To Avoid Organizational Crises, Unlearn

Abstract

Abstract Organizations learn. Then they encase their learning in programs and standard operating procedures that members execute routinely. These programs and procedures generate inertia, and the inertia increases when organizations socialize new members and reward conformity to prescribed roles. As their successes accumulate, organizations emphasize efficiency, grow complacent, and learn too little. To survive, organizations must also unlearn. Top managers ‘ ideas dominate organizational learning, but they also prevent unlearning. Encased learning produces blindness and rigidity that may breed full-blown crises. Our studies of organizations facing crises show that past learning inhibits new learning: Before organizations will try new ideas, they must unlearn old ones by discovering their inadequacies and then discarding them. Organizations in serious crises often remove their top managers as a way to erase the dominating ideas, to disconfirm past programs, to become receptive to new ideas, and to symbolize change.