behaviour unless it is ‘aroused’ (Beer, 1981) by signals that are sufficiently strong to cause inquiry and subsequent change. Similarly, organizational learning is seen to be taking place during phases of transition from one state to another and involves a change of routines or rules (March, 1988; Nelson and Winter, 1982; Stinchcombe, 1990). In other words, organizational routines and rules owe their stability to learning processes. From this perspective organizational stability is hard won and change is reluctantly engaged in because the learning is regarded as costly in terms of time, money and human resources.

Another view sees learning as an ongoing, cumulative acquisition of knowledge, where actors gradually increase their knowledge through experience. Here we find, for example, Dewey’s (1998) work on increasing diversification of knowledge and Piaget’s (1985) work on the role of experience in cognitive development (Beilin, 1992). Central to Dewey’s and Piaget’s writings is the continuously evolving interaction between action and cognition. In organization studies such views have been reflected in theorizing routines. At the organizational level, routines and rules that may be seen as stabilized states in the first view, for example, would be seen as part of the ongoing, perpetually evolving nature of organizations (Nelson and Winter, 1982). Similarly, organizational learning becomes not a transition between stabilized states, as in the first view, but the ongoing work of expanding organizational competence and exploring new opportunities (March, 1991). In this view organizational elements such as routines and rules are in themselves dynamic and serve as mechanisms of organizational learning and change (Feldman, 2000; Feldman and Pentland, 2003).

Although continuity in organizations, as represented by, for example, routines, programmes, rules and structures, has been dealt with extensively in the organizational literature, it has not, apart from a few exceptions, been subject to systematic scrutiny in the organizational learning literature (e.g. Osadchiy et al., 2010; Zollo and Winter, 2002). On the contrary, there seems to be a common opinion among learning theorists that in order for learning to take place, a mismatch between intentions and outcome (Argyris and Schön, 1978), a split (Jarvis, 2006), a cognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957), a discrepancy (Weick et al., 2005) has to occur, i.e. the continual flow of action must be broken up by an unforeseen discontinuity, which constitutes a surprise. This can be the case, for example, when a classroom teacher finds that his way of explaining a mathematical problem does not contribute to student learning, a manager realizes that her way of communicating with a subordinate leads to hostility instead of trust and a surgical team grasps that electromagnetic interference is about to injure their patient. Although discontinuity in relation to organizational learning may be more or less radical and trigger more or less extensive change, as shown by Engeström et al. (2007), the assumption is still that learning arises from discontinuity.

When continuity is assumed in the organizational learning literature, the studies in question explain the accumulation of knowledge at individual and group level, focusing mostly on practical knowledge (e.g. Brown and Duguid, 1991; Gherardi, 2000; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Styhre et al., 2010). Cohen (1991), for example, focuses on the relationship between individual learning and routines, where individual learning is largely skills based. The findings in studies of this kind are consistent with studies on routines due to their focus on continuity as opposed to discontinuity. Even though organizational learning theories may include individual learning, they also need to include an element of agency at organizational level, an area that would benefit from further development in the organizational learning literature (Crossan et al., 2011). Indeed, as Crossan, Maurer and White (1999) demonstrate, it is difficult to speak of organizational learning without also mentioning the integration of knowledge at organizational level. The literature has failed to clearly address continuity on this level, relying extensively on discontinuity as a basis for learning instead.

Our contribution to the debate is to explicitly consider what we call learning under continuity at organizational level, which we define as the mindfully engaging in opportunities while simultaneously keeping things on track. Engaging mindfully in opportunities implies searching for understanding of the broader implications of activities (Weick and Roberts, 1993), including how they may be consequential in the longer run even though they may not seem to be of immediate significance. In some situations, the decision not to pursue an opportunity for change means learning may result from the explorative work required to justify staying on course. In this regard, our argument is in line with Osadchiy et al. (2010) and Zollo and Winter (2002), who deal with learning under continuity, albeit in different ways. Osadchiy et al. (2010) point out that absorbing problems, rather than changing in response to them, may in itself actually constitute a higher-level learning. Zollo and Winter (2002: 340) show that an organization’s dynamic capabilities (the systematic generation and modification of an organization’s operating routines in pursuit of improved effectiveness) do not develop as a disjointed adaptation to crises, but through relatively stable activity. They further highlight that knowledge development in organizations should be as much about ‘knowing why’ as about ‘knowing how’ (Zollo and Winter 2002: 349). The latter involves learning how to ‘do the thing right’, while the former develops through what they refer to as knowledge articulation and knowledge codification. In other words, organizational learning takes place not just by adapting to problems, but also by understanding what occurs during stable conditions. We find support for our argument with Berends and Lammers (2010), who emphasize that organizational learning can be both continuous and discontinuous, implying that both elements should be granted attention. Weick (1996) provides further support by pointing out that a distinct imbalance exists towards change at the expense of continuity in the literature. This inequity may, in fact, be a serious oversight, since, as Weick argues, ‘When people equate learning with change, they strip the learning process of much of the constancy, continuity, and focus that are necessary for adaptation’ (Weick, 1996:738).

The remainder of this article further addresses organizational learning under continuity, a topic that the organizational learning literature has not adequately explored. By focusing on this topic, we also wish to contribute to the debate on the future of organizational learning (Baldwin-Evans, 2007; Easterby-Smith, 1997; Elkjaer, 2004; Vince et al., 2002; Weick, 1996).

There is lack of a shared agreement on a single definition of organizational learning (Crossan et al., 1999; Phillips and Soltis, 1998), but we have chosen Huber’s (1991: 89) definition of organizational learning as the acquisition of knowledge that is recognized as potentially useful to the organization as the framework for our discussion. Knowledge may mean, for example, a better understanding and contextualization of past and current courses of action. Like Huber, we do not tie the notion of learning to behaviour change, but rather to the potentiality for change, by considering an entity to be learning when the range of its potential behaviours is changed. Thus an entity (an individual, group or organization) may be said to be learning when the range of actions to choose from has changed. Such a definition enables learning to be seen as the potentiality for continuity as well as for change, because it leaves open whether or not the range of actions is adopted. Using Huber’s terms, our main argument is that non-adoption of potential behaviour constitutes learning, just as adoption does. The knowledge gained is not so much about responding to mismatches or surprises, but more about increasing knowledge about the contexts for organizational learning, similar to Bateson’s idea of deutero-learning, which, incidentally, Visser (2007) describes as a neglected perspective in the organizational learning literature. Deutero-learning (i.e. learning to learn) includes, according to Bateson (1972: 364), the acquisition of information about the contingency patterns of the contexts in which the actual learning occurs. In an extended discussion Tosey et al. (forthcoming) elaborate on Bateson’s idea of deutero-learning as corrective change in the system of sets of alternatives from which choices are made. From this we infer that the sets of alternatives from which actors choose also comprise non-change. Translating Huber’s definition into this perspective would mean that knowledge is developed at organizational level about future courses of action, but does not necessarily assume that change is introduced in response to the problems experienced.

We will argue that the intention of keeping things on track, even when there is no discernible discontinuity, constitutes organizational learning, because, as argued by other researchers (Hernes, 2007; Tsoukas and Chia, 2002), keeping things on track requires work, much the way that Dewey (in Cohen, 1991) saw habits as integral to thoughtful foresight and judgement. Continuity can be defined in various ways, but we primarily concentrate on procedural continuity, i.e. repetitive situations where there are no discernible breaks or discontinuities in the on-going process or the routines and procedures as they unfold. In other words, there is no difference that makes a difference, to paraphrase Bateson (1972: 459).

In what follows we will first discuss how learning may or may not take place in situations of continuity or discontinuity. Next, we discuss how acts of maintaining current courses of action while being aware of future courses and their possible consequences result in a form of learning which merits further systematic study, even though this subject has been looked at in the organizational learning literature (e.g. by Weick, 1996). In the last part of this article, we suggest three modes of organizational learning under continuity called (1) assessment of present courses of action; (2) exploration of future courses of action; and (3) re-interpretation of past courses of action.

Learning under continuity and discontinuity

The following section provides a selected review of the organizational learning literature while considering four different combinations of learning and non-learning versus continuity and discontinuity. The objective of the review is to describe the perspectives of learning and (dis)continuity that underlie each combination.

Continuity and non-learning

Most organizational learning theory postulates that when there is an insufficient amount of difference between expectations and outcomes to cause concern among organizational members over mismatch, the result may be continuity without learning. Such thinking relates typically to systems models of learning (Argyris and Schön, 1978; Bateson, 1972), which put emphasis on system responsiveness (Elkjaer, 2004) to stimuli. Argyris and Schön (1978) dubbed single-loop learning the gradual adaptation of the system and the inability to learn by questioning basic assumptions about the system. The inability to question underlying assumptions is attributed to conflict avoidance and defensive behaviour (Argyris, 1990).

Non-learning under continuity is also ascribed to organizational mindlessness (Langer, 1989; Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001). Langer (1989: 152) defines mindlessness as the application of yesterday’s business solutions to today’s problems, describing it as a state of reduced attention resulting from a tendency to rely on pre-existing distinctions, categories and routines. Mindlessness may produce the inability to specify expectations, without which it becomes difficult to detect early signs of danger and to foresee the possible dysfunctional effects of adhering to a chosen course of action. Although, as Hedberg et al. (1976) argue, incoherence and indecision may foster learning in some cases, it does not automatically imply that they form a good basis for learning.

Mindlessness is, however, not only about letting changes in context go unnoticed; it is also about developing a blindness to the potential consequences of continuity when caused by zealous pursuance of a certain state of affairs, which may again cause competency traps (Levitt and March, 1988) or self-fulfilling prophesies (Starbuck, 1982). If the latter occurs, people may act on automatic pilot, sticking to plans and well-known recipes, and staying on track without any form of visible learning. The portrait of organizational pathology painted here is one in which people favour the old and familiar at the expense of novelty and innovation (Ahuja and Lampert, 2001). Tripsas and Gavetti’s (2000) example of Polaroid shows how company managers were so attached to the raison d’être of their firm being about selling consumables that they were unable to appreciate the emerging digital imaging market.

Explanations of non-learning under continuity are rooted in a view of organizational continuity as offering meagre opportunities for learning, either as a result of an absence of ‘natural’ shocks or as a result of persistence among leaders to stick to the status quo. Continuity tends to be viewed as the lack of difference that makes a difference (Bateson, 1972); in other words, a lack of arousal of the system, either because it is short of purposive behaviour or because there is an excess of it.

Discontinuity and non-learning

Argyris (1994) claims that rigorous reasoning stops and defensive reasoning takes over when problems involve a potential threat or embarrassment. The explanation for such behaviour is psychological, Argyris claims. In early life, we develop defensive mental models and the corresponding master programmes for protection for dealing with emotional or threatening issues. We use these as sets of rules to design our own actions, as well as to interpret the actions of others. We retrieve them rather unconsciously in situations where we face problems or must invent solutions. The programmes can be understood as theories-in-use, i.e. theories that can be identified from observing what we actually do. They may differ substantially from our espoused theories; in other words, the theories we believe or claim we apply.

Few of us are aware of the inconsistency between the two, Argyris contends. Most of us are consistently inconsistent in the way we act. We follow theories-in-use that seem to have the same set of governing values; we strive to remain in unilateral control; we aim to maximize winning and minimize losing; and we suppress negative feelings while maintaining the desire to be as rational as possible. We act this way because we are programmed to apply a deeply defensive strategy in order to avoid embarrassment, risk and vulnerability, and we do so out of a desire not to appear incompetent in the face of others and ourselves (Argyris, 1994).

Argyris and Schön (1996: 89) claim that defensiveness begins with primary inhibitory loops on the individual level. These initial loops may lead to secondary inhibitory loops, defined as ‘the behavioural loops – causal connections between action strategies and anti-learning consequences – that are supra-individual, pertaining to interactions of groups within organizations’ (Argyris and Schön, 1996: 97). In the end, these loops may become a feature of the whole organization.

This argument is largely echoed by March’s (1994: 194) observation that organizations operate to conceal, tolerate or even stimulate what is regarded as useful incoherence. Defensive routines are depicted as a process developing from the individual to the organizational level. The routines stem from the skilled use of unlearning strategies among individual actors, and from there the defensiveness may become a group trait and, finally, a characteristic of the organization as a whole.

Ignorance of mismatch can be fueled by ‘silent’ institutional forces, such as the zeal for planning (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001). Arguing that plans act the same way as expectations, they write, ‘Disconfirming evidence is avoided, and plans lure you into overlooking a buildup of the unexpected quite as handily as do other expectations’ (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001: 43). Brunsson (1998) claims that non-learning organizations have developed a proficiency in ignoring not just problems, but also their own attitudes toward these problems and the possible solutions. Brunsson’s explanation is also institutional in that she believes that, through procedures, the distribution of responsibility supports and reinforces non-learning behaviour under conditions of discontinuity. A shared feature of the studies examined here is that non-learning is assumed because there is no detectable change, which is again put down to defensiveness and ‘strategic ignorance’.

Explanations of non-learning under discontinuity relate to cognitive limitations at individual level or the collective inability to respond to mismatch or surprise. Such explanations tend to derive from expectations that knowledge is manifest in behavioural responses only, but they do not allow for studying the accumulation of knowledge as a potential for response at a later time.

Discontinuity and learning

The main body of organizational learning literature ascribes learning to the detection of a mismatch between expectations and outcomes. The assumption is that learning implies a change in behaviour as a result of thoughtful inquiry. This supposition is particularly evident in the ‘first way’ (Elkjaer, 2004) of organizational learning theory and particularly in the works of Argyris and Schön, which have resulted in a series of related schools of thought known as action science, action theory, action design, and action inquiry (Argyris, 1976; Argyris and Schön, 1978; Argyris et al., 1985; Friedman, 2001; Leitch and Day, 2000; Senge, 1990; Torbert, 1972, 1991). Argyris and Schön (1978), for example, view the discovery of divergence as a process of learning in itself. One of their central arguments is that when the organization ‘discovers’ the incongruence between privately held assumptions (reflecting norms practised by the organization) and the espoused practice of the organization, it can be said to be learning. A common thread in these studies is the notion of mismatch and the need for inquiry created by the mismatch. The assumption is that in order for learning to take place, there has to be a process of detection of errors that may lead to an inquiry into the situation at hand. Since the actor is an agent on behalf of the organization, organizational learning will not take place unless a change in individual action theories takes place first (Burgoyne et al., 1994; Honey and Mumford, 1992). Argyris et al. (1985: 85–86) state:

When the consequences of an action strategy are as the agent intends, then there is a match between intention and outcome, and the theory-in-use of the agent is confirmed. If the consequences are unintended, and especially if they are counterproductive, there is a mismatch or an error.

When our theories of action do not lead us to where we expected to go, a discrepancy exists between intentions and outcomes. This disparity may require correction, but in order for this correction to take place, the actor has to experience some sort of interruption, surprise, frustration, discontinuity, or disturbance. A surprising mismatch between expected and actual outcomes calls for a process of thoughtful inquiry that may lead to a modification of the actor’s mental images of the organization (Argyris and Schön, 1996: 16). A change in the individual’s theory-in-use will be the ultimate proof that learning has occurred. Argyris and Schön suggest that two types of change, single loop or double loop, may ensue from such an inquiry. In a similar vein, March (1995) refers to two types of change in relation to rules, namely change in existing rules versus new combinations of rules. In both cases discontinuity is assumed to be a basis for learning.

Continuity and learning

In the organizational learning literature learning under continuity has been largely dealt with as incremental processes of skills or knowledge acquisition. Some examples of this are learning as exploitation (March, 1991), procedural memory (Cohen, 1991, Moorman and Miner 1998; Singley and Anderson 1989), routines (Feldman, 2000; Feldman and Pentland, 2003) and practice-based learning (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Styhre et al., 2010). March’s (1991) idea of learning as exploitation emphasizes the incremental nature of organizational life, where organizations find themselves trapped in a sub-optimal equilibrium as they engage in the functional refinement of operations. Procedural memory (Cohen, 1991; Moorman and Miner, 1998; Singley and Anderson, 1989) refers to the stored experience, knowledge and skills that are reproduced on a routine basis by organizational members. Routines, as conceptualized by Feldman (2000) and Feldman and Pentland (2003), represent the performative adaptation of change, as routines come to embody new knowledge. Practice-based learning (Brown and Duguid, 1991; Lave and Wenger, 1991; Styhre et al., 2010) is also incremental, as it relates to the gradual acquisition of knowledge through the practical experience of individual organizational members.

Common to more recent works on organizational learning in particular is a view of how actors – including managers – apply their knowledge while in the flow of experience. This has directed attention towards processes such as social and temporal structuring (Berends and Lammers, 2010), learning as practice (Styhre et al., 2010), practical coping (Segal, 2010), practice-based knowledge (Chia and Holt, 2009) and organizational becoming (Clegg et al., 2005). Common to these studies is the assumption that knowledge is of an ongoing nature and the refusal to give knowledge fixity with actors or objects. Instead, learning is seen as the continual extraction and structuring from the flow of experience within the contingencies of the moment, consistent with a view of organization as ‘on-going accomplishment’ (Feldman, 2000; Weick, 1979). Given that the literature on learning under continuity discusses the process of the unfolding of knowledge in space and time, it gives little attention to the enactment of managerial agency in imposing continuity. This may be explained by the fact that it considers agency to be distributed rather than central, by considering learning as local, incremental and embedded in day-to-day practice, hence the view of organizations as ongoing accomplishments.

Giving agency to continuity: A temporal view of organizational learning under continuity

Our contribution consists of considering managerial agency that has power to impose some continuity on organizational activity. For example, when a management group decides not to adopt a new technology by not granting the resources needed to adopt that technology, it exercises agency to impose continuity of existing activity. Making organizational decisions to keep things on track, in other words, requires temporal agency in order to ignore, simplify and fix problems momentarily (Law, 1994, in Clegg et al., 2005: 153) while engaging in exploratory activity. This is implied by Osadchiy et al. (2010), who focus on the dynamics of rules and by Zollo and Winter (2002), who focus on the development of codification as learning processes.

Although both of these contributions consider managerial agency, they do not explore temporal agency. By ‘temporal agency’ we mean the agency to direct inquiry at any of the three elements of temporality, i.e. the past, present and future while keeping things on course. Not only does this reflect a philosophical tradition of considering actors in an ongoing present, continuously oriented towards the past and future (Mead, 1932), but it also reflects, as we see it, the reality of management keeping a continuous eye on the past, present and future. Mindful of this temporal nature of management, we will discuss how learning under continuity may take place through three different processes, which we describe as the: (1) assessment of present courses of action; (2) exploration of future courses of action; and (3) re-interpretation of past courses of action.

Assessment of present courses of action

Something that tends not to be defined as learning in the current literature is knowledge derived from the assessment of present courses of action. On the contrary, evaluations not acted upon tend to be categorized as non-learning. This arises from a limiting definition of learning and ignores the possibility that current courses of action may be purposely kept as they are precisely in order to facilitate learning. Nevertheless, product lines and services are often purposely kept sufficiently stable in order to assess how they perform, and the knowledge obtained under such self-imposed continuity is used to both better understand how they perform and to explore alternatives. Customers need sufficient time to familiarize themselves with products and services before their reactions can be known to any degree of certainty. This means that things may have to be kept as they are for a certain amount of time while delaying changes to the products or services. For example, when the iPad was first introduced Apple purposely built in fewer functions in the first version than was possible. We interpret this as a way of retaining a sufficient degree of simplicity to enable understanding of current courses of action. The result of purposely keeping the status quo is that doing so may be precisely what enables change at a later time. Keeping the status quo in order to build knowledge addresses Blackman and Sadler-Smith’s (2009) idea of ‘insightful knowing’, which they see as happening when managers are creating ‘the conditions for insight to occur (i.e. by immersion in a problem), accepting of encountering problem-solving impasses, and prepared to allow a space for unconscious cognitive processes to yield their outcomes—being comfortable with ‘slow thinking’ (Blackman and Sadler-Smith, 2009: 579–580; Claxton, 1998).

In fact, acting routinely while mulling over other possibilities is actually what managers do most of their time, according to Weick (1984: 223): ‘When managers act, their thinking occurs concurrently with action. Thinking is not sandwiched between activities; rather, it exists in the form of circumspection present when activities are executed’. This is possible as human actors apply what Polanyi (1958) calls subsidiary awareness. Shotter (2006), who relates Polanyi’s idea of subsidiary awareness to time, suggests that subsidiary awareness can provide an ‘anticipatory sense’ of what is to come next in an ongoing process. Zollo and Winter (2002) make a point to this effect in the organizational learning literature by suggesting that learning forms part of developing dynamic capabilities of organizations, which are not necessarily adaptations to problems or crises, but constitute a more stable body of organizational knowledge of how to adapt. In other words, while carrying out activities in their present state, the possibility of acting otherwise is assessed. In addition, according to our position, this pattern occurs because things are kept temporarily as they are in order to make it possible to better understand how things can be carried out differently, as it is the accumulated knowledge in the present that enables the anticipation of future possible courses of action. What is taking place is a collectively tacit acknowledgement of the possibility of things changing, but involves a choice to keep things as they are, at least for the time being, as learning from things as they are provides potentially useful knowledge.

The choice to keep things as they are in the present comes through the temporal agency enacted by management. This is shown in studies of companies attempting to implement sustainability strategies, which in essence is a process of developing the capacity to endure. Implementing sustainability strategies ‘requires a careful analysis of the key drivers of performance and a measurement of both the drivers and the linkages between them’, according to Epstein and Roy (2001: 602). Epstein and Roy show how companies, by systematically monitoring their key current performance indicators, may gain the knowledge needed to stick to courses of action that are deemed both ethical and profitable. The continuous assessment of present performance opens a potential for learning and for the development of mechanisms to access and share important practices across the organization, notably as the institutionalization of social concerns takes place throughout the organization.

Exploration of future courses of action

March (1991) famously coined the distinction between exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. In March’s view, exploitation signifies refinement, choice, production, efficiency, selection and implementation, while exploration signifies risk, search, experimentation, discovery and innovation. While March’s article assumes the actualization of choices, the very activity of exploring future courses of action may also be a way to better understand why it makes sense to maintain present courses of action while developing an awareness of changes that may be necessary in the future. Assessment of future courses of action is an exercise in hypothesizing about the possible future’s viability and the potential benefits of future courses of action, and may range from quantitative estimates of cost and benefit to qualitative judgments.

Assessing future courses of action involves an enactment of anticipatory awareness, i.e. an awareness of what might ensue from acting in a certain way. Shotter (2006: 597–598) argues that:

While being ‘focally aware’ of the responsive whole resulting from us ‘looking over’ what is before us, we have ignored the background structure of anticipations (of which we are only ‘subsidiarily aware’) that guide us as we actively ‘do’ the relating of ourselves to our surroundings.

Assessing future courses of action thus becomes more than a rational, conscious process. The process involves probing, building scenarios and imagining their consequences. At the organizational level this is typically done by allocating resources to search processes and innovation projects. Knowledge derived from such activities may have unexpected effects when it is used to improve existing arrangements rather than to develop new solutions.

A case in point is de Geus’ (1988) description of Royal Dutch/Shell’s practice of scenario building, which the company has practised since the late 1960s. Typical for scenario building, as de Geus points out, is that it enables multiple scenarios to be developed, but more importantly, it identifies in conversations between people inside the company and outsiders the ‘driving forces’ of possible future scenarios of a social, political or technological nature. Scenario building may amount to thousands of pages of interviews to be analysed and formatted as a basis for collective action. Thus knowledge is developed within existing arrangements as a potentiality for dealing with crises to keep things on track, or alternatively, for pursuing additional courses of action when opportunities arise. It is when future scenarios provide support for keeping things on track that learning under continuity is effectively achieved through exploration of future courses of action. The type of useful knowledge acquired is hypothetical, yet applied as if it applies to the actuality of the present situation.

Re-interpretation of past courses of action

Although the past always weighs in on the present it also remains open to interpretation. Levitt and March (1988) point out that the past is changing and ambiguous; hence we infer that the past is partly open to choice, although not so much about what has happened as the meaning of what has taken place. At the same time, for all practical intents and purposes, the past cannot be changed at will. If organizations kept redefining their past at will it would make life unbearable for the people affected by this. Still, turning to the past is a defining characteristic of organizational sense-making (Weick, 1979, 1995) and it must be called upon and reinterpreted in the context of the present and the anticipated future.

Calling upon the past and reinterpreting it constitutes learning processes because doing so requires time and resources. It is a search process that contributes to collective knowledge. Going back to the past involves imagining what may have been decisive experiences during those past occasions (Schutz, 1967) and then projecting an understanding of those experiences onto the challenges of the present. Thus renewing present knowledge involves a re-articulation (Weick, 1996) of the meaning of past experiences in the light of the current situation.

Calling upon the past typically happens during threats to the organization. Leaders may refer to past experience in order to justify a change in structure or strategy. They may also deliberately attempt to link the past to the future, as illustrated by Irgens’ (2009) longitudinal study of 15 years of change projects in an offshore construction yard. Irgens found that leaders and change agents created what he coined institutional bridges between the past and the future in order to justify the new change projects, as well as to carry established practices and values onward. But calling upon the past may equally take place during continuity. Past experiences, such as the perceived failure of launching a new product, may be evoked to stop the launching of a similar product in the current situation.

Alternatively, past experiences may be evoked to justify a current course of action. Schultz and Hernes (forthcoming), for example, illustrate how managers at the LEGO Corporation evoked the past in reconstructing their identity in line with past identities. They found that during an extensive process of re-positioning itself, LEGO re-emphasized identity claims established over 70 years earlier, such as the idea of ‘system in play’ and ‘playful learning’. These choices enabled the LEGO Corporation to exercise continuity by strengthening current options with reference to past courses of action. Such examples show how the past both conditions present choices while providing some scope for choice. Regardless of the choices made, they mark a break with the past through change or reinforce it through continuity. The choice involves collective re-interpretation, which demands allocation of resources, which in turn requires managerial agency. In the LEGO case, for example, LEGO management contracted MIT researchers to perform an analysis of the attraction of LEGO bricks as toys and as being educationally sound, which reinforced their beliefs in the traditional brick as a viable option for the company’s long-term future.

Summary and conclusions

As we have attempted to illustrate, the dominant organizational learning theory’s notion of mismatch and surprise is based on the idea that a split, discontinuity or surprise creates a situation that needs to be explored for learning to take place. If change is not made in response to an opportunity, it is supposedly because of mindlessness (Weick and Sutcliffe, 2001), institutionalized practices and beliefs (Brunsson, 1998; Wicks, 2001) or defensive routines (Argyris and Schön, 1978).

Keeping things on track, however, is not necessarily an act of ‘habitual blindness’ (Cassirer, 1944), but on the contrary, a conscious effort to keep things as they are and to make organizational decisions not to engage in changing things in response to problems, while deploying resources to engage with available opportunities. Consistent with Huber’s definition, mindfulness comes from the building up of potentially useful knowledge (Huber, 1991) while purposely keeping things on course. A similar view is found in process-based views of strategizing, where Chia and Holt (2009: 114) point out how, as human beings, we actually discount much of what we experience in order to be able to deal with contingencies as they arise, and how this is a pragmatic way to maintain focus on what is of use to us rather than what exists. As they point out, instead of looking at the actualization of knowledge towards a specific end, we may be talking about ‘negative capability’, which implies containment and endurance rather than the capacity for (immediate) intervention (Chia and Holt, 2009: 211).

One reason for the ascription of the non-correction of courses of action to features such as inability, incompetence or blindness is that researchers tend to focus on singular courses of action and assume that sense-making relates to that course of action only. This kind of focus is a result of a preference for what Cassirer calls ‘the Eye of Science’ (Cassirer, 1944; Irgens, 2011) and may be necessary to produce research results that live up to standards of rigour and relevance. Thus reseachers practise what Shotter (2006) calls a thinking process ‘from the outside’, observing processes as happening ‘over there’. As an alternative Shotter calls for an understanding of process ‘from within’, which is what practitioners experience and why Shotter brings different levels of awareness into his discussion. Researchers have the privilege of focusing on one or a few courses of action in an organization, while practitioners, and managers in particular, need to cope with multiple foci, each of which may lead to different courses of action. Our contribution to the debate is to position this multi-foci reality within an organizational learning framework, suggesting that learning accrues under continuity as organizations engage in the assessment of present courses of action, the exploration of alternative future courses of action and the re-interpretation of past courses of action. Managers in particular hold this sort of ‘Janusian’ focus, as they try to keep a continuous eye on the past, present and future. It is in view of this multi-foci reality that we become better at understanding why managerial agency may be applied to ensure continuity as a means to learn, although, ‘from the outside’, it may seem that no learning is taking place. It is for this reason that we suggest that the notion of temporal agency be more explicitly addressed in the organizational learning literature, because it addresses the situated nature of management, where decisions need to be made in the flow of time, with continual adjustment of past and future in view of the needs of the present.

Our discussion has brought us to the conclusion that reducing learning to a rational inquiry into a surprising situation created by mismatch may restrict our understanding of how organizations learn. In order to better understand the challenges of organizational learning, we believe there is a need to recognize the learning that goes into keeping things mindfully on track. This will require transgressing the propensity to celebrate change and to delimit learning to mismatch situations and surprise. It will also require an understanding of how managers may find themselves in situations ‘betwixt and between’ conflicting institutional expectations (Turner, 1982). On the one hand, managers are celebrated for being innovative and finding new courses of action. On the other hand, managers in formal organizations are expected to secure continuity since continuity is essentially what organizational survival is all about (Fry and Srivastva, 1992). Either choice may lead to a feeling of guilt (Veiga et al., 2004). We propose that a strengthened focus on learning under continuity will help managers caught between conflicting institutional expectations to justify their decisions openly by associating continuity, not with inertia, but with a capacity for ‘strategic patience’. Mismatch and surprise are utterly important in organizational learning, as they represent an opportunity for learning and willful change, but also because they represent an opportunity for choosing not to change. And so does continuity, as we have argued in this article. Continuity, after all, is the very essence of organizational survival (Fry and Srivastva, 1992), and should, as in the case of change, be seen as a result of learning and not automatically attributed to blindness or inertia.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their comments and to Robin Holt and Morten Thanning Vendelø for comments to an earlier draft of the paper.

Funding

This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial of not-for-profit sectors.

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