Learning when lives depend on it: how organizations learn when they cannot trial and cannot err

Thesis

Organisational learning has been explored extensively but we know surprisingly little about how organisations learn in the most challenging cases. Contexts defined by high costs of failure, ambiguity, uncertainty, and experiential scarcity all complicate learning. Through an ethnographic study of the UK’s Royal Marines, I examine the ways in which an elite military unit learn in one of the most difficult learning contexts imaginable. Costs of failure include loss of life, or worse, loss of war. Information is intentionally ambiguous and in recent years, experience has been absent. Through this research I contribute to the literatures on routine dynamics, organisational learning and organisational identity.

First, my findings show the ways in which actors are able to decouple patterning and performing in routine dynamics so that what is performed need not be what is patterned. This represents a significant challenge to the routine dynamics literature which has typically framed a highly recursive relationship between patterning and performing. Second, I contribute to the literature on experimentation learning by showing the heterogeneity of learning from simulated experiences. My findings show the specific ambiguities and means of interpretation necessary to learn from experience when that experience is inherently not real. I show the critical role that identity plays in this interpretation, allowing actors to dismiss, challenge or promote actions based on alignment to identity and credibility. Finally, I follow this identity stream by showing the ways in which identity can be physically embodied at an organisational level.

Collectively, this research highlights the challenges of learning where failure is not an option.

Authors: Jackson, A

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-wrbr1rmng
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: organizational learning; ambiguity; identity; organization theory; organizational routines
• Subjects: Organizational learning