Organizational learning activities in high-hazard industries: the logics underlying self-analysis
Article Abstract:
Organizational learning takes place through activities performed by individuals, groups, and organizations as they gather and digest information, imagine and plan new actions, and implement change. I examine the learning practices of companies in two industries - nuclear power plants and chemical process plants - that must manage safety as a major component of operations, and therefore must learn from precursors and near-misses rather than exclusively by trial-and-error. Specifically, I analyse the linked assumptions or logics underlying incident reviews, root cause analysis teams, and self-analysis programmes. These logics arise from occupational and hierarchical groups that work on different problems in different ways - for example, anticipation and resilience, fixing and learning, concrete and abstract. In organizations with fragmentary, myopic and disparate understandings of how the work is accomplished, there are likely to be more failures to learn from operating experience, recurrent problems, and cyclical crises. Enhanced learning requires ways to broaden and bring together disparate logics. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)
Publication Name: Journal of Management Studies
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0022-2380
Year: 1998
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The influence of institutional and task environment relationships on organizational performance: the Canadian construction industry
Article Abstract:
A study comparing the effects of institutional theory and task environment perspective on organizational performance was conducted on Canada's residential construction industry. While institutional perspective focuses on state and professional organizations' influence, task environment focuses on economic exchange relationships. Results indicate that task environment relationships had more influence on organizational performance and success whereas in times of highly stringent regulatory conditions, institutional relationship had more influence on performance.
Publication Name: Journal of Management Studies
Subject: Business, general
ISSN: 0022-2380
Year: 1997
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