Leaving Behind What We are Not: Applying a Systems Thinking Perspective to Present Unlearning as an Enabler for Finding the Best Version of the Self

Grisold, Thomas; Kaiser, Alexander

doi:10.1080/14779633.2017.1291145

Cited by 36 publications

(24 citation statements)

References 70 publications

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“…Recent works have connected unlearning with different theories, e.g. from psychology TLO 26,5 (Grisold and Kaiser, 2017;Kluge and Gronau, 2018) and (Eastern) philosophy (Brook et al, 2016). The vision of this special issue was to build upon these recent developments and reach out to scholars who might not be familiar with the concept as understood by management and organization scholars, but may be able to offer novel perspectives in terms of theories and methods.…”

Section: Using the Ongoing Debate As Inspiration And Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial

Klammer

Grisold

Nguyen

2019

TLO

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Guest editorial Opportunities and interdisciplinary perspectives for organizational unlearning This special issue is the first attempt to collect, present, and discuss interdisciplinary perspectives on organizational unlearning. Our idea is based on two central observations. On the one hand, being involved in unlearning research, we, as guest editors, observed that the term has been attracting strong interest in research and practice. However, the field of unlearning has also been confronted with various conceptual issues and empirical challenges. On the other hand, we recognized that the term "unlearning" proves relevant in many different disciplines other than management and organization studies. These other fields of research have not yet intersected with the discourse in the organizational unlearning community. In fact, over the past years, we have talked to philosophers, psychotherapists, historians, and psychologistswho all had different views on unlearning. We agreed that dedicating space for such interdisciplinary perspectives and presenting them to scholars in management and organization studies could be a highly fruitful endeavor. This special issue contains six original articles that explore unlearning from different perspectives such as psychology, philosophy, arts, and management. Although the articles differ in terms of their research background, they all provide fresh and insightful perspectives on organizational unlearning and offer new opportunities for future research. The presented articles might require unlearning scholars to scrutinize and unlearn their own assumptions, views, and positions to advance the field. In the remainder of this editorial, we will discuss the underlying motivation of this special issue and present the individual articles as well as their respective contributions.

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Section: Using the Ongoing Debate As Inspiration And Motivationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Guest editorial

Klammer

Grisold

Nguyen

2019

TLO

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“…If a total removal of old knowledge, or a "clean slate" would occur, this would suggest the brain erases unneeded information and could be compared to "forgetting" often occurring within organizations [23]; [19]. Authors Griswold and Kaiser, theoretically suggest that reducing old influencers are triggered by disequilibrium in previously held routines [24]. These behaviors are discarded intentionally to become a better version of self; however, this implies unlearning is entirely under cognitive control [24].…”

Section: The Unlearning Theoristsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Authors Griswold and Kaiser, theoretically suggest that reducing old influencers are triggered by disequilibrium in previously held routines [24]. These behaviors are discarded intentionally to become a better version of self; however, this implies unlearning is entirely under cognitive control [24]. Knowledge change has continued to create confusion because selfregulatory and higher-level cognitive functions often associated with unlearning.…”

Section: The Unlearning Theoristsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Are There Typological Characteristics of Individual Unlearning?

Hafner¹

2019

Proceedings of the Annual Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences

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Organizations have sought solutions to produce consistent, competent practices while updating organizational processes. A traditional method of learning used strategies of identifying gaps in knowledge, and teaching lacking information to close gaps. Faulty learning completion processes often yield decreased work product quality, and productivity, or increased product costs. Knowledge base change creates ongoing difficulties for individuals who must unlearn, store, and use new knowledge processes to update the old. Knowledge change, or unlearning, speculated to involve a replacement of prior knowledge remains unconceptualized due to limited, anecdotally based research. This qualitative study aims to further characterize unlearning initiation processes, and clarify knowledge replacement factors: 1) How does individual unlearning initiate? and, 2) What factors contribute to the unlearning process? Three weeklyspaced interviews with 31 participants categorized unlearning using Rushmer and Davies' (2004) typological unlearning model. Predominately two knowledge change typologies were demonstrated and a new unlearning model developed.

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“…Finally, this work provides the basis for further research in building a general holistic theory of "learning to learn." In that regard, it would be interesting to see how the proposed learning levels can be related to more-inward directed learning processes, that is, how individuals can learn about a better or even ideal version of their self (Grisold and Kaiser, 2017).…”

Section: Future Researchmentioning

confidence: 99%

Learning from the future meets Bateson’s levels of learning

Kaiser

2018

TLO

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Users who downloaded this article also downloaded: (2018),"A systemic approach to processes of power in learning organizations: Part I -literature, theory, and methodology of triple loop learning", The Learning Organization, Vol. 25 Iss 4 pp. 260-272 https://doi.org/10.1108/TLO-10-2017-0101 (2018),"Challenges of the levels of learning", The Learning Organization, Vol. 25 Iss 4 pp. 281-287 https://doi.org/10.1108/TLO-03-2018-0037 Access to this document was granted through an Emerald subscription provided by All users group For AuthorsIf 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. Learning from the future meetsBateson's levels of learning Alexander KaiserInstitute for Information Business, Vienna University of Economics and Business, Vienna, Austria AbstractPurpose -Previous studies showed that combining learning based on experiences in the past with learning from an envisioned future scenario results in more innovative and radical ideas, as well as in a higher number of covered content domains. However, currently there is no holistic learning theory that integrates both sources of learning. The main purpose of this paper is to investigate whether it is possible to extend Bateson's theory of learning, to link these two learning sources in one coherent framework.Design/methodology/approach -To answer this research question, the author draws on learning from an envisioned future, and tries to link it with the most important levels of learning in Bateson's framework.Findings -This paper contributes to the literature by attempting to link the important but still underexplored aspect of "learning from the future" to the complex and multifaceted work of Bateson. Given the fact that both sources of learning and experience yield a great potential to create new knowledge, this study outlines a possibility to include both sources into one learning theory.Research limitations/implications -This work provides the basis for further research in building a general holistic theory of learning to learn.Practical implications -On the individual level, the proposed approach can be easily applied with systemic coaching processes in general and...

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Leaving Behind What We are Not: Applying a Systems Thinking Perspective to Present Unlearning as an Enabler for Finding the Best Version of the Self

Cited by 36 publications

References 70 publications

Guest editorial

Guest editorial

Are There Typological Characteristics of Individual Unlearning?

Learning from the future meets Bateson’s levels of learning

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