Organizational learning at a refinery

These notes are part of a series for the book. This article is about a refinery in UK (probably Shell). The company wanted a more participatory form of decision-making, instead of a top-down one. The authors studied how this worked, especially one initiative — the PCDM — for which all employees rewrote and shared procedures.

Boreham, N. and Morgan, C. (2004) ‘A Sociocultural Analysis of Organisational Learning’, in Murphy, P. and Hall, K. (eds) (2012) Learning and Practice: Agency and Identities, London, SAGE Publications Ltd.

Outline

Introduction
The sociocultural perspective
The project
The procedures and competence development methodology
A model of organizational learning: dialogue embedded in relational practices
1. Opening space for the creation of shared meaning
2. Reconstituting power relations
3. Providing cultural tools to mediate learning
Conclusion

Notes

How does an organization “learn”?

Argyris and Schon: Through cultural change
Schein: An organization’s culture determines what it can and cannot do. An individual’s socialization into that culture determines what they can and cannot do.
Boreham: The knowledge generated by organizational learning is a collective resource
Engestrom: “Activity system” — a group whose orientation to the object of their activity is mediated by:
- Division of labor (workforce segmentation)
- Rules (SOPs)
- Cultural artifacts (blueprints, meetings, computers)
- “Expansive learning”: the activity system learns as a whole by sharing experiences across the boundaries of the division of labor, especially lessons learned from failures.

The PCDM process

All employees rewrote and shared procedures. They:

Renamed the process
Created a review system
Held meetings
Posted procedures on their intranet and created job aids, flowcharts, and/or checklists and distributed these to workstations

This changed the way the teams interacted and solved problems. Dialogue became central — not just pooling together ideas and information while problem-solving, but creating shared meaning.

Three practices that were the basis of organizational learning

The authors found that these three practices were the basis of organizational learning:

Opening space for the creation of meaning
- Collective knowledgebase
- Consensus
- Operators taking ownership (instead of top-down)
- People liked it!
Reconstituting power relationships
- PCDM caused the organization to become more egalitarian. There was no longer a group that was powerful because they cornered the knowledge and used rank to influence others with their views.
- Redistribution of power: former procedure writers liked this, because they were uncomfortable with their lack of hands-on experience when writing procedures.
Providing cultural tools to mediate learning
- Created cultural tools: checklists, task aids, etc.
- What’s important is not the tools themselves but the culture of its use

Katherine Hinchey