Collaborative Technologies and Organizational Learning

• Authors: Robert Neilson
• Venue: Collaborative Technologies and Organizational Learning
• Year: 1997

From the Book:In the post-organizational reengineering era, public and private organizations are searching for a new holy grail. Reengineering gurus and corporate downsizing executioners are in the midst of their respective "mea culpa" acts, claiming that they may have erred too much on the side of structural organizational interventions at the expense of behavioral interventions. Concurrently, announcements for a myriad of conferences, symposia, and workshops for those seeking new insight cross my desk daily showcasing the latest and greatest in balanced scorecards, knowledge management, beyond reengineering, organizational outcome measurement, complexity and non-linear dynamics in a linear world, and so on. From a technological perspective, organizations are transferring larger and larger bitstreams of information across, within, and among organizational units and strategic partners. Much of this information is now transmitted using collaborative technologies (groupware) or intranets in the hopes that information will be shared across organizational boundaries thereby "magically" creating an organizational vice individual asset. These seemingly disparate occurrences have one thing in common. The concept of organizational learning permeates much of the continuing discussion among post-reengineering advocates, groupware proponents and those who organize the plethora of conferences that seem to spring to life like mushrooms. Organizational learning is a strong candidate to replace reengineering as the next intellectual bastion on the continuously twisting road to increased organizational productivity. However, there is a paucity of research on how transferring intellectual materials via groupware products fosters organizational learning. This book provides a first glance into intellectual intersection between organizational learning and collaborative technologies. The book is intended to serve two audiences: (1) the academic community; and, (2) public and private sector practitioners who seek greater understanding of the underlying bases behind organizational learning. Most importantly, the book contains practice prescriptions for those interested in increasing the chances of successfully implementing a collaborative technology (i.e., Lotus Notes驴). The book begins with an analysis of the organizational learning, intellectual capital and collaborative technologies literature to ascertain if there are commonalities or themes that run through the literature. Next, theoretical bases are discussed and critically reviewed using a series five questions as a focal point of discussion followed by a discussion of the methodology used in the case study. Results of an exploratory case study are presented including a series of practice prescriptions followed by a final section on building organizational learning understanding through metaphors. Throughout the book, I have tried to avoid taking a techno-utopist view of the subject matter, attempting instead to steer a course between the techno-utopists and techno-phobics.