A few of you (Esther and Kimber) have already blogged about learning organizations and Weick's theory of sensemaking. According to Peter Senge, the learning organization exhibits flexible mental models. From Weick's perspective, decision making in organization is for the most part retrospective, organizations are viewed as communities, and managers are symbol manipulators.
One of my colleagues from graduate school and I have just started working on a business and professional speaking book that uses these two approaches to organizations as the theoretical foundation of the text. In the book's proposal, we argued, "Conceptualizing organizations—and communicators—as continually learning underscores the importance of effectively gathering and analyzing information, applying that knowledge in practical ways, evaluating the outcome, and updating knowledge pools and skill sets. In this fast-paced, always on, always connected information age, students must develop flexible learning styles to make sense of and adapt to an ever-changing environment." The concepts of sensemaking and learning apply not only to organizations, but also to how we plan to present the information in the book.
We recently signed a contract for Communicating for Business and the Professions: Knowledge and Skills with Cengage and hope to start writing soon!
~ Professor Cyborg
Week 5: Blog 4
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Web Lecture: Procedural Democracy
I think the main point of this concept is that without it, you cannot have
democracy at all. A profound example of this i...
14 years ago
1 comment:
Pr. Cyborg, your new book sounds interesting because the ability to make sense out of situation/data/people and flexibility are key elements to becoming a successful professional. In one of my undergraduate classes, we were required to team up with graduate students of Engineering Management where 80% of our grade depended on that joint project. At that time, all the students felt frustrated because of the virtual collaboration between business students and engineering students. The professor probably received bad evaluation due to the high tension that everyone felt through out that semester. But when I look back at that class, I feel like I learned the most from that class. Now I understand that the class was purposefully designed and administered that way with so much vagueness and so many sudden changes. The professor actually created a true learning environment for us by giving us a peek into the practical and ever changing business world where we all must learn to make sense of what is thrown at us by being flexible, adapt, and act accordingly.
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