Learning to Change: An Information Perspective on Learning in the Organization

Change in the organization is usually analysed in the context of the organization in which the change is taking place. This is quite understandable and yields recognition of those internal factors most instrumental in the change process. From this organizational perspective, external factors seem to play a marginal role in change, at most a catalytic role. Change is always relative, but not simply to what the organization has done before. Organizational change should also be relative to what is going on outside the organization. What appears to be major progress from an organizational perspective may look like stagnation in a wider context. This paper suggests that notions of the “learning organization” have often emphasied internal aspects of the change process and neglected the external. In particular, they seem to have paid little attention to the essential contribution of external information to internal change. Information is so fundamental to the learning required for deliberate change that it is not unreasonable to see change as an information process. This view affords an information perspective of change in the organization, and a revealing contrast to the usual organizational perspective. Change in the organization is seen as a process in which the finding and acquisition of external information are critical. So, too, is mixing these external bits of information with those already in use within the organization. The result is not just another model of what is already understood about change in the organization. It has profound implications for those who seek to understand and manage the process of change. The information perspective indicates that organizational change is largely dependent on the information activities of individual employees acting on their own account as much as that of the organization. These activities may be—and sometimes must be—beyond the control of the organization. Thus, those who would manage change face the challenge of managing without control. The information perspective suggests that the concentration on structure and control inherent in notions of the learning organization may be mimical to the real learning required for organizational change.