INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MANAGEMENT

Information Technology Management And Organisational Learning

Information Technology Management And Organisational Learning

Knowledge can not be directly managed but only indirectly through the carriers of the knowledge - the people (through human resource management) and the `technology (through information management and information technology management) and the interaction between them (information flows and communication). Of the two branches in the management of knowledge (strongly coupled to the subjective versus objective nature of knowledge) the authors would side with the management of people, since people are the primary source of knowledge and technology the secondary (as storage medium of knowledge transferred from people). Placing technology first is' almost certain to invite failure as (most) people resent being made to feel inferior to a machine. But although people possess the knowledge, technology is necessary for the orderly storage, retrieval, and sharing of knowledge. A balance of these two approaches is the ideal and each organisation must determine where this balance lies in their situation.

Organizational learning considers organizations to be cognitive entities, capable of reflecting on and modifying their own behavior. The burgeoning literature can be separated into two groups (Argyris and Schon 2006:12), On the one hand, organizational learning has evolved with an academic orientation, seeking to explain how organizations learn new responses and why they often fail to learn. Although this literature has progressed since the late 1970s, it has been the object of many controversies and criticisms. Huber (2001:85), for example, concluded that organizational learning lacked empirical studies, a cumulative tradition, and suffered from a lack of intellectual coordination among its proponents. Yet the interest in organizational learning has never been stronger, as evidenced by the number of recent articles providing conceptual clarification and focus (eg., Dodgson 2003, Jones 2005, Miner and Mezias 2006:35-59). On the other hand, practitioners have a strong interest in learning organizations, which achieve higher performance through their ability to learn from past experiences (Senge 2000:10). Learning organizations treat experience as empirical evidence that can be used to validate the assumed causal relationships between organizational actions and desired outcomes. In learning organizations, human capacity is expanded through training and teamwork, ensuring the continuation of inquiry and experimentation. Writings on learning organizations, although sometimes considered halve and uncritical, offer prescriptions about the structures and technologies that enable organizational learning.

Although organizational learning adopts a more active and optimistic posture toward organizational change than the theories considered previously in this paper, it too embodies a logic of opposition in the concept of organizational memory. Organizational memory is typically defined as understandings shared by members of an organization about its identity, mental maps, and routines for thought and action (Fiol and Lyles 2005, Walsh and Ungson 2001:11). These components of memory are knowledge resources, learned from past experience, that members use to guide their actions. However, current knowledge may be a poor guide to future action when business conditions change. Ironically, organizations with successful histories may fall into "competency traps" by clinging to formulas for success that have become ...