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http://hum.sagepub.com/Human Relations
http://hum.sagepub.com/content/56/8/931The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/00187267030568002
2003 56: 931Human RelationsAlessia Contu, Christopher Grey and Anders rtenblad
Against Learning
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Against learningAlessia Contu, Christopher Grey andAnders rtenblad
A B S T R A C T T h i s a r t i c le i s a c r it i q u e o f t h e b r o a d e n s e m b l e w h i c h w e i d e n t i fy a s
le a r n i n g d i sc o u r s e a n d it s p e r v a siv e i d e o lo g ic al c o n t e n t w h i ch d e t e r -
m i n e s l e a r n i n g as a g o o d t h i n g f o r a l l. W e c o n s id e r h o w t h e si gn i -
fi e r le a r n i n g w o r k s as a n o d a l p o i n t w h i ch c o n st i t u t e s ( l e git i m iz e s
and sus t a ins ) , ye t g losses ove r , an t agon is t i c and con t rad i c t o r y
o r g a n iz at io n a l a n d s o c ia l p r a c t ic e s. W i t h o u r c r i t iq u e w e e n d e av o u r
t o g o b e y o n d a sim p l e r e b u k e o r r e b u t t a l. W e , r a t h e r, p o in t o u t t h ep r o b l e m a t ic n a t u r e o f t h e t r u t h s e n g e n d e r e d in m a k in g t h e s o c ia l
a n d c o n s t it u t i n g t h e p r o m ise o f a le a r n i n g so c ie t y w h o se a m b i t
e n c o m p a s se s le a r n i n g i n g e n e r a l , t h e l e ar n i n g o r g a n iz at i o n a n d t h e
p o lit ic al e co n o m y o f t h e k n o w le d g e e c o n o m y . B y d o in g so w e
e x p o se t h e p o l it i ca l c h a r a ct e r o f t h e l e a r n in g d i sc o u r s e w h i ch , w e
a r g u e , w o r k s a s t h e su r f a c e o f in t e l li gi b i li t y p r o - p o si n g t h e r e a li t y o f
w o r k , se l f- h o o d , c it i ze n s h i p a n d so c ie t y . W e a n t a g o n i ze i t s n o
a lt e r n a t iv e t r o p e b y q u e s t io n i n g t h e e q u i v ale n c e i t c r e at e s b e t w e e n
so c ia l i n c lu s io n , c o m p e t i t iv e n e s s, e m p l o y a b i l it y, e m p o w e r m e n t a n d
p e r so n a l d e v e l o p m e n t . O u r c r i t iq u e m a ke s e x p lic it h o w it i s p o ssib l e ,
a n d w h y i t is i m p o r t a n t , t o b e a ga in s t le a r n i n g .
K E Y W O R D S c r i t i q u e d i s c o u r s e k n o w l e d g e l e a r n i n g o r g a n i z a t i o n a l
l e a r n i n g p o l i t i c s
In this article we seek to advance two propositions. The first is thatorganizational learning is inseparable from, but is a key term within, a
wider learning discourse. The second is that this learning discourse is itself
an element within the articulation of a problematic politics of tru th. There
9 3 1
Human Relations
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SAGE Publ icat ions
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can be little doubt that learning has become a vogue term. In the field of
work organizations, concepts of organizational learning (Argyris &
Schn, 1978; Schn, 1983) and the learning organization (Senge, 1990)
have become increasingly prevalent (Easterby-Smith, 1997) and, a rguably,influential. Of course, the managerial and organizational literature is well
known for its faddism (Abrahamson, 1996; Kieser, 1997), and one might
choose to regard learning as just one more example. In particular, the
learning organization has been seen as a fashion, fad, buzzword or hype
(e.g. Born & Nollen, 1993; Eccles & Nohria, 1992; Garavan, 1997;
Hawkins, 1994; Jackson, 2000; Mastenbroek, 1996; Scarbrough & Swan,
2001). Fadd ishness, of course, implies an ephemeral popularity or, perhaps,
that the content of the idea is not new. However, something more signifi-cant seems to be occurring. For learning is not just a hot topic in manage-
ment. It has also come to the fore in a range of contexts, with politicians
in many countries speaking breathlessly of the goal of a learning society
and the achievement of lifelong learning (see, e.g. H ughes & Tight, 1995).
Wales has for many years been aspiring to become a learning country
(Francis, 2000; Poole, 1997). There is at least one worldwide network of
cities striving to become learning cities (Learning Towns and Cities,
2001).
So, rather than treat it as a management fad, it seems more adequateto regard organizational learning as a term within an ensemble that we might
call learning discourse. We do not, of course, mean to imply that fads are
non-discursive or that discourses are not sometime faddish. Rather, we mean
that organizational learning has a wider purchase and a more enduring
presence than is normally implied by the term management fad (Abraham-
son, 1996). Within learning discourse, organizational learning is not just
another term, however. Rather, it operates as a relay connecting, rather
obviously, learning in some way to organization and the significance of thisis in the linkage it makes between work and the wider social arena within
which learning occurs. As a discourse, which is to say a structured and
meaningful totality (Laclau, 1990),1 learning articulates a series of differen-
tial relations, which pose and shape a certain understanding of social reality
and by extension, as we shall see, offer learning as a response to the foreseen
future of this reality. It is this discursive ensemble that we explore in this
article.
Although we see organizational learning as more important than a fad,
this does not imply an endorsement of those proselytizers for organizationallearning who treat it uncritically as, in and of itself, a break with the past.
This evangelism proposes that:
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It is a shift which will be permanent, for in no sense does it reflect a
fad of (sic) fashion.
(Swieringa & Wierdsma, 1992: 148; see also Garrat t, 1995)
Here, other concepts are relegated to the merely fashionable, whilst organiz-
ational learning instead represents a new and enduring verity. By contrast,
our stance is not to define organizational learning as significant because of
its inherent importance but because of its enmeshment within a wider set of
concerns. For we will not get very far in analysing organizational learning
as if it were readily delineated from other instances of the invocation of
learning. Viewed as part of a discourse, organizational learning emerges as
a condition and consequence of the structuring of work, schooling and thepolitical agenda relating to the knowledge society and global competition.
Of course, one might think that the fact that learning discourse is
fashionable constitutes, in and of itself, an excellent reason to criticize it. To
do so would be not merely confirming and contributing to its modishness
but also reproducing a familiar pattern in the life cycle of any fashionable
artefact (Kieser, 1997). That might be worthwhile since, with relatively few
exceptions (Brown, 1996; Coopey, 1995; Coopey & Burgoyne, 2000;
Fenwick, 1998; Fielding, 2001; Garrick & Rhodes, 1998; Leymann, 1989;
Oswick et al., 2000; Pant, 2001) there has been very limited criticaldiscussion of organizational learning to date (see rtenblad, 2002, for a
review). However, although we want to contr ibute to this discussion, we also
want to do so in a way that makes connections between organizational
learning and wider considerations of learning discourse. The aim is to high-
light the discursive formation in which the signifier learning is mobilized in
a way that legitimizes and reinforces a neo-liberal ethos, as an inescapable
answer to the changing times of the supposedly knowledge driven, global-
ized economy. For what is most striking is how learning discourse seems tohave become constituted as truth: it is unproblematically assumed that
learning, like vitamins and stopping smoking, is a good thing (cf. Hawkins,
1994). Every label containing the term learning is conceived as a positive
label, and the term appears in an almost limitless array of couplings, whether
in organizational learning and the learning organization or in learning
climate, learning communities, learning systems, learning cities, learning
towns, learning regions, learning nations, learning economy, learning at
work, on-the-job learning, continuous learning, lifelong learning or, at its
most generic, learning society.Because learning as a discursive term is present in so wide a range of
political and social arenas this means that its power effects are of some
significance. It seems as if learning has the capacity to short-circuit
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Although organizational learning is influenced by the activities of
active agents, it is at the same time a top-down process. Organizational
history, assimilated in organizationa l memory, structures the activities
of these learning agents.(Huysman, 1999: 65)
Furthermore, a learning organization is supposed to be structured to increase
flexibility, with less formalization and more decentralization than in the
traditional bureaucratic organization (see e.g. Senge, 1990; Swieringa &
Wierdsma, 1992; Watkins & Marsick, 1993; West, 1994). This is not,
however, the absence of structure. It may be another kind of structure, but
it is still structure, but we will return in greater detail to this point.Perhaps the most influential formulation of organizational learning is
that which distinguishes between single- and double-loop learning (Argyris,
1992). Single-loop learning is conceptualized as the situation where indi-
viduals perform actions which have consequences. There is a match or
mismatch between the two and on that basis actions are continued or
altered. Double-loop learning occurs when the individuals alteration of
actions occurs on the basis of an examination of governing variables which
are:
. . . the preferred states that individuals strive to satisfice when they
are acting . . . they are the variables that can be inferred by observing
the actions of individuals acting as agents for the organization, to drive
and guide their actions.
(Argyris, 1992: 9)
Needless to say, all of the key terms here are rather suspect, and it must be
questionable, to say the least, whether this formulation, with its implicitrat ionalism, matches the way that any kind of learning really occurs. But the
general idea is that double-loop learning is the more creative, critical, inno-
vative kind, whereas single-loop learning is the plodding, repetitious kind.
Thus:
Single-loop learning is appropr iate for the routine, repetitive issue it
helps get the everyday job done. Double-loop learning is more relevant
for the complex, non-programmable issues it assures that there will
be another day in the future of the organization.(Argyris, 1992: 9)
Despite some noises to the contrary, it is plain that single- and double-loop
learning are hierarchically paired, with the former deferring to the latter. Fiol
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and Lyles (1985), for example, refer to single-loop as lower-level learning,
and to remain at such a level is, apparently, to court disaster:
Unless people acting as agents for organizations and societies are ableto learn how to detect and correct double-loop errors, the survival of
the society may be in doubt.
(Argyris & Schn, 1978: 5)
No doubt, like any such pairing, that of single- and double-loop learning
could be deconstructed and inverted. But what matters for present purposes
is that it is a pairing which enables the argument that the kind of learning
which is antithetical to organization is, specifically, the double-loop kind: itis this which disorganizes and increases variety.
But does it? What is crystal clear from Argyris formulation is that even
double-loop learning is to be understood in terms of the individual as an
agent for the organization, and to assure the future of the organization. So
learning even the double-looped kind turns out to be relentlessly per-
formative. That is to say it is directed towards the achievement of particular
outcomes, and not just any outcomes, but those imputed to the organization
and concerned with the survival and prospering of the organization (Fenwick,
1998; Garrick & Rhodes, 1998). This must therefore imply that some of thegoverning variables, such as those which guide the individual to serve rather
than subvert the organization, remain unexamined. For how does one
question a premise whilst seeing the world through its lenses? (Dery, 1982:
219). In relation to organizational learning, as Fenwick suggests:
employees are supposed to reflect critically on the operational
procedures of the corporat ion, but only its surface . . . learning that
threatens the existence of the organization, such as liberated workersfinding ecological and communicatively nurturing ways to achieve their
purposes that begin with dismantling the organization, are not possible
from the organizations perspective.
(Fenwick, 1998: 149)
Thus double-loop learning does not disorganize and increase variety except
within strictly defined parameters. These parameters are defined by the
organization and therefore, even in this sense, learning and organization, are
not antithetical.We shall return to this argument, because it has significant implications
for claims about the emancipatory nature of organizational learning. But
suppose that such antithesis is conceded. What might then emerge would be
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the claim that learning and organization are not antithetical per se, but rather
that learning (that is, the double-loop kind) is antithetical to particular,
traditional kinds of organization. In short, organizational learning is to be
conceived of as a version of anti-bureaucratic organization. Single-looplearning is bureaucratic learning, having to do with repetition and mundan-
ity, occurring within a given organizational structure, a given set of rules
(Fiol & Lyles, 1985: 807). Double-loop learning is post-bureaucratic being
less structured, less hierarchy-driven, more pro-active, more innovative:
These examples [of learning organizations] have in common systems
thinking, decentralization, continuous learning, and empowerment
keys to a learning organization. The examples are all organization-wide cultural change programs that measurably change the skill and
innovation base in the organization, that alter bureaucratic and hier-
archical relationships, and tha t create collegial, problem solving teams
aligned around a globally understood mission.
(Watkins & Marsick, 1993: 192)
This, of course, is a much weaker claim to make, and if this is taken to be
the organizational learning position then some important consequences flow
from it. First, it means that it is appropriate to make use of many of thefamiliar devices and concepts of organizational analysis to discuss organiz-
ational learning. This would not of course be possible if organizational
learning were established as subverting organization per se. Second, it means
that organizational learning should be considered alongside, or as related to,
a whole array of post-bureaucratic (Heckscher, 1994) approaches and tech-
niques excellence, teamworking, reengineering and so on. Similarly,
organizational learning should be read as part of the sustained assault on
bureaucracy which typifies recent managerial and political discourse (du Gay,2000), a point we will amplify later.
This is certainly explicit in much, if not most, of the organizational
learning literature. Perhaps most famously, Peter Senge positions learning
organizations in distinction to bureaucratic organizations where the wonder
and joy of living have no place (Kofman & Senge, 1993: 22). It is a moot
point, of course, whether bureaucracies are quite as heartless as this and
more critical analysis (e.g. Ritzer, 1993) would suggest (see du Gay, 2000).
Actually, bureaucracies do have some capacity to provide meaning and
community, if not wonder and joy. Equally, it is not clear that learningorganizations do or will have a place for wonder and joy. Indeed, the idea
of the learning organization has been criticized for not valuing the unique
differences between the individuals (Fenwick, 1998), for interfering with the
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employees time with families and friends (Coopey, 1995; Fielding, 2001),
and for assuming that people are necessarily more comfor table with flexible,
post-bureaucratic structures (Victor & Stephens, 1994).
Senges work is certainly, as Fielding (2001) notes, animated by a deeplyhumanistic commitment in the sense that the learning organization is deemed
to be one that is structured towards the realization of the human potential
and in particular those higher order attributes such as caring and creativity.
Senge is absolutely explicit in arguing for an essentialist conception of
humanity: attributes and needs are assumed to be asocially and ahistorically
given (see also Johnson, 1993). In this, Senge, and other organizational
learning proponents, stand in a long line of organizational theorists, certainly
from human relations theory onwards, who argue that creating the circum-stances under which human needs are realized is both morally worthwhile
and will also enhance organizational performance. A more critical line, which
has been widely explored in sociology and organization theory (Friedman,
1977; Roberts, 1984; Rose, 1990), understands such humanistically informed
management as being implicated in subtle and disingenuous forms of control
which are entangled in making and enforcing capitalist and other hegemonic
forms of the organization of work, economy and subjectivity.
The capacity of organizational learning to yield, in principle, new
forms of organizational control is a point developed in some detail by JohnCoopey (1995) in one of the earliest and most incisive of the existing critical
treatments of organizational learning. He argues that employees within
learning organizations are likely to be socialized into self-responsibilized
subject positions. In this, organizational learning may be seen to have much
in common with other new or post-bureaucratic managerial techniques
which have been extensively analysed, largely from a Foucauldian perspec-
tive, in terms of their capacity to instigate regimes of self-surveillance and
self-cont rol (e.g. Sewell & Wilkinson, 1992 on JIT/TQM).The key issue here is that of empowerment. Organizational learning,
like other forms of the post-bureaucracy thesis, posits the new organizational
forms it prescribes as empowering, not in passing but as a central part of
their definition: empowerment is a cornerstone of the learn ing organization
(Watkins & Marsick, 1993: 215). This coupling of empowerment and
learning runs throughout the literature, beginning with the high priest of
organizational learn ing, Peter Senge:
. . . learn ing organizations will, increasingly, be localized organiz-ations, extending the maximum degree of authority and power as far
from the top or corporate center as possible.
(Senge, 1990: 287)
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Near identical formulations abound (e.g. Marquardt & Reynolds, 1994;
Pedler et al., 1991) and it would be repetitious to quote them, but what is
important is to recognize that empowerment is configured as mandatory for
organizational learning to occur:
It is, I believe, possible to begin to implement organizational learning
without a concomitant move toward shared authority, but it is not
possible to move far in that direction.
(Dixon, 1994: 129)
Taken together, the proponents of organizational learning conjure up a
Utopia of democracy and freedom, always contrasted positively with thestifling hierarchy of bureaucracy. However, their opt imism seems less justified
than the darker vision of control which Coopey (1995) art iculates. That this
is so is strikingly illustrated by the formulation of one of the champions of
organizational learning, striking because it so closely mirrors the language
of Foucauldian critics of empowerment:
Right now the word empowerment is a very powerful buzzword. Its
also very dangerous. Just granting power, without some method of
replacing the discipline and order that come out of a command-and-control bureaucracy, produces chaos. We have to learn how to disperse
power so self-discipline can largely replace imposed discipline.
(OBrien in Senge et al., 1994: 14)
Empowerment is here revealed to have resolutely proscribed limits, and
learning can occur only within parameters defined by powerful others
(Fenwick, 1998). Moreover, learning may not just operate within those
constraints but actually increase them so that existing asymmetries of powerare likely to be buttressed by the learning process, giving senior managers
access to newly generated corporate knowledge and language . . . (Coopey,
1995: 209, emphasis added).
Pursuing this point undermines the plausibility of the weak organiz-
ational learning claim. Here the influential work of Ikujiro Nonaka is
particularly illustrative (Nonaka, 1991; Nonaka & Takeuchi, 1994).
Nonaka posits an interaction between explicit and tacit knowledge as the
basis for innovation. Much of what makes an organization work is tacit
knowledge accumulated through experience. Somewhat paradoxically, onthe one hand, N onaka argues that this tacit knowledge cannot be formalized
whilst, on the other hand, claiming that the successful knowledge creating
company builds bridges between the tacit and the explicit such that the
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former becomes the latter, thereby enhancing innovation and adding to the
knowledge-capital of the organization.
Whether or not Nonaka is right about this, there is nothing very new
about it and certainly nothing post-bureaucratic. Even Argyris notes (usingthe loop-learning language) that:
One might say that one of the features of organizations as a social tech-
nology is to decompose double-loop issues into single-loop issues
because they are then more easily programmable and manageable.
(Argyris, 1992: 9)
To put it differently, a desire to render explicit, and at least somewhat tocodify, the tacit knowledge of employees seems to be the guiding thread of
management theory from Taylor onwards (Braverman, 1974; Shenhav,
1999). It was Taylors desire, as embodied in the first principle of scientific
management, to supplant the control which informal knowledge gave to
workers that partly animated his project, just as later human relations
approaches sought access to the informal norms of work groups in an
attempt to align them with formal organizational purposes. So learning
configured in this sense scarcely represents the antithesis of even traditional
organization rather, if it may be allowed, it is its essence. M oreover, learningorganizations, thus configured, by no means create knowledge so much as
access it and seek to control it as exemplified by the continuous improve-
ment associated with teamworking practices (see Adler, 1993).
We are not arguing that there is no difference between organizational
learning and Taylorism. It certainly matters that different languages and
understandings of organization are invoked because these do have the
capacity to construct new social realities. But we do want to challenge the
notion of a fundamental discontinuity between traditional and learning (or,generally, post-bureaucratic) organization. Why? Because it is that claim to
discontinuity which goes with the praising and reinforcing of new organiz-
ational forms and new regimes of work that can be seen as the justificatory
trope of social and political actions in which learning works as a crucial relay.
To tackle this same issue from a different direction, suppose it were to
be conceded for the sake of argument that learning represents some new
alternative to traditional organization. What understanding of learning goes
beyond the walls of academia through the artefacts and engagements of its
members, for example, in the form of conferences, books, training activityand research processes informing policies? Contu and Willmot t (2003) have,
in this respect, shown how a conceptualization such as that of situated
learning theory and community of practice, embraced by companies such as
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Xerox and IBM, has many radical elements. Yet in the translation (Feyer-
abend, 1975) into the field of management, its meaning has been naturalized
into a functionalist or systemic ontology for organization. This has facili-
tated the re-appropr iation of some of its most radical concepts, such as legiti-mate peripheral participation, from a valuable and radical analytical tool
into a technocratic tool of organisational engineering (Contu & Willmott,
2003: 289).
Examples such as this show the plasticity of learning discourse and its
capacity to shape and be shaped by social realities. In the following section
we elaborate on how learning has been mobilized, translated and prescribed
in the field of policy making as well as in the commentaries on the current
social conjuncture, typically known as knowledge era, showing what thisdiscourse implies and excludes in the process.
Learning, politics and the politics of truth
The connection of the terms learning and organization is significant as part
of a wider understanding of the social role of education as being linked to
performance, in the sense of corporate and economic needs. Of course, it
is well known that since the 1980s a utilitarian conception of education hasbecome increasingly dominant, so that education is increasingly conceived of
in terms of vocationalism. Education, whether primary, tertiary or higher, is
seen more and more as training for economic functioning, and an instru-
mental and credentialist understanding of education was encouraged (see,
e.g. Gewirtz, 2002). Yet this narrowing of education, for all that it some-
times seemed overwhelming, never really exerted the hegemonic influence
which New Right ideologues might have wished for. As their repeated at tacks
on the education establishment and trendy teachers make clear, there hasremained a strong attachment within the education system to notions of indi-
vidual emancipation, social progressivism and disinterested study (see Wolf,
2002).
The promulgation of learning discourse in the 1990s can be read as a
response to these resistances through the invocation of a seemingly more
benign language which superficially resonates with progressivism whilst
maintaining an underlying commitment to functional or utilitarian concep-
tions of education. Who, indeed, can be against learning? Educators of all
sorts find it easy to commit to a term which was a part of their traditionallexicon. Learning, after all, seems to leave indeterminate the content of what
is learned (Fenwick, 1998). Learning might encompass anything from
reading Derrida to making petrol bombs.
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However, learning discourse codes a much more restrictive set of prac-
tices than might be assumed. The political rationale for learning appears to
be a recognition of belief that it is in the vanguard of post-industrialism.
Public policy, in the UK, EU and elsewhere, is predicated on claims thatcapital is mobile, technology can migrate quickly and goods can be made in
low cost countries and shipped to developed markets (UK Competitiveness
White Paper, 1998: 10). Given this reality, competitive advantage must be
found, not in traditional means of production but ra ther in knowledge, skills
and creativity (UK Competitiveness White Paper, 1998: 10). Lifelong
learning becomes a means through which economies and organizations can
re-tread workforces and labour pools to adapt to these changes. Therefore,
on this account, as advanced industrial economies become more knowledge-based or knowledge-intensive, learning becomes a key to competition. In
the UK, the 1998 Green Paper, revealingly titled The Learning Age: A renais-
sance for a new Britain, makes this explicit. For, as the foreword by the (then)
Secretary of State for Education explains:
the fostering of an enquiring mind and the love of learning are essen-
tial for our future success. To achieve stable and sustainable growth,
we will need a well-educated, well equipped and adaptable labour
force.
Such thinking is by no means confined to the UK. The EU has a 10-year
mission plan:
to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge based
economy . . . capable of sustained economic growth . . . Lifelong
Learning is a core element of this strategy, central not only to compet-
itiveness and employability but also social inclusion, active citizenshipand personal development.
(Lifelong Learning, 2002. See also Towards the Learning Society,
1995)
These formulations entail several sleights of hand. The promotion of an
enquiring mind and love for learning, social inclusion and personal develop-
ment does not necessarily have much to do with an adaptable labour force
and economic competitiveness. Indeed, enquiring minds might be lead to
question the assumptions about economic growth, competition and theeconomic primacy of the West which permeate these policy promotions.
They might also question the chain of equivalence between social inclusion,
personal development, and competitiveness and employability, which tends
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to equate democratic and humanist values with those of utilitar ianism, profit-
ability and exploitation. But, of course, we are being disingenuous: those
kinds of enquiry are not at all what learning policy has as its aim. In exactly
the same way as organizational learning restricts and challenges the kind oflearning which can acceptably be undertaken, so too does the wider invoca-
tion of learning in society proscribe the roles that are taken by and ascribed
to its citizens/workers. It is for this reason that it is possible and perhaps even
commendable to be against learning.
It should be plain from this comparison why we have stressed that
organizational learning cannot be abstracted from learning discourse. It is
not just that the same term is used, it is that the same understandings and
practices are associated with those terms. And, even more importantly, thevarious invocations of learning as would be expected from a discursive
formation are mutually re-enforcing. For there is plainly a common
rat ionale between the case for new, post-bureaucratic, learning organizations
and conceptions of a new, globalized knowledge-based economy. In order to
compete, both organizations and economies must change in related ways.
Moreover, to the extent that capital is held to be globalized, nation states
which fail to encourage learning amongst their citizens will not be favoured
sites for inward investment. So a common imaginaire unites different kinds
of agencies in the construction of learning discourse. This commonality,which can be read as one of the most powerful ideological2 stances struc-
turing the current conjuncture, is, as we have seen, evident in the UK since
the advent of New Labour to government in 1997 and their programme of
modernization of the social fabric of the UK, as has been very widely
discussed (Callinicos, 2001; du Gay, 2000; Heffernan, 2001; Newman,
2001). New Labour politicians articulate very much the same language of
change, competitiveness, knowledge, leadership, etc. found in contemporary
managerialism (Clarke & Newman, 1997). And a similar stress is put uponlearning, with one erstwhile education ministry being re-designated as that
for lifelong learning. Thus, what is in process is a kind of interchange in
which government embraces business values, whilst business claims to be no
longer solely about profit, but also about social visions of empowered
lifelong learners (Gee et al., 1996: 223).
But the political implications of learning discourse are more extensive
than this rapprochement of nation-state governments, supra-governmental
bodies and corporate organizations would imply. For it is deeply significant
that the rewriting of desirable forms of organizational structure implicitly and often explicitly goes hand in hand with claims that the nature of the
polity has fundamentally shifted. No one suggested that the introduction of,
say, matrix structures into organizations bespoke of such a shift and yet the
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emergence of post-bureaucratic organizational forms has been heralded as
presaging, variously, the end of organized capitalism (Lash & Urry, 1987),
the start of post-capitalist society (Drucker, 1993) or the rise of the network
society (Castells, 1996). In this way, learning discourse becomes emblematicof a series of much wider actual or alleged shifts.
Hence, as we said earlier, organizational learn ing cannot be considered
just in relat ion to management/fads but as a term, linked to other terms, that
requires evaluation and problematization as such. At that point in the
discussion our a rgument was that we should not under-value the significance
of what appear, at first, to be merely organizational or managerial changes.
But the converse also applies: we should not over-value them. This may be
illustrated by reference to Castells influential work on the network society,mentioned above. For a centra l plank of his argument for the rise of network
society is transformations in the nature of organizations, work and employ-
ment (Castells, 1996). Here, Castells not only explicitly invokes the litera-
ture on organizational learning (e.g. Castells, 1996), but places this within
what he takes to be a fundamental shift from Fordism to Toyotism, which
is another version of the bureaucracy/post-bureaucracy shift.
We know, of course, how often, in various guises, this shift has been
identified. But Castells takes claims about it to be entirely unproblematic
(that is, he takes it as an accomplished fact that this shift has occurred) eventhough there is plenty of work suggesting otherwise (e.g. Warhurst &
Thompson, 1998; Thompson & Smith, 2001). To take a recent example,
Delbridges (1998) comparat ive ethnography of a traditional and a Japanized
factory shows how the differences between them at the level of labour
process practices are fairly superficial. Plainly, this is related to the point we
made earlier that organizational learning is not so different to the traditional
concerns of scientific management.
However, we do not wish simply, or even primarily, to argue thatnothing has changed. We are trying to suggest a need to steer between, or
away from, two kinds of realist position. One says that organiz-
ational/learning is just so much froth, rhetoric or management-speak and
that really the fundamentals of control and exploitation remain intact (cf.
those who claim that the learn ing organization is only a buzzword/fashion).
The other says that really what has occurred is a fundamental transform-
ation of economy and society. Almost every writer on organizationa l learning
explains the need for it by reference to changes in the environment (Argyris
& Schn, 1978; Pedler et al., 1991; Senge et al., 1999). And, as we haveseen, the policies of countries moving towards neo-liberalism are also
justified in the light of unrelent less changes in the forces and organizat ion of
production. This is also true for neo-Marxists authors such as Hardt and
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network that is learning discourse. It is this ensemble, which makes learning
a significant ideological tool and a real, practical force. It expresses a kind
of mood, or summons up a nebulous but seductive and futuristic vision, in
which old conflicts, whether organizational or social e.g. access toresources, the distribution of wealth, the operations of power are rendered
invisible. And this is achieved not through some totalitarian control over
information but through the very power of freedom (Rose, 1999) bestowed
by learning.
In this respect, our critique has endeavoured to go beyond a simple
rebuke or rebuttal. Our case has been not only, or not primarily, that of
arguing for the falseness of learning discourse. Rather we have tried to high-
light and make explicit the very truth which is engendered through thisdiscourse. It is by actually exploring the truth effects of th is discourse that
it is possible to open a space for a challenge that is subversive because it ques-
tions how those effects are obtained and what they leave out. This is what
we have identified as the no alternative trope which is woven into the
learning discourse that, making it difficult if not impossible to be against
learning. We have therefore considered how the signifier learning works as
a nodal point which constitutes (legitimizing and sustaining) yet glosses over
antagonistic and contradictory organizational and social practices. In
connecting learning and knowledge to empowerment and new, necessaryorganizational structures, learning discourse promotes new locales in which
individual learners can prove and improve their own potential as workers
and as citizens. Thus attention has been dedicated to making explicit the
extent to which policy making mobilizes the learning signifier and thereby
pro-poses a notion of society, self-hood and citizenship.
The universal and uncritical acceptance of learn ing shows just how far
the ideological move of appropriating and suturing a notion of society,
organization and self around learning has gone. This makes it difficult butnot, as we hope we have demonstrated, impossible and at the same time
important to argue against learning.3
Notes
1 Throughout this article, we leave our theoretical commitments somewhat in paren-theses. We want the article to be read as a theoretically informed argument aboutlearning rather than as an application of a theoretical position to learning. But themain sources, fairly obviously, are Laclau, Foucault, iek and, somewhere in thebackground, M arx and Gramsci.
2 The concept of ideology we are drawing upon here is that developed by Laclau (1996)and iek (1994). Without entering here the maze of the intellectual discussion on thedeath or life of ideology, as Laclau puts it the ideological operation par excellence
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consists of attributing that impossible role of closure to a particular content that isradically incommensurab le with it. In other words the operat ion of closure is imposs-ible but at the same time necessary, impossible because of the constitutive dislocationwhich lies at the heart of any structural ar rangement, necessary because without thatfictitious fixing of meaning there would not be meaning at all (1996: 205). The possi-bility of constituting the community as a coherent whole around the notion of learningprojecting the social in the imaginary of a learning society represents a powerful andcomplete attempt at the ideological closure Laclau discusses.
3 Important as it may be, it is of course always possible, and sensible, to question theextent to which an academic article can make a difference, in this case by shiftingapprehensions of learning. This is a complex issue which faces critical work of allkinds, and can hardly be dealt with satisfactorily in this article. It is obviously thecase that any individual article has only a limited impact upon a relatively closedcommunity. However, as a contribution to wider projects, such as those within thecritical management studies community, it is possible for the cumulative effects to
be greater than is immediately obvious, especially when these projects begin toinform teaching. In relation to learning, so muted have been the voices of critiquethat anything which opens up a space of dissent seems to us to be worthwhile. Forfuller discussions of this issue, see Fournier and Grey (2000) and Parker (2002).
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Alessia Contu i s a Le c tu re r i n t h e D e p ar tm e n t o f M an age me n t L e arn i n g
a t Lancas te r Un ive rs i ty . She i s i n te res ted in the no t ion o f po l i t i cs as
hegemon ic a r t i cu la t i on and i ts s ign ificance fo r c r i t i ca l management
stu d i e s. H e r w r i t i n g h as fo cu sed o n th e co n ce p t o f co m mu n i t y o f p ra ct i ce
and i ts re la t i on w i th power . She i s cu r ren t l y exp lo r ing the po l i t i cs o f
l ear n ing and o r gan izat io nal change in t he co n tex t o f t he d ig ita l i ndust r y.
[E-ma i l: a.con t u@ lancaste r .ac .uk ]
Chris Grey, BA Econ , PhD (M ancheste r ) , i s cu r ren t l y Sen io r Lec tu r e r
a t the Un ive rs i ty o f Cambr idge hav ing p rev ious ly worked a t Leeds and
U M IST. H is m a in r esearch in te r ests a re in o r gan izat io na l theo r y and
cr i t ica l m anagement s tud ies and he h as publ ished w ide ly in these areasin journa ls inc lud ing H u m a n R e la t io n s , Jo u r n a l o f M a n a g em e n t St u d ie s an d
Organ iza t ion S tud ies . H e i s Ed i to r - i n -Ch ie f o f M a n a g em e n t L ea r n in g , a
m e mb e r o f t h e Execu t i ve C o m m i t te e o f t h e M an age me n t Ed u cat i o n a n d
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Human Relations 56(8)9 5 2
D e ve lo p m e n t D i vi si o n o f t h e A m e r i can A cad e my o f Ma n age me n t , a
m em ber o f the D fESs N at io na l Educa t iona l Research For um and C ha ir
o f t h e M an age me n t R e se arch A d v iso r y Fo r u m to t h e N at i o n a l C o l l egefo r Schoo l Leader sh ip .
Anders rtenblad i s a teacher and r esearcher at H almstad U n iver s ity ,
i n Sw eden . H is m ain research in te r ests a re th e sp read o f (popu lar )
management i deas in genera l , and ideas connec ted to know ledge and
lear n ing in par t icu lar . H e has publ ished ar t ic les o n t hese subject s in
M a n a g e m e n t L ea r n i n g, I n t e r n a t io n a l Jo u r n a l o f M a n a g e m e n t R e vi ew s an d T h e
Learn ing O rgan iza t ion .
[E -ma i l: ander s.o r tenb lad@ set .hh .se ]
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