How Management Science, Consultancies and Business Companies (Do not) Learn from Each Other. Applying Concepts of Learning to Different Types of Organizations and to Interorganizational Learning

Alfred Kieser ()
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Alfred Kieser: Lehrstuhl für ABWL und Organisation, Postal: L 13, 15, D-68131 Mannheim

No 98-20, Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Publications from Sonderforschungsbereich 504, Universität Mannheim, Sonderforschungsbereich 504, University of Mannheim

Abstract: The central thesis of this paper is that management science, consultancy, and manage-ment practice are social systems, that are on the one hand, dependent on each other, but that, on the other hand, pursue different goals, are subjected to different norms, and therefore develop their own rationalities and their own rhetorics. The consequence is that each system, over time, builds up and cultivates language barriers vis Ó vis the respective other systems. An analysis on the basis of theories of organizational learning shows that consulting proj-ects especially trigger problems of superstitious learning and learning under ambiguity, since it is impossible to properly evaluate their impact on performance. Another result is that consultants generally do not counterbalance their clients' tendency towards exploita-tion at the cost of exploration. Researchers seem to be even less successful than consultants in their attempts to support learning of organizations. This presents a problem to them, since as management scien-tists they are under pressure from practice to demonstrate the usefulness of their science. The consequence that follows from this analysis is that research and the development of methods for consulting cannot profit very much from each other, at least in the field of organization theory, and should therefore be decoupled to some extent.

Pages: 36 pages
Date: 1998-08-30
Note: Financial Support from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, SFB 504, at the University of Mannheim, is gratefully acknowledged. The author is thankful to Nikolaus Beck, Berrit Ernst, Cornelia Hegele, Peter Walgenbach, and Michael Woywode for helpful comments.
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