Organizational metacognition

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Organizational metacognition is knowing what an organization knows, [1] a concept related to metacognition, organizational learning, the learning organization and sensemaking. It is used to describe how organizations and teams develop an awareness of their own thinking, [2] learning how to learn, [3] [4] [5] where awareness of ignorance can motivate learning. [6]

Contents

The organizational deutero-learning concept identified by Argyris and Schon [7] [8] defines when organizations learn how to carry out single-loop and double-loop learning. It has also been described as learning how to learn [9] through a process of collaborative inquiry and reflection (evaluative inquiry).

"When an organization engages in deutero-learning its members learn about the previous context for learning. They reflect on and inquire into previous episodes of organizational learning, or failure to learn. They discover what they did that facilitated or inhibited learning, they invent new strategies for learning, they produce these strategies, and they evaluate and generalize what they have produced" [8]

Learning what facilitates and inhibits learning enables organizations to develop new strategies to develop their knowledge. For example, identification of a gap between perceived performance (such as satisfaction) and actual performance (outcomes) creates an awareness that makes the organization understand that learning needs to occur, driving appropriate changes to the environment and processes. [10]

Learning prototypes

Wijnhoven (2001) grouped four learning prototypes that best meet learning needs, the match between these needs and learning norms dictating an organization's learning capabilities; deutero-learning is the acquisition of these capabilities. [11]

  1. knowledge gap analysis [12]
  2. classification of problems to select operationally required knowledge and skills [13]
  3. coping with organizational tremors and jolts by anticipation, response and adjustments of behavioural repertoires [14]
  4. decisional uncertainty measurement [15]

Terminological ambiguities

Organizational metacognition and organizational deutero-learning have both been described as the concept or phenomenon where organizations learn how to learn. [3] [9] Argyris and Schon (1978) place deutero-learning into their cognitive theory of action framework, neglecting aspects of adaptive behaviour and context core to Bateson's (1972) original definitions. In order to resolve terminological ambiguities, Visser (2007) reviewed and reformulated the concept of deutero-learning as, "the behavioral adaptation to patterns of conditioning in relationships in organizational contexts, distinguishing it from meta-learning and planned learning" (pg. 659). [16]

Significance

Organizational metacognition is considered a key norm to the prescriptive concept of the learning organization. [17] [18] Its significance has been recognized by industry, the military [1] and in disaster response. [19]

Examples in practice

Examples of poor metacognition (deutero-learning) have been described in knowledge network environments,

"Knowledge networking is important to most competitive enterprises today. Enterprise knowledge is becoming ever more specialized in nature, so no single person or organization can know everything in detail. Hence addressing complex, multidisciplinary problems requires developing and accessing a network of knowledgeable people and organizations. The problem is, many otherwise knowledgeable people and organizations are not fully aware of their knowledge networks, and even more problematic, they are not aware that they are not aware. This focuses our attention toward organizational metacognition." [1]

Related Research Articles

Organization development (OD) is the study and implementation of practices, systems, and techniques that affect organizational change. The goal of which is to modify a group's/organization's performance and/or culture. The organizational changes are typically initiated by the group's stakeholders. OD emerged from human relations studies in the 1930s, during which psychologists realized that organizational structures and processes influence worker behavior and motivation.

Organizational learning is the process of creating, retaining, and transferring knowledge within an organization. An organization improves over time as it gains experience. From this experience, it is able to create knowledge. This knowledge is broad, covering any topic that could better an organization. Examples may include ways to increase production efficiency or to develop beneficial investor relations. Knowledge is created at four different units: individual, group, organizational, and inter organizational.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Action research</span> Methodology for social science research

Action research is a philosophy and methodology of research generally applied in the social sciences. It seeks transformative change through the simultaneous process of taking action and doing research, which are linked together by critical reflection. Kurt Lewin, then a professor a MIT, first coined the term "action research" in 1944. In his 1946 paper "Action Research and Minority Problems" he described action research as "a comparative research on the conditions and effects of various forms of social action and research leading to social action" that uses "a spiral of steps, each of which is composed of a circle of planning, action and fact-finding about the result of the action".

Chris Argyris was an American business theorist and professor at Yale School of Management and Harvard Business School. Argyris, like Richard Beckhard, Edgar Schein and Warren Bennis, is known as a co-founder of organization development, and known for seminal work on learning organizations.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Concept map</span> Diagram showing relationships among concepts

A concept map or conceptual diagram is a diagram that depicts suggested relationships between concepts. Concept maps may be used by instructional designers, engineers, technical writers, and others to organize and structure knowledge.

Personal knowledge management (PKM) is a process of collecting information that a person uses to gather, classify, store, search, retrieve and share knowledge in their daily activities and the way in which these processes support work activities. It is a response to the idea that knowledge workers need to be responsible for their own growth and learning. It is a bottom-up approach to knowledge management (KM).

Adaptive management, also known as adaptive resource management or adaptive environmental assessment and management, is a structured, iterative process of robust decision making in the face of uncertainty, with an aim to reducing uncertainty over time via system monitoring. In this way, decision making simultaneously meets one or more resource management objectives and, either passively or actively, accrues information needed to improve future management. Adaptive management is a tool which should be used not only to change a system, but also to learn about the system. Because adaptive management is based on a learning process, it improves long-run management outcomes. The challenge in using the adaptive management approach lies in finding the correct balance between gaining knowledge to improve management in the future and achieving the best short-term outcome based on current knowledge. This approach has more recently been employed in implementing international development programs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Donald Schön</span>

Donald Alan Schön was an American philosopher and professor in urban planning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He developed the concept of reflective practice and contributed to the theory of organizational learning.

In business management, a learning organization is a company that facilitates the learning of its members and continuously transforms itself. The concept was coined through the work and research of Peter Senge and his colleagues.

Metacognition is an awareness of one's thought processes and an understanding of the patterns behind them. The term comes from the root word meta, meaning "beyond", or "on top of". Metacognition can take many forms, such as reflecting on one's ways of thinking and knowing when and how to use particular strategies for problem-solving. There are generally two components of metacognition: (1) knowledge about cognition and (2) regulation of cognition. A metacognitive model differs from other scientific models in that the creator of the model is per definition also enclosed within it. Scientific models are often prone to distancing the observer from the object or field of study whereas a metacognitive model in general tries to include the observer in the model.

Employability refers to the attributes of a person that make that person able to gain and maintain employment.

Reflective practice is the ability to reflect on one's actions so as to take a critical stance or attitude towards one's own practice and that of one's peers, engaging in a process of continuous adaptation and learning. According to one definition it involves "paying critical attention to the practical values and theories which inform everyday actions, by examining practice reflectively and reflexively. This leads to developmental insight". A key rationale for reflective practice is that experience alone does not necessarily lead to learning; deliberate reflection on experience is essential.

Sensemaking or sense-making is the process by which people give meaning to their collective experiences. It has been defined as "the ongoing retrospective development of plausible images that rationalize what people are doing". The concept was introduced to organizational studies by Karl E. Weick in the late 1960's and has affected both theory and practice. Weick intended to encourage a shift away from the traditional focus of organization theorists on decision-making and towards the processes that constitute the meaning of the decisions that are enacted in behavior.

A community of practice (CoP) is a group of people who "share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly". The concept was first proposed by cognitive anthropologist Jean Lave and educational theorist Etienne Wenger in their 1991 book Situated Learning. Wenger then significantly expanded on the concept in his 1998 book Communities of Practice.

Knowledge sharing is an activity through which knowledge is exchanged among people, friends, peers, families, communities, or within or between organizations. It bridges the individual and organizational knowledge, improving the absorptive and innovation capacity and thus leading to sustained competitive advantage of companies as well as individuals. Knowledge sharing is part of the knowledge management process.

Human Systems Intervention (HSI) is the design and implementation of interventions in social settings where adults are confronted with the need to change their perspectives, attitudes, and actions. Depending on the philosophical and theoretical orientation of the intervener, the process can be approached as a planned, systematic, and collaborative activity.

Double-loop learning entails the modification of goals or decision-making rules in the light of experience. The first loop uses the goals or decision-making rules, the second loop enables their modification, hence "double-loop". Double-loop learning recognises that the way a problem is defined and solved can be a source of the problem. This type of learning can be useful in organizational learning since it can drive creativity and innovation, going beyond adapting to change to anticipating or being ahead of change.

Organizational Information Theory (OIT) is a communication theory, developed by Karl Weick, offering systemic insight into the processing and exchange of information within organizations and among its members. Unlike the past structure-centered theory, OIT focuses on the process of organizing in dynamic, information-rich environments. Given that, it contends that the main activity of organizations is the process of making sense of equivocal information. Organizational members are instrumental to reduce equivocality and achieve sensemaking through some strategies — enactment, selection, and retention of information. With a framework that is interdisciplinary in nature, organizational information theory's desire to eliminate both ambiguity and complexity from workplace messaging builds upon earlier findings from general systems theory and phenomenology.

Psychological safety is the belief that one will not be punished or humiliated for speaking up with ideas, questions, concerns, or mistakes. In teams, it refers to team members believing that they can take risks without being shamed by other team members. In psychologically safe teams, team members feel accepted and respected. It is also the most studied enabling condition in group dynamics and team learning research.

Team Based Learning Organisation (TBLO)

References

  1. 1 2 3 Looney, J.P.; Nissen, Mark E. (2007-01-01). "Organizational Metacognition: The Importance of Knowing the Knowledge Network". 2007 40th Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences (HICSS'07). pp. 190c. doi:10.1109/HICSS.2007.419. S2CID   6825631.
  2. ↑ Riding, R. J. (2000-01-01). Cognitive Styles. Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN   9781567504590.
  3. 1 2 McCarthy, Alma; Garavan, Thomas N. (2008-06-19). "Team Learning and Metacognition: A Neglected Area of HRD Research and Practice". Advances in Developing Human Resources . 10 (4): 509–524. doi:10.1177/1523422308320496. ISSN   1523-4223. S2CID   144953988.
  4. ↑ Briñol, Pablo; DeMarree, Kenneth (2012-04-27). Social Metacognition. Taylor & Francis. ISBN   9781135234096.
  5. ↑ "Kellogg School of Management | Northwestern University". www.kellogg.northwestern.edu. Retrieved 2015-12-11.
  6. ↑ Nevis, Edwin C.; Dibella, Anthony J.; Gould, Janet M. (15 January 1995). "Understanding Organizations as Learning Systems". MIT Sloan Management Review. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
  7. ↑ Schon, Donald A. (1975-01-01). "Deutero-learning in organizations: Learning for". Organizational Dynamics. 4 (1): 2–16. doi:10.1016/0090-2616(75)90001-7.
  8. 1 2 Argyris, Chris; Schon, Donald A. (1978-05-18). Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective: 001 . Reading, Mass: Addison Wesley Longman Publishing Co. ISBN   9780201001747.
  9. 1 2 Preskill, Hallie (1998-10-20). PRESKILL: EVALUATIVE INQUIRY FOR. Thousand Oaks, Calif: Sage Publications, Incorporated. ISBN   9780761904540.
  10. ↑ "Organizational Learning - Knowledge Center". www.12manage.com. Retrieved 2015-12-14.
  11. ↑ Wijnhoven, Fons (2001-06-01). "Acquiring Organizational Learning Norms A Contingency Approach for Understanding Deutero Learning" (PDF). Management Learning. 32 (2): 181–200. doi:10.1177/1350507601322002. ISSN   1350-5076. S2CID   144716960.
  12. ↑ Simonin, Bernard L.; Helleloid, Duane (1993-08-01). "Do Organizations Learn? an Empirical Test of Organizational Learning in International Strategic Alliances". Academy of Management Proceedings. 1993 (1): 222–226. doi:10.5465/AMBPP.1993.10316992. ISSN   0065-0668.
  13. ↑ Tampoe, Mahen (1994-08-01). "Exploiting the core competences of your organization". Long Range Planning. 27 (4): 66–77. doi:10.1016/0024-6301(94)90057-4.
  14. ↑ Meyer, John W. "Conclusion: Institutionalization and the rationality of formal organizational structure." Organizational environments: Ritual and rationality (1992): 261-282.
  15. ↑ Duncan, R., and A. Weiss. "Organizational Learning: A Theory of Action Perspective." MA: Addison-Weslay. Morgan, G. and Ramirez (1979): 1-28.
  16. ↑ Visser, Max (2007-04-01). "Deutero-Learning in Organizations: A Review and a Reformulation". Academy of Management Review. 32 (2): 659–667. doi:10.5465/AMR.2007.24351883. hdl: 2066/19481 . ISSN   0363-7425. S2CID   10107525.
  17. ↑ Senge, Peter M. (2006-04-06). The Fifth Discipline: The art and practice of the learning organization: Second edition (2nd Revised ed.). London: Random House Business. ISBN   9781905211203.
  18. ↑ Weick, Karl E. (1995-07-20). Sensemaking in Organizations . Thousand Oaks, Calif.: SAGE Publications, Inc. ISBN   9780803971776.
  19. ↑ "Business professor receives funds to study disaster response". news.emory.edu. 2014-12-30. Retrieved 2015-12-15.
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