Developing guiding principles: an organizational learning perspective

Abstract

If you would like to write for this, or any other Emerald publication, then please use our Emerald for Authors service information about how to choose which publication to write for and submission guidelines are available for all. Please visit www.emeraldinsight.com/authors for more information. About Emerald www.emeraldinsight.comEmerald is a global publisher linking research and practice to the benefit of society. The company manages a portfolio of more than 290 journals and over 2,350 books and book series volumes, as well as providing an extensive range of online products and additional customer resources and services.Emerald is both COUNTER 4 and TRANSFER compliant. The organization is a partner of the Committee on Publication Ethics (COPE) and also works with Portico and the LOCKSS initiative for digital archive preservation. AbstractPurpose -Guiding principles are knowledge structures that call to mind collective narratives with emotional content, and are articulated and used heuristically to guide decision making in organizations. The purpose of this paper is to explore how: guiding principles become integrated in management teams through discursive processes of social learning, and how process techniques from the realm of organizational learning can be used to facilitate the development of guiding principles. Design/methodology/approach -Develops theoretical findings drawing from the organizational learning literature, and explores these findings through use of a two-part illustrative case study of guiding principles development in a European telecommunications firm. Findings -It was found that guiding principle development may be facilitated using process techniques similar to those proposed for integrating organizational learning, namely, a dialogue-intensive process involving stages of inquiry, divergence and convergence.Research limitations/implications -The study focuses on dialogue, while future studies may usefully focus on non-discursive aspects of the conversational setting and structure in which the empirical case was embedded. Originality/value -This paper combines both theory development with illustrative empirical data to shed light on the process by which guiding principles may be intentionally developed in an organizational setting.

The stipulation‐stimulation spiral: A model of system change

“…In another version, leaders encourage local innovation (stim), then use structured opportunities for shared learning and sensemaking to inform system‐level policy (stip) . Other examples of stip‐stim sequences include the “fire bullets, then cannonballs” approach to testing and scaling up innovation in a rapidly shifting context; the “master the rules, then ignore them” process that characterizes the transition from novice to expert; and the divergent and convergent phases observed in problem‐solving and organizational learning . System improvement may often require multiple iterations of stip and stim, producing a pattern of oscillation ; for instance, the elimination of interprofessional silos demands alternation between mobilization of existing social identities (stim) and introduction of concrete changes that compel new working relationships (stip) .…”

“…25 Other examples of stip-stim sequences include the "fire bullets, then cannonballs" approach to testing and scaling up innovation in a rapidly shifting context 30 ; the "master the rules, then ignore them" process that characterizes the transition from novice to expert 31 ; and the divergent and convergent phases observed in problem-solving and organizational learning. 32,33 System improvement may often require multiple iterations of stip and stim, producing a pattern of oscillation;…”

Facilitating Serious Play

“…Indeed, the notion of storytelling as an informal social process through which emotional as well as cognitive dimensions of decision-making (cf. Oliver & Roos, 2005;Oliver & Jacobs, 2007) applies to the practice of using stories to describe their complex constructions. Future decision making research could focus not only on the ways in which decision parameters and optimality criteria are shaped by narratives, but also on the interplay between cognition, emotion and physical performance as organizational actors construct and interpret models of their organization.…”

Dialogue as a source of positive emotions during cross-border post-acquisition socio-cultural integration

“…The word originates from the Greek words dia and logos, signifying a flow of meaning (Senge, 1990;Isaacs, 1999;Bohm, 2003). Dialogue involves embracing diverse viewpoints and understanding that no viewpoint is more or less legitimate than any other (Oliver and Jacobs, 2007). If group members are willing to suspend their own judgments and embrace others' viewpoints, the group can advance from discussion to dialogue (Schein, 1993).…”