The role of middle managers in building organisational ...gsblibrary.uct.ac.za/ResearchReports/EMBA18/Bennett.pdf · The role of middle managers in building organisational learning

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The role of middle managers in building

organisational learning capacity in strategy-as-

practice: A construction industry case Subtitle

Presented to

The Graduate School of Business University of Cape Town

In partial fulfilment

of the requirements for the degree

Master of Business Administration specialising in Executive Management

Submitted by: Dave Bennett

Supervisors: Kosheek Sewchurran Jenny McDonogh

December 2017

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DECLARATION

1. I know that plagiarism is wrong. Plagiarism is to use another’s work and pretend that it

is your own.

2. I have used the APA convention for citation and referencing. Each significant

contribution and quotation from the works of other people has been attributed, cited and

referenced where appropriate.

3. I certify that this submission is all my own work.

4. I have not allowed and will not allow anyone to copy this assignment with the intention

of passing it off as his or her own work.

Signed: Date: December 2017

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ABSTRACT

The role of middle managers in building organisational learning capacity in strategy-as-practice:

A construction industry case

Improving company performance and maintaining strategic competitive advantage is a common goal

most organisations wish to attain. This can be difficult to achieve in an organisation where middle

managers are unable to create learning capacity and annual strategy sessions become nothing more

than a “rinse, wash and repeat” of the previous year, offering little innovation.

This study investigates the persistent and relevant problem of how to build organisational learning

capacity through middle manager’s strategy-as-practice, in a complex problem situation that cannot be

solved by any one stakeholder in the organisation.

The study combines a pragmatic research philosophy with “Soft Systems Methodology in Action” to

conduct an inquiry into the human activity system of strategy practice within an organisation. The

research effort aims to develop a purposeful activity model, which is tested via a single case study that

includes both qualitative and quantitative reasoning. This model is inductively developed through an

interpretive process that includes a framework of ideas from Soft Systems Methodology, as well as

systems dynamics (causal loop modelling), learning organisations, sense-making/sense-giving and

strategy as practice concepts.

Through data collection and analysis, this study explores why the process of organisational learning to

facilitate strategy as practice is so perplexing. The study culminates in findings that refine the

purposeful activity model in its final research cycle and offer insights for future research efforts.

Key words: Systems Dynamics. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM). Complex Systems. Purposeful

Activity Modelling, Action Research, Learning Organisation, Sense-making, Sense-giving, Strategy-

As-Practice, Knowing Organisations, DLOQ, Strategic Leadership.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

ABSTRACT iii

TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................... iv

LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................... vii

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ............................................................................................... ix

Chapter 1: Introduction ...................................................................................................... 1

1.1: Introduction and Contextual Background to the Situation of Concern ........................ 1

1.1.1: Contextual background to study ......................................................................... 2

1.2: Situation of concern in my organisation ..................................................................... 6

1.3: Research goals ......................................................................................................... 8

1.4: Focusing questions ................................................................................................... 9

1.5: Research approach ................................................................................................... 9

1.6: Research methodology ............................................................................................ 10

1.7: Data gathering and analysis .................................................................................... 12

1.8: Ethical considerations .............................................................................................. 12

1.9: Outline of the paper ................................................................................................. 13

Chapter 2: Research Methodology .................................................................................. 15

2.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 15

2.2: Research philosophy: Pragmatism ......................................................................... 15

2.3: Research approach: Soft Systems Methodology ..................................................... 18

2.3.1: SSM and Action Research (AR) ....................................................................... 18

2.3.2: SSM as a methodology ..................................................................................... 23

2.3.3: Rationale for selecting of action research in an SSM way as a methodology .... 25

2.4: Data collection and data analysis ............................................................................ 27

2.4.1: Sampling strategy and data collection .............................................................. 27

2.4.2: Data analysis .................................................................................................... 33

2.5: Ethical considerations .............................................................................................. 35

2.6: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 37

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Chapter 3: Literature review ............................................................................................ 38

3.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 38

3.2: Strategy as practice and the role of middle managers ............................................. 39

3.2.1: Definition of s-a-p ............................................................................................. 39

3.2.2: Key components of s-a-p .................................................................................. 39

3.2.3: Different views of “practice/s” in s-a-p ............................................................... 40

3.2.4: The role of middle managers as s-a-p actors .................................................... 41

3.2.5: The effect of organisational structuring on middle managers’ practice as knowledge 42

3.2.6: Middle managers’ role in knowledge creation through s-a-p ............................. 43

3.2.7: Middle managers as sense-makers .................................................................. 44

3.2.8: Inhibitors – Possible barriers to s-a-p ................................................................ 45

3.2.9: Learnings synopsis for s-a-p ............................................................................. 46

3.3: Sense Making and Sense-Giving............................................................................. 47

3.3.1: Learnings synopsis for sense-making and sense-giving ................................... 50

3.4: Learning Organisations ........................................................................................... 51

3.4.1: Learning organisation and structure .................................................................. 52

3.4.2: Learning organisation and strategy ................................................................... 53

3.4.3: Learning organisation and environment ............................................................ 54

3.4.4: Learning organisation and culture ..................................................................... 55

3.4.5: Learning organisation interaction with contextual factors .................................. 58

3.4.6: Learning organisation capacity building through middle managers’ role in knowledge

development through s-a-p .......................................................................................... 59

3.4.7: Dimensions of a learning organisation .............................................................. 63

3.5: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 65

Chapter 4: AR1 - Theory development: A Purposeful Activity Model using SSM ............. 69

4.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 69

4.2: Learning cycles and SSM’s 7 steps ......................................................................... 70

4.3: Analysis 1, 2 and 3 .................................................................................................. 70

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4.4: CATWOE analysis ................................................................................................... 78

4.5: Task or issues-based transformation discussion ..................................................... 82

4.6: ROOT definition ....................................................................................................... 82

4.7: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 83

Chapter 5: AR2 – Insights and Learnings from Organisational data gathering and analysis87

5.1: Introduction ............................................................................................................. 87

5.2: Learnings and Insights generated from Interviews and Questionnaires and analysed

qualitatively ..................................................................................................................... 87

5.2.1: Contextual emergence ...................................................................................... 94

5.2.2: Power dynamics and organisational identity ..................................................... 94

5.2.3: Risk aversion .................................................................................................... 95

5.2.4: Measures of performance (MoP) ...................................................................... 96

5.3: Conclusion .............................................................................................................. 96

Chapter 6: AR3 – Learning generation and insights from data gathering and analysis using the

Dimensions of a Learning Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ) .......................................... 97

6.1.1: Learning and Insights from comparison to DLOQ benchmark ........................... 99

6.2: Testing the DLOQ against the Purposeful Activity Model ....................................... 104

6.3: Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 107

Chapter 7: The Learning Journey, Conclusions and Future Study recommendations .... 109

7.1: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 109

7.2: My Learning Journey ............................................................................................. 110

7.3: Conclusions and recommendations for future studies ............................................ 111

7.4: References ............................................................................................................ 112

Appendix A. Company Permission for the study .............................................................. 116

Appendix B. DLOQ plus developers permission grant as well as frequently asked questions around

the DLOQ 117

Appendix C. DLOQ Send Out Email ................................................................................ 118

Appendix D. Questionnaire Send Out .............................................................................. 119

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Tensions stemming from middle management ................................................................... 7

Figure 2: SSM Learning Cycle (Checkland 1985) ........................................................................... 19

Figure 3: SSM process of inquiry interpretation through an action cycle (Checkland, 2000) ........... 20

Figure 4: SSM as AR ...................................................................................................................... 21

Figure 5: Action research as SSM................................................................................................... 21

Figure 6: Researcher’s interpretation of Checkland’s (2000) 7-step learning cycle ......................... 24

Figure 7: Gioia Method Indicative Illustration (Gioia et al., 2012) .................................................... 35

Figure 8: Authors interpretation of Fiol and Lyles (1985) contextual factors influencing a learning

organisation .................................................................................................................................... 59

Figure 9: Knowledge flow (Adapted from (Choo, 1996)) .................................................................. 63

Figure 10: Link between s-a-p, sense-making and a learning organisation from a middle manager’s

perspective ..................................................................................................................................... 67

Figure 11: SSM Analysis 1 (Checkland & Poulter, 2010) ................................................................ 71

Figure 12: Rich Picture interpretation of Analysis 2 summary giving cultural flavour of the

organisation .................................................................................................................................... 75

Figure 13: Analysis 3 summary detailing political commoditization insights in my organisation ....... 77

Figure 14: CATWOE Model ............................................................................................................ 79

Figure 15: Purposeful activity model of what "should be" concluded in AR1 ................................... 85

Figure 16: (i) of (iv) ....................................................................................................................... 89

Figure 17: (ii) of (iv) ...................................................................................................................... 90

Figure 18: (iii) of (iv)...................................................................................................................... 91

Figure 19: (iv) of (iv)...................................................................................................................... 92

Figure 20: Purposeful Activity Model overlain with research findings from previous interviews and

questionnaires ................................................................................................................................ 93

Figure 21: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) - Manufacturing cluster .................. 100

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Figure 22: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) - Construction cluster ..................... 101

Figure 23: DLOQ results (GREY – Senior Manager and BLUE – Middle Manager) vs. benchmark

(ORANGE) – Senior management in construction cluster ............................................................. 102

Figure 24: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) – Business Services ...................... 103

Figure 25: Final Purposeful Activity Model .................................................................................... 107

Figure 26: Summary of the Purposeful Activity Model ............................................................ 110

LIST OF TABLES

Table 1: Declared F and M for this research effort's AR cycles ....................................................... 22

Table 2: Interview Questionnaire .................................................................................................... 28

Table 3: Details of interviewees and questionnaire respondents for Phases 1 and 2 ...................... 30

Table 4: Practice Views (Rouleau, 2013) ........................................................................................ 40

Table 5: Watkins and Marsick’s Dimensions of a Learning Organization (Marsick & Watkins, 2003)

....................................................................................................................................................... 64

Table 6: CATWOE element definitions (Checkland & Poulter, 2010) .............................................. 79

Table 7: Definitional questions of the three "E's" ............................................................................. 80

Table 8: Summary of my three ”E’s” analysis – Monitoring criteria of the transformation process ... 81

Table 9: Benchmarking from Marsick and Watkins (2003) .............................................................. 98

Table 10: Critical Learning Dimension in the context of the developed Purposeful Activity Model . 104

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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

AR Action Research

CATWOE Customers, Actors, Transformation, World View, Owners, Environment

CIDB Construction Industry Development Board

DLOQ Dimension of a Learning Organization Questionnaire

EXCO Executive Committee

GSB Graduate School of Business

I&C Investments and Concessions

MoP Measures of Performance

PWC Price Waterhouse Coopers

R&D Research and Development

s-a-p Strategy as practice

SSM Soft System Methodology

STF Safe-To-Fail

VRP Voluntary Rebuild Programme

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Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1: Introduction and Contextual Background to the Situation of Concern

I have been working in the construction industry in South Africa for some 20 years now, the

last eight of which have seen me involved as a middle manager in practicing strategy within

my organisation, a listed South African construction company with a number of subsidiary

companies. Over the years, the construction-related organisations I have worked with have,

from my perspective, adopted tactics that they have mistaken for strategies, rather than

developing bespoke and innovative strategies to differentiate them from their competitors. Bust

periods are ridden out in anticipation of boom periods, and boom periods are seen as being

there to be enjoyed, without too much thought given to the long term strategic future of the

company.

The construction industry as a whole is not perceived as strategically effective, and my

organisation’s response to industry related risk is to continuously add hurdles that weigh it

down with systems and procedures, rather than enabling more adaptability to change. In this

regard, Arif, Azhar and Bayraktar (2012, p. 1531) note that “construction firms only consider

project performance as the parameter to measure success, neglecting the importance of strategic

planning and management for higher profitability and quality business operations”.

In my organisation, performance over the past 3 years has been in decline with consecutive

losses of ever increasing proportion posted. Performance measures set by the organisation’s

senior management are purely financial and ignore strategic planning and management, opting

only for a return on equity interest from EXCO when evaluating the success of businesses in

the group. Performance measurement is also done based on historic performance, without any

forward looking measures to see if the business unit has considered its strategic future and

without interrogating its validity. The response to poor performance has not been to change

direction strategically, but rather to try to take operational decisions away from the coalface

and push them up to management. This further impacts future ability to secure the order book.

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The middle managers in my organisation are expected to assist with the development, adoption,

practice and diffusion of strategy. The organisation struggles to be able to pre-emptively

anticipate strategic windfalls and develop strategic plans through our Strategy-as-Practice (s-

a-p), resulting in a perceived inability to keep strategically ahead of our competition.

1.1.1: Contextual background to study

The strategic world that construction middle managers operate in is immensely complex.

Numerous factors simultaneously affect strategic choice, adoption and diffusion.

Notwithstanding the complexity there is a paradox – there is very little strategic difference

between competitors in the sector. During the boom period between 2004 and 2010 this was

of little consequence as profit taking was far easier. Since 2010 there has been a steady decline

of work coupled with exponential growth in the number of competitors, which has seen the

industry brought to its knees. According to the Construction Industry Development Board

(Construction Industry Development Board, 2010), the number of direct competitors grew

from 46 to 83 registered contractors between 2010 and 2016 – an increase of 80% .

Given that most construction companies in South Africa compete on a price basis, they tend to

be organisationally bound to similar strategies. (Dikmen, Birgonul, & Budayan, 2009, p. 288)

call this ‘strategic grouping’, where comparable strategic decisions are made based on the

general mode of competition in the industry, which in the case of the South African

construction industry, is an open tender system for government work. To change to other more

strategically advantageous markets is expensive, and this mobility barrier keeps organisations

in a strategic rut within which making a decision to change market positioning becomes very

difficult (Budayan, 2008, p. 10). Arguably, most listed construction companies have similar

strategies, and as Collis and Rukstad (2008, p. 86) note, “if your firm’s strategy can be applied

to any other firm, you don’t have a very good one”.

The Company under study is listed on the JSE and is involved in construction, development,

operations and maintenance of various kinds of infrastructure for both government and private

clients. It operates mainly on the African continent, but has substantial operations and

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maintenance annuity income streams from Eastern Europe and the United Kingdom. In

addition, it owns manufacturing capacity in terms of construction building materials offered to

the market.

The company is split into three business units: Construction, Manufacturing, Investments and

Concessions (I&C). In general, the construction business is underperforming, whilst the I&C

and Manufacturing clusters enjoy sustained performance that meets or exceeds expectations. I

resided under the construction division up until half way through this research effort before

leaving to join another company in October 2017.

The company analysed in this research effort has been in the ‘strategic grouping’ trap for so

long without forcing change that it has no real strategic advantage over its rivals, i.e. “the

business [has lost] its competitive advantage over competitors” (Strümpfer, 2005, p. 1). The

only perceived option is to compete on price and tactically attempt to reduce costs.

Unfortunately, this cycle has left the organisation to struggle along in an overtraded market

that is hypercompetitive, with little room for execution error and little hope for mobility into

different markets. This is not helped by other trends in the construction sector, particularly “the

changing needs of clients, [which] complicate functions of projects, [and] highlight the

pressing need for contractors to enhance competitiveness continuously” (Lu, 2006, p. 2).

In addition, the construction industry is facing the following major contextual issues:

(i) Corruption at multiple levels in the private and public sectors.

(ii) Labour unrest. “Strikes have reached a new level in terms of number, duration and

violence and have inflicted significant damage to the economy in both the short and

medium terms” (PWC, 2015, p. 13).

(iii) A lack of government spending (due to global economics as well as their own internal

technical inabilities), resulting in a decline in construction sector performance. “The

turnover in the construction industry is highly sensitive to government spending as the

government is the industry’s largest client (Windapo & Cattell, 2011; (Hove, 2015, p.

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8). According to PWC (PWC, 2015, p. 6), “since September 2009, when reaching its

high point, the construction sector has decreased by 68%”.

(iv) High levels of competition in the country and on the continent. Hove (2015, p. 9) notes

that, “There is fierce competition and low margins in the industry which generate loss

of knowledge and concomitant enterprise failure”, while (Anugwo & Shakantu, 2015,

p. 290) commented that “construction industry companies are amongst the highest of

failing business (Round & Segner, 2011). This is due to the competitive nature of the

industry”.

(v) Climate change. (World Economic Forum, 2016, p. 2) warned that, “After its presence

in the top five most impactful risks for the past three years, the failure of climate change

mitigation and adaptation has risen to the top and is perceived in 2016 as the most

impactful risk for the years to come”.

(vi) The South African Government’s drive for ‘Radical Economic Transformation’,

proposes to give more work to emerging and medium sized companies rather than large

companies. There has been a marked decrease in Construction Industry Development

Board category nine (CIDB 9) projects coming to market over the last two years. These

are the largest project types that we as an organisation are licenced to execute.

(vii) Continued policy inconsistency at government level around what they expect from the

contractors. This is not yet clear and the ambiguity from government has resulted in a

construction industry that at present remains “…highly variable and inconsistent across

a broad range of issues and policies such as the Government Preferential Procurement

Policy Framework Act” (Atkinson, et al. 2012).

(viii) The Voluntary Rebuild Programme (VRP). The SA construction industry was found

guilty of collusion following a Competition Commission investigation into work fixing

on some 140 construction projects. These projects maximised company profits at the

expense of the taxpayer in most instances. The government required more to be done

than just the paying of fines (over R1.4 billion), and negotiated that companies found

guilty of collusion had to either sell a 40% equity stake to Black Owned Entities, or

take 3 to 4 smaller black-owned companies and organically grow them to 25% of their

organisation’s own turnover. This alternative developmental role needs to be achieved

while the companies still maintain their own growth to keep shareholders happy. Many

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of the affected construction companies are still considering how to proceed, as this issue

has not been considered in strategy development. “With signing the Voluntary Rebuild

Programme, the large listed companies have committed to act as catalysts to transform

the industry. However, if we only address transformation from an ownership and

development viewpoint, the bad habits of the past will continue” (Milne, 2016, p. 2).

(ix) Government mistrust of the big six contractors that were involved in the collusion

scandal will be a difficult relationship dynamic to factor into strategies and practice

moving forward.

(x) Inability to attract talent due to the industry’s current poor reputation because of factors

like the Competition Commission investigation. “The brand damage to the industry is

difficult to gauge, but it certainly has a felt effect” (Milne, 2016).

(xi) The cash flow constraints of clients in both the public and private sectors. “Construction

finds itself in something of a perfect storm, buffeted on the one side by a weaker

economy and on the other by diminishing margins and labour strikes that have delayed

project completions and therefore revenue collections. Government’s vaunted

infrastructure programme has been slow in coming” (Pauwels, 2016).

(xii) A lack of private market work because of a commodity slump and government policy

uncertainty around mining resulting in unwillingness from foreign investors to invest

in South African mines. According to (PWC, 2015, p. 9), “Due to difficulties

experienced in the sector, mining companies have reduced their capital expenditure by

R22 billion (31%) over the past three years. The 2016 mining capital expenditure was

the lowest since 2007”.

(xiii) “A lack of R&D or technology advancements in the construction sector due to financial

constraints and general apathy in the industry in this regard” (Milne, 2016).

Unfortunately, there has been a lack of solid strategic practice to ensure improved market

positioning and performance in this environment. Most of the major listed companies have as

a result, seen their poor results translate into massive erosion of market capitalisation. My

organisation has not adjusted strategically, and continues on a similar path in the blind hope

that the market conditions will improve and solve the crisis. As a result, as Pauwel (2017)

notes, “the Big Five of the construction industry have fallen from their high-rise status… From

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2007, the Big Five has lost 79% of its value. This represents the complete destruction of

shareholder wealth – a total loss of R60 billion in value and the equivalent of a whole Capitec!”

(Pauwels, 2017). These factors all point to “perhaps (the) ultimate failure – [...] a tendency for

management to maintain the organization's current strategy-structure relationship despite

overwhelming changes in environmental conditions” (Miles, Snow, Meyer, & Coleman Henry

J., 1978, p. 558).

The balance of this chapter highlights the situation of concern within my organisation, the goals

of this research effort, and how these are intended to be achieved in terms of methods and

ethical considerations.

1.2: Situation of concern in my organisation

Currently there exists a pervasive tension between the EXCO and middle management. The

EXCO wants to see “out of the box” strategic thinking that exponentially improves the business

performance, but expects this at zero risk, without budget, and without any tolerance for

mistakes.

This unintended “standoff” between middle management and the EXCO has resulted in the

business unit managers becoming disenfranchised and middle managers acting recursively,

which leads to little or no learning. The middle managers succumb to profit and performance

pressures, with the tensions between management levels blocking relevant and productive

discourse, resulting in few strategic learnings. This in turn constrains strategic change

behaviour, limiting innovation resulting in a continuous ‘washing cycle’ of the same ideas and

strategies that are ‘reinvented’ under different guises. Figure 1 below depicts these reflections

in a rich picture format.

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Figure 1: Tensions stemming from middle management

The main situation of concern is then how the organisation can overcome this lack of

innovation in the human activity system involved in strategic practice within it.

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The following sub-section will elaborate on this in terms of flushing out more exact research

goals to guide the study to valuable and focussed findings that will enable improvement of the

situational concern within the organisation.

1.3: Research goals

The primary research goal of this study is to ascertain the role of middle managers in

interpreting, devising, diffusing, adopting and practicing strategy within the case study

organisation. A further goal is to assess what role middle managers play in pushing the values

of a learning organisation culture in the organisation. I want to gain insight into how middle

managers can build learning capacity in strategy-as-practice (s-a-p), from the perspective of

my experience within the construction industry.

My personal goals are to increase my own intellectual knowledge in s-a-p, sense-making and

Learning Organisation Theory, and to observe and gain insights into the level at which middle

managers in my organisation use the principles of s-a-p and organisational learning as a tool to

achieve strategic differentiation. This is important to me because, as a middle manager , I

struggle to understand the role played by middle managers in building a learning capacity

through s-a-p in an organisation. Löwstedt (2016, p. 11) stated that “s-a-p recommends a shift

in attention, from strategy as something a company has (possesses), i.e., which exists per se, to

something that people do”. If I can gain personal intellectual knowledge, I will better be able

to implement strategy, as a middle manager, offering my organisation and those within it a

greater opportunity to operationalise strategic learnings for the benefit of the organisation in

terms of future performance enhancement.

My goal is also to purposefully adopt a personal phronetic stance of value rational thinking,

during the research effort, in a conscious determination to combat a self-perceived industry

bias towards instrumental thinking driven to achieve the ‘most effective, most efficient’ single

solution. Given my engineering training and career over the last two decades, instrumental

thinking is a difficult bias for me to overcome. By remaining continually conscious of it during

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the research, I hope it will allow me greater headspace to be more creative and innovative in

my approach.

1.4: Focusing questions

Given the study’s concern with a human activity system of strategy practice within an

organisation, the key focusing questions are as follows:

(i) How do middle managers improve organisational capacity to learn and practice

strategy?

(ii) What sense-making and sense-giving (and sense-censoring) practices do middle

managers use to facilitate strategic learning?

(iii) What practices of middle managers facilitate the adoption or rejection of learning

organisation principles?

(iv) What role do middle managers play in enabling or disabling the diffusion of strategy

through the organisation?

(v) Are the s-a-p and Learning Organisation principles synergistic with the expected role

of a middle manager in an organisation?

(vi) What is the role of middle managers in diffusing and improving the adoption of a

developed strategy within the organisation? Likewise, what are the barriers?

(vii) Can the role of middle management in s-a-p possibly improve the organisation’s

strategic differentiation?

1.5: Research approach

This study will draw on Pragmatism as its core ontology and epistemology.

This is due to the following reasons (elaborated upon in Chapter 3.2):

1. In pragmatism, truth is developed through discourse (language), which results in

actions.

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2. Pragmatism offers the researcher an opportunity to learn cyclically without over-

reliance on what others perceive the truth to be.

3. It aligns well with a soft systems approach because it supports the idea that truth can be

constructs of what the perceived reality is by the researcher, and can then be tested and

explored through these constructs to allow greater insight and deeper, richer clarity of

the problematic situation.

4. Each learning cycle or iteration can eliminate “truths” which lack muster, efficiently

improving the accuracy of the researcher’s perceived knowledge around the system of

concern.

5. It allows the identification of potential triggers, which can offer practical routes to

improving a problematic situation.

6. Finally, Pragmatism allows reflective learnings to be incorporated by feedback looping

it into developed models and assessing the outcomes (both good and bad) for future

cycles of learning.

Adopting a Pragmatist approach is thus appropriate as it allows the researcher to:

(i) Question and probe the middle manager’s role in developing learning capacity

through s-a-p;

(ii) Find practical learnings that can challenge the status quo; and

(iii) Question current and absent practices/behaviours, to enable learning through deep

and rich insight into how the future state can be improved.

1.6: Research methodology

This predominantly qualitative effort involves studying a human activity system (of strategy

practice) in the form of a specific group of actors (middle managers) and their social

interactions within an organisation. Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) in an Action Research

(AR) fashion seemed the best fit to make sense of the system as a whole. Although the research

methodology will be explained in greater detail under Chapter 2, it must be highlighted at this

point that the key rationale for selecting action research done in an SSM way is as follows:

(i) SSM is well suited to complex human activity systems;

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(ii) SSM is an inquiring approach well suited to learning and undertaking action to improve

a situation; and

(iii) SSM allows the use of a framework of ideas as lenses on the situation of concern.

According to Checkland & Holwell (1998), research using SSM in an AR way means the

researcher must proclaim his or her framework of ideas (F) that informs the enquiry upfront,

this will then be applied to the area of concern (A) through the methodological approach to

the enquiry (M), in order to generate learnings (L).

This effort had three AR cycles within its methodological approach (M) that informed its

conclusions. These are explained in detail under Chapter 2 and summarised below:

AR1. Involved using a framework of idea’s (F) using a literature review (Chapter 3)

as well as data analysis findings from an SSM exercise (Chapter 4) that resulted

in the development of a theoretical purposeful model describing the area of

concern (A) as well as generate learnings (L)

AR2. Took the learnings from AR-1 and compared these to insights or learnings (L)

that were generated from a methodological qualitative analysis (M) of data

generated from semi structured interviews and questionnaires done within my

organisation around s-a-p. These learnings (L) developed in Chapter 5,

iteratively informed and improved on the validity of the first model developed

describing the area of concern (A) in Chapter 4.

AR3. Lastly a third action research cycle allowed further learnings applied to the

purposeful model describing and modelling (A) through the data collection and

analysis (qualitative and quantitative) using a standardised questionnaire on

organisational learning (Dimensions of a Learning Organisation Questionnaire

– DLOQ – Marick and Watkins (2013)) . This was carried out in Chapter 6.

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1.7: Data gathering and analysis

Data collection is through semi structured interviews; questionnaires around s-a-p; and

questionnaires relating to evaluating the learning capacity of the organisation. These essentially

formed two of the eventual three AR cycles of this research effort each resulting, through their

detailed analysis, in learnings that would inform and improve upon a developed purposeful

activity model.

The analysis of data collected during AR-2 are purely qualitative whilst AR-3 involved both

qualitative and quantitative analysis, as elaborated on under Chapters 5 and 6 respectively.

1.8: Ethical considerations

Chapter 2.4.3 covers the ethical considerations of this paper in detail. This section is to

highlight the key ethical issues of the paper.

Essentially this research does not provide any confidential information that is not already in

the public domain. It in no way, shape or form contravenes any legal acts of our country’s

Competition laws in terms of divulging financial and strategic information of the company that

could offer a competitor an unfair market advantage.

The research did not burden anyone in the organisation unfairly, other than the time needed to

undergo an interview or complete a questionnaire, both being voluntary and as such posed no

ethical concerns.

All data collection has been sanitised for privacy. As a director of the company, I understand

my fiduciary duties and have ensured that the paper does not in any way compromise these

duties.

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No data was collected under any duress and all participants were offered full anonymity in their

responses.

1.9: Outline of the paper

This paper is organised into seven chapters. The remaining six chapters will cover the

following:

Chapter 2 details the research methodology adopted and applied in this study. It further

discusses the importance of a pragmatic approach that provides practical and implementable

outcomes through the adoption of the SSM chosen for this research effort. It also details how

the data were gathered and analysed. Normally the Chapter 2 of a dissertation goes directly

into the paper’s literature review, but in this case, I have purposefully chosen to rather elaborate

on the research methodology instead. This is primarily because SSM Research Methodology

requires that I elaborate on and describe my methodology and framework of ideas upfront or

risk invalidating the research effort.

Chapter 3 provides a detailed outline of the theoretical frameworks used (s-a-p, Learning

Organisation, Sense-making / Sense-giving) through a detailed literature review that is relevant

to the research area of concern. These insights developed will be used in the development of

the preliminary purposeful activity model in Chapter 4.7 under the first AR cycle.

Chapter 4 takes SSM and develops a purposeful activity model of “what should be” in the area

of concern (A) in terms of insights gained through this exercise as well as the literature review

covered in Chapter 3. This establishes the benchmark through theoretical idea frameworks (F)

of how middle managers can develop organisational learning capacity in strategy-as-practice

in my organisation.

Chapter 5 presents the qualitative data analysis learnings through the study’s findings from the

second of the three Action Research cycles (AR2) and is the core of the paper. It details

learnings stemming from data collected through interactions with various stakeholders at

different levels of the organisation, as well as a review of certain relevant company artefacts,

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gathered, synthesised and analysed to form an informed model of middle management abilities

in building learning capacity through s-a-p. It gives the initial picture of the area of concern

(A) demonstrated as “what should be” in a purposeful activity model from which core insights

are drawn before moving into the second Action research cycle covered in Chapter 6.

Chapter 6 details the last of the three Action Learning Cycles (AR3). This generates a final

model through iterative learnings generated through the qualitative and quantitative data

analysis of data collected through the DLOQ sent out in my organisation.

Chapter 7 concludes the research findings, offering reflections on the learning journey and

possible improvement opportunities for middle managers to ensure a greater capacity for

driving organisational learning through s-a-p. Possible future research efforts are examined,

and suggestions for potential research made.

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Chapter 2: Research Methodology

2.1: Introduction

This research project’s objective is to understand how middle managers build learning capacity

through strategy-as-practice. This chapter details the research methodology adopted during this

research effort in order to support this.

The chapter discusses the underpinning methodological paradigms of the SSM approach and

the pragmatic style of research adopted. It also details the methodological frameworks adopted

in terms of Soft Systems Methodology, its background, the rationale behind its selection, and

how it has been used as a methodology for this research effort. Data collection and analysis is

then discussed, detailing the sampling strategy for data collection, data collection itself and

finally the data analysis methods adopted. Before concluding, the Chapter will also cover the

ethical considerations of this paper and those stakeholders involved in making the research

effort possible.

2.2: Research philosophy: Pragmatism

The study adopts a research philosophy of Pragmatism. The rationale for the choice of

Pragmatism as the underlying philosophy of this research study can be explicitly stated as

follows:

First, “for pragmatism truth is linguistically mediated, which means that what is true is decided

upon within the communication between people as they attempt to engage with the world (Ray,

2004) … true propositions are those that have stood up over time to the scrutiny of individual

use” (Baker & Schaltegger, 2015, p. 268). I have purposefully accentuated “linguistically

mediated” as appreciating that strategy happens in and through language, and language is the

key to understanding the underlying principles of a pragmatic approach. In pragmatism, truth

is developed through discourse (language), which results in actions.

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Second, the philosophy of pragmatism is one that “emphasizes the practical application of ideas

by acting on them to actually test them in human experiences” (Gutek, 2014, p. 76; 100). In

this study, the undertaken action is done in the real world in order to test the validity of a

developed model of what the researcher perceives the truth to be and what the researcher

perceives should be done iteratively to ensure it passes muster over time. Pragmatism offers

the researcher the means to create and test your own truths and undertake a continuous and

never-ending cyclical learning without over-reliance on what other theorists believe the truth

should be.

Third, Pragmatism aligns well with a soft systems approach because it supports the idea that

truth is a deeper understanding of the system you are exploring, and helps you understand

system dynamics and relationships (Baker & Schaltegger, 2015). Combining a Pragmatism

approach with SSM allows the researcher to ignore the “real world” and develop constructs of

what the perceived reality is that they wish to test and explore. This allows the researcher to

explore the human activity system of concern to find truths through an iterative and practical

learning process of continual sense-making where I hope that each iteration provides greater

insight and deeper, richer clarity.

Fourth, within a Pragmatism approach, in each iteration in learning, one can remove “truths”

that do not stand the test of time (or lack muster or are found to be ‘fallible’). In so doing the

researcher can pragmatically cycle through effective learning progressions and feedback loops

of these learnings/insights and feed them back into conceptual model; thus automatically and

very efficiently improving the accuracy of the researcher’s perceived knowledge around the

system of concern. This possibly allows the researcher to gain deeper insights into improving

its future state into a more desired one (Cavaleri, 2008).

Fifth, knowledge is only useful if used practically to improve organisations and their

performance (Fendt, Kaminska-Labbé, & Sachs, 2008). It is my hope that this research and its

pragmatic approach will facilitate organisational learning through identifying triggers for

middle managers to enhance “learning capacity in strategy-as-practice”.

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Finally, Pragmatism considers reflection to be a valid source of insight. For Pragmatist Charles

Saunders Pierce, a pragmatic style is one which considers “…confrontation with reality through

action as the principal source of doubt, which in turn feeds scientific curiosity and becomes the

driving force to inquire to settle that doubt. Thus, action and the interrogations stemming from

it are what drive the agenda of science” (Pierce, cited by Fendt et al., 2008, p. 480). A

pragmatist is a “practising reflector” as opposed to a “reflective practitioner” (Kelemen &

Rumens, 2012, p. 482). This aligns well with Action Research done in an SSM way, as it is

acceptable to use continuous and unabated iterative cycles of practical action and then learn

from this action by feedback looping it into developed models and assessing the outcomes

(both good and bad) for future cycles of learning.

Adopting a Pragmatist approach is thus appropriate as it allows the researcher to (i) question

and probe the middle manager’s role in developing learning capacity through s-a-p; (ii) find

practical learnings that can challenge the status quo; and (iii) question current and absent

practices/behaviours, to enable learning through deep and rich insight into how the future state

can be improved.

The possible downside of a pragmatic approach, in my opinion, is the fact that it is susceptible

to subjectivity. Since the experimentation and research will be carried out by myself, the

findings are potentially subject to my own inherent cognitive bias and mindset. Therefore, I

stressed in Chapter 1 that I also intend to purposefully adopt a phronetic stance of value rational

thinking in a conscious effort to combat an industry bias towards instrumental thinking. From

university and throughout my entire career I have been disciplining my mind into a goal seeking

type thinking which is in line with hard systems thinking. In order that I fulfil my own given

mandate of a soft system thinking approach and methodology, I need to remind myself during

the research to fight the urge to “solve” the problem I am researching. As described in Chapter

3, SSM is more to do with a perpetual cycle of learning around the process and system than it

is about engineering it.

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2.3: Research approach: Soft Systems Methodology

This study uses Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as its research approach. The following is

a detailed account of the background to SSM, the rationale for choosing it as the research

methodology focussing on Action Research cycles, and then concluding with how SSM is

used as a research methodology.

2.3.1: SSM and Action Research (AR)

“Hard” systems thinking, which was used effectively in the 1950s and 1960s, is grounded in

the premise that “problems” can be “engineered”, in a goal seeking style, to a conclusive

solution that eliminates the problem. Checkland (1985), realised in the early 80’s that a lot of

the “problems” we deal with are “soft” rather than “hard” in that they relate to social interaction

and human behaviour that creates “un-engineerable” complex system requiring a “soft

systems” approach. Checkland (2000) developed SSM over the last 40 or so years to be a

methodology premised on Soft Systems Thinking. Checkland (1985) defines SSM as "a

methodology for rational intervention in human affairs” that is exploratory in nature as opposed

to goal orientated. Thus, SSM is well suited for sense-making and learning of a messy complex

problem phenomenon in a never-ending way to continually improve its outcome.

SSM encourages the development of models that describe the way the world works as a

construct of theories of how the world is perceived to work, rather than how it works in reality.

Hard systems thinking is purported to build real models of the world (ie. How it really works

as opposed to how it is perceived to work). SSM requires model development that embodies a

particular way of viewing the world that is explicitly stated upfront before model development.

The model should then be true to this stated view which would form one of the Measures of

Performance of the developed model (Checkland, 1985).

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SSM promotes a way of thinking focused on perpetual learning about an area of concern, in

order to test and probe with various interventions, in an effort to iteratively improve the state

of the concerned area for the better in a cyclical fashion (Checkland, 2000). The end of the

learning is essentially an arbitrary one, declared at a certain point in time. As a result, SSM is

well suited to action research. Checkland and Holwell (1998) developed an action research

methodology using SSM. This process is illustrated below in figure 2.

Figure 2: SSM Learning Cycle (Checkland 1985)

As shown below in figure 3, SSM done in these learning cycles will lead to the development

of a purposeful activity model based on the declared perspective and perceived contexts and

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interrelationships of variables in a human system. Rather than trying to map its real world

causal interactions, it encourages us to generate as much insight as possible into the underlying

mechanism driving the perceived system causality through adopting multiple perspectives. One

can then propose an action for improvement intervention, using these mechanisms and insights

gained during the SSM process.

Figure 3: SSM process of inquiry interpretation through an action cycle (Checkland, 2000)

Essentially the researcher is also a participant in the problem situation. Being so involved in

the problem the researcher risks being unable to retain his intellectual bearings during the

research and as such should declare upfront the framework of ideas to be implemented during

the research.

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Before this is declared, it is important to note that to fully develop a final purposeful activity

model, three such action cycles shown above in Figure 3 were done during the research project.

Figure 4 below illustrates how, in principle, this research methodology adopts SSM as AR

where, in each instance, the researcher is required to declare framework (F) in the adopted

methodology (M) of Action Research (AR). This would then be applied to the area of concern

(A) yielding learnings (L) that can be iteratively reflected upon in terms of the researcher’s

lived experiences and recording the learnings throughout this research journey.

Figure 4: SSM as AR

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This project would involve three such action cycles which will be referred to as AR1, 2 and 3

respectively.

The following table shows these upfront declarations for this research effort.

Table 1: Declared F and M for this research effort's AR cycles

Action

Research

Cycle

F M A L Outcome

AR1 SSM Tools and

Literature review.

SSM Organisational

learning capacity

through strategy-

as-practice

From

qualitative

data analysis

Purposeful

Activity Model

(PAM) of the

Area of concern.

AR2 L from AR1 plus

semi structured

interviews and

questionnaires

SSM as

AR

Organisational

learning capacity

through strategy-

as-practice

From

qualitative

data analysis

Improved

accuracy PAM

AR3 L from AR2 and

the DLOQ

SSM as

AR

Organisational

learning capacity

through strategy-

as-practice

From

qualitative

and

quantitative

data analysis

Final PAM

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2.3.2: SSM as a methodology

I have encapsulated my version of Checkland’s (2000) seven step learning cycle model in my

own interpretation shown here below in Figure 6. This SSM learning cycle links to ideas that

learning takes place in both the exploratory phase (where little is known about the problematic

situation) and the exploitation phase of found interventions. The problem is never solved, but

is continually improved upon through running exploration that leads to ideas for change. The

ideas and learnings can be converted into explicit knowledge that can be exploited to the

organisation’s strategic benefit. This allows an iteratively applied learning process to the

problem situation, which hones the exploitation over time. In so doing, it has the effect of

perpetually improving the situation of most concern in an organisation until it is in a

satisfactory state, where after efforts can shift and be applied in a similar manner to the next

crucial situational concern in an explorative way.

My model details the same seven steps as Checkland’s model. SSM is underpinned by

considering conflicting worldviews about a problem situation, and human nature’s desire to

improve it through purposeful action. My interpretation adds the iterative looping through

feedback channels from learnings achieved during the SSM process steps, and highlights the

view that the beginning of the process is exploratory. Cyclical arrows in steps two and three

highlight the most exploratory phases. In trying to understand the problem situation, I feel that

given that there is flux in any situation over time, and the relationship between understanding

a problem and where you are in the continuum of time relative to the flux experienced will

influence the problem area you have. A key step modified to some extent in this model is the

cyclical looping arrows shown between steps five and six. Checkland (2000) seems to move

directly from five to six, whereas I believe that this would be iterative until all debates have

rationalised which actions are feasible and desirable. As the inquiry method unfolds and

insights emerge from the chosen actions through a few iterations of exploration, one naturally

tends towards a state where exploitation can happen from the learnings gained, until you have

honed the improvements to such a stage that you are satisfied you have sufficiently improved

the area of concern. The flux over time would change and may result in a new problem area,

where the process can then begin again.

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Figure 6: Researcher’s interpretation of Checkland’s (2000) 7-step learning cycle

To augment the insights gained from the literature review, I performed the following exercises

prior to constructing the Purposeful Activity Model required of this sub-chapter, in line with

Checkland and Poulter’s guidelines for SSM practices (2010, pp. 208–225):

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(i) Analysis 1, 2, 3.

To complete the Purposeful Activity Model, I:

(ii) Performed a CATWOE analysis to identify conflicting worldviews to inform the ROOT

definition under item (vi);

(iii) Discussed and decided whether the model will be a “Primary Task” or “Issue Based”

model to inform the ROOT definition under item (vi); and finally

(iv) Developed a suitable ROOT definition to inform the Purposeful Activity Model

development.

In Chapter 4, I will apply all these steps in detail in the first AR cycle (AR1), explaining what

they entail, as they are covered, for ease of reference to the reader.

2.3.3: Rationale for selecting of action research in an SSM way as a methodology

The key rationale for selecting action research done in an SSM way is that:

(i) SSM is well suited to complex human activity systems;

(ii) SSM is an inquiring approach well suited to learning and undertaking action to

improve a situation; and

(iii) SSM allows the use of a framework of ideas as lenses on the situation of concern.

These three reasons are elaborated upon in more detail below.

SSM is well suited to complex human activity systems

This study deals with a situation of concern of repeated poor strategic performance within an

organisation that is embedded in a complex human activity system that requires a learning and

inquiring approach to introduce improvements to the system (rather than use a hard systems

efficiency improvement approach). In trying to demystify how middle managers build learning

capacity through strategy-as-practice, I need to consider a research approach methodology that

allows me to make sense of a very complex world.

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Action research done in an SSM way (using the LUMAS action research cycle) has been

selected because SSM is suited to studying human activity systems. As a result, it should then

enable me to gain sufficient deep and rich insights that could help suggest possible

interventions to alter the area of concerns’ future state for the better.

SSM is an inquiring approach and thus suited to learning

The study focuses on systems that are complex as opposed to linear in nature and as such, they

cannot be “solved” but rather must be continually explored and better understood. This allows

for iteratively improving understanding and intervention cycles that lead towards improved

prospects.

The construction world involves various systems that interact holistically through the people

in the organisation, and in the ways they perceive and make sense of the world. All of this leads

to actions and interactions, which in turn lead to further complexities requiring even further

actions and interactions in a cyclical exploratory and experimental inquisitiveness, to

continually improve its outlook and future state. Soft Systems Thinking, where learning as

opposed to optimising is the key focus, is thus more appropriate for this study.

SSM is also more suited for messy complex problems where there can be no defined goal (or

end) but rather a push to improve the problem area iteratively through a methodology of

imposing a framed theory to assist the problem to improve through learning.

SSM enables the use of a framework of ideas

Through an SSM approach, theory and practice go hand in hand in trying to make sense of and

improve on an area of concern. As shown in Figure 3, this research study should result in a

theory that can be applied and tested in practice, in order to then feedback-loop and hone and

improve the theory to iteratively improve the practice in a self-generative fashion. It is an

intertwined relationship if it is to offer any form of pragmatic value (Checkland, 1985, p. 757).

SSM supports this ideal and this, in my view, is its biggest advantage.

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It allows employees to be continuously experimenting and engaging with their world, in a

positive way, that allows (and in fact promotes) iterative change management with feedback

loop learning to drive the organisation perpetually to an improved state.

2.4: Data collection and data analysis

2.4.1: Sampling strategy and data collection

The sampling strategy is to use purposeful sampling to select information rich cases. Criterion

sampling is used – individuals who play a pivotal role in the organisation at all levels of

management will be selected, but with a particular focus on middle management with

experience in strategy practice. The sampling emphasis is thus within a single organisation

involved in construction but with diversified business units.

Data collection is through a simultaneous strategy that incorporates three phases, namely

(i) Semi structured interviews;

(ii) Questionnaires around s-a-p; and

(iii) Questionnaires relating to evaluating the learning capacity of the organisation.

Each phase is outlined below:

Action Research Cycle 1 (AR1): Inquiry phase - Qualitative analysis

The first action research cycle (which is covered in Chapter 4 but considers the literature review

insights from chapter 3also) is a qualitative inquiry to gain insights into the current state of how

the “world should be” to allow me to diagnose and interrogate the “world as it is” in terms of

my own organisation. The literature review informs this process.

I also used the Checkland SSM steps shown in Figure 6 above to generate insights to combine

with those from the literature review in order to generate the first purposeful activity model.

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Action Research Cycle 2 (AR2): Semi structured interviews and questionnaires around

s-a-p using qualitative analysis

I interviewed senior EXCO management as well as several middle management at MD level

in various businesses within the group. In this phase, six executive committee members

including the group CEO, along with eight managing directors of varying business units within

the group (more senior middle management), were interviewed. In total, there were 14

interviewed. All interviews were conducted during one hour in a one on one session where I

questioned the individuals personally and recorded their responses myself in writing. Overall,

I covered the responses to the following 25 questions around strategy and its practice within

the organisation (refer to Table 2 below):

Table 2: Interview Questionnaire

1. Define what strategy does in your words

2. How do you see your role in strategy development?

3. On a scale of 1 to 10 what is your perception of Group Fives strategic abilities?

4. On a scale of 1 to 10, rate the effectiveness of the strategies implemented in the last period.

5. Given boom and bust periods, how do you modify your strategy-in-practise?

6. What tools do you employ in strategic discussions?

7. How do you create the conversation space that ensures maximum opportunity to pull in as many

multiple perspectives during strategic conversations as possible?

8. What practically impacts the development of strategy?

a. Drivers?

b. Restraints?

9. What do you consider as key performance measures post strategy development?

10. To what level of the organisation should be included in the strategy development? At what point should

it become purely instruction on the strategy to be carried out?

11. What factors influence the active, adoption, diffusion and belief in the developed strategy?

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12. What factors influence strategic tactical changes necessary to modify the route to the ultimate strategy?

13. What duration do you see a strategy as relevant for?

14. What frameworks or tools do you use to track strategy Measures of Performance? (Not ROE and WACC

– but rather how much of a strategic advantage the plan has given, how well it was diffused into the business

etc.)

15. How important are breakaways to the process and why?

16. How important are facilitators in the process and why?

17. In five to seven steps, describe the key strategic concepts that in your opinion are required for success?

18. What is your highest level of education?

19. How aware are you of inherent internal bias and how do you overcome it during strategic conversations

to ensure all concepts are explored for merit?

20. How do you translate strategic conversations into actionable items to ensure their implementation and

be able to track the progress thereof?

21. Name four strategic tools at your disposal that you feel comfortable to use?

22. How do you decide on which tools suit which strategic period?

23. How often should the strategy be interrogated for decisions to change or enhance to keep on track?

24. How often do you read around strategy in practice?

25. How often in a year do you discuss strategy?

I wanted to get a snapshot of how middle management within the operations of a single business

unit perceived their role in s-a-p, so I sent out the same interview questionnaire to seven

additional middle managers at head office within my business unit and twelve additional

middle managers in operations at site level, also within my business unit.

This data was very voluminous and rich in detail and as such offered massive value when re-

interrogated for this research effort through a different set of lenses. The lenses I used this time

round was s-a-p along with “learning organisation” and “sense-making/sense-giving”.

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As part of AR2, I used this reinterpreted data to gain insight into s-a-p but focussed on the unit

of measure (that of the middle manager). In other words, when looking at the senior

management and EXCO interviews I extracted the role of the manager in their eyes. I looked

at how they feel middle managers can add value through learning organisation principles

invoked during s-a-p that allows for performance enhancement as an organisation.

From the middle manager’s perspectives, I extracted their key insights into s-a-p, capacity to

learn as an organisation, how they feel they are able to sense-make, and give through these two

previously mentioned principles.

I extracted voluminous propositions from these re-interrogations and reflections on the

interviews and questionaries’ and used the Gioia method described in Chapter 2.4.2 to filter

this into succinct and valuable insights that would be used to inform the purposeful activity

model development under Chapter 4

Table 3 below details the Interviewees and questionnaire candidates used for the data

collection.

Table 3: Details of interviewees and questionnaire respondents for Phases 1 and 2

Number Interview /

Questionnaire

on s-a-p

Title Level

1 Interview Chief Executive Officer Executive Group Level

2 Interview Group Executive – Risk Executive Group Level

3 Interview Group Executive: Manufacturing Executive Group Level

4 Interview Executive Human Resources

Group

Executive Group Level

5 Interview Group Executive – Engineering

and Construction Cluster


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6 Interview Group Executive – Engineering

and Construction Cluster


7 Interview Managing Director of the Civils

Business Unit

Senior Middle Manager

Business Unit Level

8 Interview Managing Director – Oil and Gas

Business Unit


Business Unit Level

9 Interview General Manager – Projects

Business Unit


Business Unit Level

10 Interview Managing Director Power

Business Unit


Business Unit Level

11 Interview Managing Director Engineering Senior Middle Manager

Business Unit Level

12 Interview Managing Director Housing Senior Middle Manager

Business Unit Level

13 Interview Managing Director Coastal Senior Middle Manager

Business Unit Level

14 Interview Managing Director Building

Business Unit


Business Unit Level

15 Questionnaire Finance Director Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

16 Questionnaire Commercial Director Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

17 Questionnaire General Manager - Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

18 Questionnaire Financial Manager Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

19 Questionnaire Director Commercial Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

20 Questionnaire Contracts Director Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

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21 Questionnaire Commercial Manager - Full Time

Site Based

Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

22 Questionnaire Site Agent - Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

23 Questionnaire Alternate Director Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

24 Questionnaire Contracts Director Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

25 Questionnaire Contracts Director Civils Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

26 Questionnaire Alternate Director Estimating in

Civils

Middle Management at

Business Unit Level

With one of the focal lenses of this research being learning capacity generation of middle

managers through s-a-p, I felt it important to augment Phase 1 and 2 with a third phase that

would evaluate how organisational employees view the learning capacity of the group. This is

covered below in Phase 3.

Action Research Cycle 3 (AR3): The Dimension of a Learning Organisation

Questionnaire (DLOQ) questionnaire – Qualitative and quantitative analysis

It is important to be able to measure where the organisation currently sits in terms of aspirations

to be a learning organisation. To this end, I will adopt an additional grounded theoretical

questionnaire developed by Marsick and Watkins (Marsick & Watkins, 2003) over a decade.

This questionnaire was selected because of the grounded theory rigour it offered given its

existence and testing over the last decade and more. The research method needed a baseline

measure of my organisation in terms of being a learning organisation and using an established

method made academic sense.

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The DLOQ measures seven principles that are required to be in place for a learning origination

to be realised. Positive permission to use their Dimension of a Learning Organisation

Questionnaire (DLOQ) was given by both Victoria Marsick and Karen Watkins as per

Appendix 1.

Thereafter I will do my own interpretation of the data and confirm/enhance the insights gained

through collaboration with Karen Watkins directly (again with Victoria Marswick’s

permission). Even though my interpretation was qualitative, Watkins offered to run a

regression analysis on the data I had gathered (which was 54 returned questionnaires of 129

sent out to middle managers across the organisation) and I thus emailed the insights to her. This

was generous on her side as this was not my original intention when starting this research given

the time constraints and the inherent complexity of running a qualitative and quantitative

methodology. Watkins’ email response and correlations found are discussed in Chapter 6.

2.4.2: Data analysis

The Gioia method

I will use the Gioia method to re-interrogate the data looking for insights into not only s-a-p

but also in terms of learnings, learning organisation principles, sense-making and sense-giving

and any links between all of them.

The Gioia method (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2012) will be used for synthesis and analysis.

I will use the Gioia method using a 1st, 2nd and 3rd order of categorisation to distil and crystallise

possible model variables and contextual influencers.

Gioia et al (2012) described their process on page 20 of their paper, which I have paraphrased

in the following paragraph.

• The 1st-order analysis adheres strictly to informant terms, with easily 50 to 100, 1st-order

emergent categories.

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• In a 2nd order analysis I will seek similarities and differences among the many 1st order

categories to reduce the relevant categories to a more manageable number of 25 to 30.

These are termed 2nd order themes. Gioia et al.(2012, p. 20) noted that “in this 2nd-order

analysis, we are now firmly in the theoretical realm, asking whether the emerging themes

suggest concepts that might help us describe and explain the phenomena we are observing.”

• From here we use the 2nd order themes and aggregate them further still to what Gioia et al

call 2nd-order ‘‘aggregate dimensions.’” Once all three have been determined a data

structure is drawn up as a “sensible visual aid” (Gioia et al., 2012, p. 20) to help the model

development and data analysis process where “…after the initial stages of analysis, we also

begin cycling between emergent data, themes, concepts, and dimensions and the relevant

literature, not only to see whether what we are finding has precedents, but also whether we

have discovered new concepts” (Gioia et al., 2012, p. 21).

The following diagram illustrates the proposed Gioia method to data analysis that will be

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Figure 7: Gioia Method Indicative Illustration (Gioia et al., 2012)

Using these developed insights from the data collection and analysis, I will develop a

conceptual model through a grounded method for both my “should be” and “as is” models that

explains the phenomenon of interest and its core concepts dynamic relationships in a rigorous

and ordered way.

2.5: Ethical considerations

All questionnaires were collected anonymously and permission to solicit the manager’s help in

filling in the questionnaire was obtained by the group CEO prior to sending it out. No staff

member was under any obligation to return the questionnaire and this was made clear when

sending out the request to assist in this study. (See appendix 2 copy of this)

In any data gathering and analysis process, especially as an employee of the same organisation,

a major risk for the researcher is ‘‘going native’’ (Gioia, Corley, & Hamilton, 2012, p. 19). The

risk lies in essentially adopting the informant’s view and losing objective higher-level

perspective necessary for informed theorizing. To combat this and in terms of the Gioia

method, I will ensure that my dissertation supervisor act as a “devil’s advocate” (Gioia et al.,

2012, p. 19) to continually question and critique my data interpretations to push me beyond the

obvious and linear rational thinking.

Ethically, this paper offers immense value not only for my personal growth, but also to the

organisation as a whole. It is an attempt to find a way to influence social behaviour in the

company through key role players, who can hopefully influence the organisation’s future

performance and improve our strategic competitiveness and thus sustainability (viability). In

this way it helps to secure the future of the company and in so doing the employees, their

livelihoods and their families’ well-being. A more sustainable and strategically differentiated

company is potentially more profitable, and thus offers shareholders better returns.

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This research does not provide any confidential information that is not already in the public

domain, since the organisation is a listed entity. It does not divulge the company’s future

strategy, nor does it compromise the company or its employees in any way; it is simply research

to find ways to improve how middle managers can build the learning capacity of the

organisation, to practice strategy, to better our future business relevance, and to allow a learning

ability as an organisation.

The research did not burden anyone in the organisation unfairly, other than taking the time

needed to undergo an interview or complete a questionnaire. Both were voluntary and as such

posed no ethical concerns.

Any data that was perceived as sensitive was sanitised, including if it could have been

detrimental to an employee if it were shared with EXCO members and/or other employees.

Another ethical concern involved potentially private matters (both personal and company

related), however all discussions fell under Chatham House Rules1. As a director of the

company, I understand my fiduciary duties as well as the unwritten cultural rules about what

should and should not leave the interview room. I was also cautious when conducting the

interviews and queried from time to time, whether the information being shared was sensitive.

Further, it was made clear at the outset of each interview that the interviewees were not required

to answer any uncomfortable questions.

In the interviews and questionnaires, anonymity will be key to ensure truthful answers that

would provide valid and robust data with rich meaning. UCT’s Code of Research Ethics has

been and will be followed.

1 The Chatham House Royal Institute of International Affairs developed the world famous Chatham House Rule which may be invoked to encourage openness and the sharing of information. The rule is as follows from their official website (www.chathamhouse.org) : “When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”

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I will also be aware to not use my authority in an unethical manner to extract data from an

unwilling subject or subordinate, and any information received from others in the industry will

be assessed in terms of the Competition Act.

In summary, although there are some privacy concerns, efforts have been made to address them

by using simple countermeasures that protect the integrity of the research and its potential

outcomes.

2.6: Conclusion

Pragmatism is chosen as the overarching research style in order to provide practical

implementable interventions that will advance the middle manager’s role in driving

organisational learning through s-a-p in my organisation. This gives the research purposeful

intent, which adds significant value by removing error and honing the business model towards

an improved system (heuristic).

Soft Systems Methodology (SSM) as Action Research (AR) will be adopted as the primary

research methodology to develop deep and rich understanding of the phenomenon of interest

without attempting to “solve” it in a goal seeking mentality. Instead, the promotion of continual

learning through developing and testing a model around the system of interest will direct the

research effort. It is the most suited to inquiry of human systems.

Chapter 3 focuses on the literature review in order to gain insights for AR1 (covered in chapter

4). I need to develop a deeper understanding of s-a-p, sense-making/sense-giving and learning

organisation. Each of these will be unpacked in detail to offer propositions on how they play a

role for middle managers to develop organisational learning capacity through s-a-p within my

organisation.

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Chapter 3: Literature review

3.1: Introduction

The literature review will cover strategy-as-practice (s-a-p), with a specific focus on knowledge

as practice and the role of the middle manager. Insights will be gathered by investigating the

literature to try to ascertain what middle managers’ role is in s-a-p, how they influence

diffusion, their ability to use s-a-p to sense-make, and how this influences organisational

adaptability. It is also hoped that insights into possible barriers or inhibitors (as well as any

catalysts) that middle managers may experience through s-a-p would be gained.

Literature was also examined to gain insights into what a learning organisation is, as well as

how it influences s-a-p and a middle manager’s capacity to utilise these learnings as knowledge,

which in turn influences the organisation’s performance, strategy and potentially its culture.

This literature review portion should also give insight into how learnings are used

organisationally and at middle manager level to sense make and sense give, both of which are

critical in s-a-p.

Lastly, academic research into sense-making and sense-giving, focussing on the middle

manager as a unit of analysis, is examined, with the intent to gain insight into the influence of

sense-making and sense-giving on s-a-p and the ability of middle managers to use these to

influence organisational learning for strategic benefit and hopefully organisational

performance enhancement.

The ultimate intention of this literature review is to develop a foundation upon which to build

a purposeful activity model (in Chapter 4) of how middle managers learn, accumulate and use

strategic practice as knowledge, and undertake strategic sense-making and sense-giving, in

order to influence the development of a learning organisation.

This literature review begins with a discussion of Strategy-as-Practice that covers its definition,

key components, different s-a-p practices and most critically the role that middle managers

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play. More specifically the s-a-p literature review focusses on how organisational structuring

in terms of their practice as knowledge influences middle managers and how they create

knowledge and use it in sense-making. The subsection then concludes with possible inhibitors

and barriers to s-a-p before moving into literature reviews on sense-making/sense-giving and

lastly Learning Organisations

3.2: Strategy as practice and the role of middle managers

3.2.1: Definition of s-a-p

Strategy as practice is concerned with understanding how people perform work in

organisations. Jarzabkowski & Spee (2009, p. 69) define Strategy-as-practice (s-as-p) as a

“research topic…concerned with the doing of strategy; who does it, what they do, how they

do it, what they use, and what implications this has for shaping strategy".

3.2.2: Key components of s-a-p

There are three key components of s-a-p: Practitioners, Praxis and Practices, defined as follows:

Practitioners are the actors who drive strategy development in organisations through direct

and indirect influence. They can be internal or external to an organisation and can be at a

number of levels in terms of hierarchy (Whittington, 2007, p. 1579). This research effort

focuses on the practitioners who have direct influence at organisational level internally

(specifically the middle manager as a meso-level aggregate level as the unit of analysis), as

opposed to extra-organisational practitioners who have indirect influence at the macro level

(such as government policies, business schools etc.).

Praxis refers to the flow of strategy “practices, decisions and events” over time, where the time

element is the key differentiator (Jarzabkowski & Spee, 2009, p. 73). Praxis refers to the way

strategic decision making is done through the various practices by the various actors, and how

these actors try and influence or sell certain strategic ideas and plans to the rest of the

organisation in the name of strategic advancement (Whittington, 2007, p. 1578).

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Practices are the “traditions, norms, rules and routines through which the work of strategy is

constructed” (Whittington, 2002, cited in Jarzabkowski, (2004, p. 20). According to

Whittington (2007), praxis, practices and practitioners “offer a sense of definition that was

earlier missing from Strategy-as-Practice research”. Although there is an overlap between

praxis and the process of strategy, a more specific focus on practice, practitioners and

profession allows the researcher to drill down deeper to offer a richer and more complex

understanding of the whole system and its importance to an organisation’s performance over

time (Whittington, 2007, p. 1578).

Now that the components of s-a-p are defined, it is important to highlight that literature on

practices have been significantly enhanced since 2007. In 3.2.3 below I elaborate on this using

Rouleau (2013) to give a deeper appreciation of the differing views on practices within the

literature.

3.2.3: Different views of “practice/s” in s-a-p

According to Rouleau (2013), s-a-p focuses on five forms of practices, which are summarised

in Table 4 below:

Table 4: Practice Views (Rouleau, 2013)

Practice View What it focuses on Research Purpose / Contribution

Practice as

managerial

action

How managers and

others strategize

A deeper comprehension of managerial

roles, skills and abilities related to

strategizing activities

Practices as a

set of tools

How managers and

others use the tools of

strategy

A stronger comprehension of the informal

procedures of strategic planning, tools and

meetings

Practice as

knowledge

How managers and

others perform strategy

A better interpretation of contextual and

hidden characteristics of strategizing

routines, conversations and interactions

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Practices as

organisational

resources

How organisational

practices shape strategic

competitive advantage

A renewed understanding of the

organisational level routines, capabilities

and processes

Practice as

global

discourse

How strategy discourse

produces managers and

organisations

A critical understanding of the institutional

and disciplinary role of strategy through

extra-organisational discourses

This research study will primarily consider strategy practice as knowledge as well as practice

as managerial action. This will inform the research as to how middle managers interact and

discuss strategy-developing routines that reinforce institutionalised knowledge in strategy

development. By understanding these routines and interactions, the researcher hopes to get a

sense of the strategic tone which is set culturally for the organisation.

3.2.4: The role of middle managers as s-a-p actors

As actors in s-a-p, middle managers play a critical social and political role that influences power

dynamics, social interaction and “routinisation” of practice. The knock-on effects of this

influence are informal power distribution and knowledge capacity development.

The role of middle manager as actor, in the context of s-a-p, links to organisational strategic

performance. In my experience, the middle manager either blocks or perpetuates the group’s

strategic intent and culture. Löwstedt (2016, p. 11) supports this assertation, arguing that “s-a-

p recommends a shift in attention, from strategy as something a company has (possesses), i.e.,

which exists per se, to something that people do”. The “people” he refers to are the middle

managers who are the focus of this study.

Practices of middle managers in an organisation influence middle managers and vice versa in

terms of learning, sense-making and sense-giving. This is due to the fact that strategy is

“socially constructed” (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 2) through practice by individual actors (middle

managers), which aggregates to form how a company or organisation practices it. Strategic

success relies on middle managers and their practices, given that they influence strategic

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“adoption and “routinisation” in organisational practice”, as well as strategy diffusion

(Jarzabkowski & Kaplan, 2015, p. 546).

How middle managers “interact with the social and physical features of context in the everyday

activities that constitute practice” (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 2) through the lenses of sense-

making and Learning Organisation, highlights the role middle managers can play in developing

knowledge through s-a-p. This can be used to enhance organisation learning capacity to

improve sustainability and long term perpetual strategic differentiation advantage.

How middle managers in an organisation develop and diffuse strategy (or practice) within

surrounding contextual issues gives direct insight into the challenges in strategy practice. The

where, how and when of strategy practice, in the context of power and social dynamics,

determines where best to influence strategic effectiveness in order to drive competitive

advantage (Rouleau et al., 2010).

3.2.5: The effect of organisational structuring on middle managers’ practice as

knowledge

The organisational structure within which middle managers are contextualised also has

research merit. Whether a business is more centralised or decentralised, bureaucratic or not,

divisional or flat in structure, has a bearing on middle management agency, and recursively

influences their forms of practice. In other words, it directly influences their resistance levels

to devolving, adopting and diffusing strategic change (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 539).

Middle managers’ structuring position within the organisation can also play a role in how

adaptive an organisation is, and hence how much of a learning organisation it is. This is turn

directly influences who participates in the strategy development and practices. As

Jarzabkowski (2004) notes:

“Culturally adaptive organizations are characterized by decentralization, with the role of senior

management being to support and align strategic initiatives arising at other levels of the firm

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(Bartlett and Ghoshal 1993). When strategy participation is more widespread, with

decentralized decision-making, cultures are more predisposed to creativity (Garud and Karnoe

2001; Shaw et al. 1998) and broader learning attitudes to risk-taking (Easterby-Smith 1990;

Eisenhardt and Sull 2001)” (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 539).

3.2.6: Middle managers’ role in knowledge creation through s-a-p

S-a-p as knowledge practice also ties directly to the frameworks of knowledge creation and

learning organisation theory.

Learning organisations (discussed in Chapter 3.4) require people who “continually expand their

capacity to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are

nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to

learn together” (Senge, 2006, p. 3). This requires middle managers who practice and encompass

this paradigm.

Popova-Nowak and Cseh (2015, p. 316) define organisational learning as a “social process of

individuals participating in collective situated practices and discourses that reproduce and

simultaneously expand organizational knowledge structures and link at multiple levels in the

organisation". Again, this talks to middle manager practices (in particular knowledge as

practice), and how this influences strategic learning and its diffusion throughout the rest of the

organisation.

Middle managers can be seen as a “micro-community” within the organisation, who, should

they possess the ability to hold “multiple interpretations simultaneously” and be able to bring

them into the strategy practices, effectively create a knowledge fashioning system within the

organisation that facilitates the strategic process (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 538).

The tacit knowledge that middle managers possess can also be seen as critical knowledge,

which, if effectively recognised, can aid greatly in the implementation of strategic change

(Rouleau, 2005, p. 1439) through middle management s-a-p.

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In s-a-p, middle managers play a pivotal role in knowledge creation and the strategic action

stemming from it; they are key to how strategy and strategic knowledge (tacit and explicit) are

diffused within the organisation. Moreover, the way they are treated by senior management

and the organisational structure impacts directly on their effectiveness in s-a-p processes, as it

determines their agency and feel. For example, in an organisation where creativity and flair are

expected by middle managers, they need to be supported by managers who do not punish, but

rather encourage experimentation and learning from failures. With this dynamic, s-a-p would

be augmented rather than stifled. Thus the relationship between top management role

expectations (and how they support this) determine the agency afforded to middle management,

enabling a more successful s-a-p (Mantere, 2008). This speaks directly to the learning

organisational theory, where structuring is a key contextual factor in determining middle

management’s and an organisation’s ability to create and act on knowledge creation and

learnings from that knowledge (Fiol & Lyles, 1985).

3.2.7: Middle managers as sense-makers

How different levels of management in the organisation adopt s-a-p, in order to fulfil their

strategic duty, is heavily dependent on how middle management are able to influence those

above and below themselves (through sense-making and sense-giving, discussed in Chapter

3.3) across a number of levels. To do this they engage in strategy as knowledge, which if

analysed for certain parameters may help us understand the efficacy of strategy action in an

organisation (Rouleau & Balogun, 2011). Rouleau and Balogun (2011) continue that one

should specifically look at the parameters of ‘performing the conversation’ and ‘setting the

scene’, which are critical to s-a-p in terms of sense-making. This is also influenced by a middle

managers’ “ability to draw on symbolic and verbal representations” (Rouleau & Balogun,

2011, p. 954)in order to get a message across that is strategically relevant, eloquent and

convincing, resulting in change adoption and diffusion for the improvement of the

organisation’s strategic practices.

“Symbolic and verbal representations” also speak heavily to the principles of a Learning

Organisation through the theory of the Knowledge Creating Company (Nonaka, 1991), where

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the use of symbolic metaphors and analogies, along with modelling positively, influence

Strategy as Knowledge. It does this by taking tacit strategic knowledge and putting it into a

model form that makes it explicit for everyone in the organisation.

The middle manager’s ability to set the scene and conduct the actual conversation is key to his

or her sense-making within an organisation’s subtle cultural and social systems. If a middle

manager can navigate this then it allows effective spreading of the correct strategic message,

augmenting strategy diffusion in the organisation. This would obviously, only be possible if

the knowledge passed down by more senior management has been translated effectively in a

similar fashion. This also talks to the ‘agency’ argument, and its influence on how a middle

manager will interact with those above, below and around themselves (Rouleau & Balogun,

2011).

3.2.8: Inhibitors – Possible barriers to s-a-p

As part of this framework, we need to understand not only s-a-p drivers, but also inhibitors and

potential barriers. As Jarzabkowski (2004) notes:

“At the organisational level, the problem of recursion is illustrated in path dependence,

persistent organisational routines, and organisational memory. The strategic and operational

routines of an organisation have genetic properties that predispose it to act in certain ways and,

more importantly, define the possible options that it may take (Nelson and Winter 1982).

Routines are socially complex, embedded, and interlocked. They comprise a social architecture

that penetrates a firm’s communication channels, information filters and problem-solving

strategies making it difficult for the firm to absorb new technologies (Henderson and Clark

1990)” (Jarzabkowski, 2004, p. 6).

This means that company culture and socialisation may inhibit a middle manager’s ability to

build organisation learning capacity through s-a-p given that he or she may run the risk of being

socialised into that organisation’s specific routines and practices, which over time lead to a

resistance to any form of change - strategic or otherwise. Löwstedt (2016) agrees that culture

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and people who are ‘set in their ways’ (collective identification) can kill strategic change

initiatives and lead to bias.

Middle management may also be biased due to contextual issues such as cost cutting or contract

losses, which result in decisions being made based on preconceived perceptions of these

circumstances, rather than the current reality. This influences the strategic practice and decision

making, leading to possibly worse performances. This is also known as “superstitious learning”

(Hardcopf, Goncalves, Linderman, & Bendoly, 2015, p. 19).

Another factor to remember about s-a-p with middle managers, is that in construction most

promotion has not occurred through performance in s-a-p and strategic development and

decision making, but rather from what was learnt and proven over time to work in the site

production environment. Again, this culture and socialisation will only reinforce “superstitious

learning”.

Most companies are driven by bottom line results, and “cost out” initiatives often dominate

overarching strategies. The result can be substantial in terms of longer term performance

(Hardcopf et al., 2015, p. 15). The reasoning for this is that a culture of this nature socialises

middle managers into s-a-p that considers only short-term cost cutting tactics, resulting in a

misalignment with the organisation’s strategy.

3.2.9: Learnings synopsis for s-a-p

Middle managers play a critical social and political role that influences power dynamics, social

interaction and “routinisation” of practice. Their practice influences the organisation and vice

versa especially in terms of sense-making, sense-giving and the ability to generate learning

from this.

A middle managers’ given hierarchical “power” and social influence from company

structuring, as well as an organisation’s business structuring (centralised or decentralised),

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plays a role in a middle managers’ s-a-p and their ability to influence others in the organisation

around s-a-p.

In s-a-p, a middle manager’s role in knowledge creation and the strategic action stemming from

it are key to how strategy and strategic knowledge (tacit and explicit) are diffused within the

organisation. How different levels of management in the organisation adopt s-a-p, in order to

fulfil their strategic duty, is heavily dependent on how middle management, are able to

influence those above and below themselves (through sense-making and sense-giving) across

a number of levels.

The following section (3.3) therefore looks at literature around middle managers and their

ability for sense-making and sense-giving and its influence on the organisation’s s-a-p.

3.3: Sense Making and Sense-Giving

According to (Rouleau, 2005, p. 1415) “sense-making has to do with the way managers

understand, interpret, and create sense for themselves based on the information surrounding

the strategic change. Sense-giving is concerned with their attempts to influence the outcome,

to communicate their thoughts about the change to others, and to gain their support”.

Both concepts (sense-making and sense-giving) are crucial to middle managers and how they

influence their own (and their organisation’s) ability to create learning capacity though s-a-p.

These concepts depend on how informed a middle manager is, what his/her social standing is,

how he/she interacts socially, and how in tune the organisation is to learning principles. These

dependencies are in turn influenced by the organisational culture, how this culture influences

mental models and then lastly, how in the context of formal and informal power, the manager

is able to use his discursive ability to influence, communicate, gain favour and influence those

around them. Through this a middle manager is able to create capacity to learn and importantly

use these learnings and communicate them so that the knowledge is transformed into actionable

knowledge from an informed standpoint which allows an organisation to improve its future

performance.

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According to Maitlis and Lawrence (2007), sense-making is not something that stems from

mental models (although a circular influence would also exist between a manager’s mental

model and the way he makes sense and gives sense). Instead, sense-making is a ‘living thing’

that evolves and emerges amongst middle managers as they engage in s-a-p, and is particularly

sensitive to the discursive ability of a middle manager. In other words, sense-making and sense-

giving are inextricably linked in an almost symbiotic relationship; the more sense a manager is

able to make, the better their understanding (perceived or otherwise) and the greater their ability

to discuss and debate with others. This leads to further learnings and potential knowledge

creation, which enriches and deepens their understanding, all of which enhances a middle

manager to sense-make.

This is reinforced by the finding of Rouleau and Balogun (2011, p. 955), who conclude that:

“…strategic sense-making does not exist just in cognitive structures or in routines and systems,

it is constituted and reconstituted in ongoing discursive activities of middle managers (Taylor

and Robichaud, 2004). In other words, strategic sense-making is accomplished through the

ability of middle managers to craft and share a message by referring to a complex mosaic of

underlying knowledge (Samra-Fredericks, 2005) that is subtly invoked in order to make that

message meaningful within the context.”

If an organisation strives towards becoming a learning organisation, then the role of middle

managers is crucial, given its interdependence with sense-making and sense-giving. Rouleau

states that sense-making and sense-giving are “in a permanent flux and constantly being

reconstituted in daily experiences of agents” (2005, p. 1437). This means that s-a-p

(specifically Knowledge as Practice) at the aggregated level of the middle manager is critical

to this process, as it influences these routines and the accumulation knowledge (particularly

tacit knowledge) developed over time through experience. If this is reinforced positively in

middle managers, then it stands to reason that this knowledge can be made explicit to others

throughout the organisation far more effectively, allowing for better strategic diffusion and the

adoption of any required strategic change initiative, leading to improved performance. This

speaks to learning organisation principles.

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In terms of a learning organisation and s-a-p (in particular s-a-p as a knowledge practice),

sense-making is a key link. It determines how information is perceived, construed,

contextualised, internalised, externalised, what knowledge could be created, and how the

knowledge is created. Sense-making influences how this information and knowledge would be

diffused or blocked in an organisational setting, and informs adaptive or recursive behaviour

as explained under the s-a-p discussion in Chapter 3.

The advantage for middle managers, who can perpetually learn through their everyday

practices and experiences with strategy, is that they can augment their ability to sense-make

and sense-give in a manner that allows the implementation of strategic change. Through this

evolving s-a-p, one hopes to improve the strategic future of the organisation by developing

strategic differentiation and thus competitive advantage. S-a-p allows sense-making through

practices, praxis and practitioners to understand what mechanisms within the organisation and

its impacting environment “underlie resources and capabilities that maintain competitive

advantage” (Rouleau et al., 2010, p. 17).

Given the varying backgrounds of managers, their contextualised interpretation (sense-making)

of the strategy will affect the way they translate (sense-giving) it to others. Strategy as practice

is critical to the diffusion of strategy throughout an organisation. This is strongly influenced by

a manager’s tacit knowledge, as well as the organisational culture they drive. Managers are

also key to adopting, dispersing and/or influencing change ideas to stakeholders within and

external to the organisation, in their own way; they tend to bend the facts of the strategy slightly

to suit the audience they have. In other words, the interpretation of the strategy will be

explained slightly differently to different levels of the organisation and outside the organisation

(Rouleau, 2005).

Middle managers help stakeholders (including each other) make sense of their strategic realities

through social interaction in s-a-p, which develops knowledge and creates actionable learnings.

Arguably, this only works if those influencing the sense-making, through sense-giving, are

motivated to do so. Middle managers need to feel that the issue is important, that they have the

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requisite knowledge, that their social standing in their organisation legitimises them. Above all

they must exist in a social structure which is conducive to them being able to conduct sense-

giving (Maitlis & Lawrence, 2007).

Rouleau and Balogun (2011) note that power also influences a middle manager’s ability to

sense-make, and thereby sense-give, which is developed over time through a deeper

understanding of his or her contextual influences. This requires ongoing knowledge

accumulation through continual learning. It can also be inferred that learning and sense-making

are intertwined in how knowledge is accumulated, assimilated, understood and acted upon

strategically in s-a-p, primarily through interactions in conversations. This means that a middle

manager’s sense-making and sense-giving ability would be primarily influenced by their ability

to “draw on symbolic and verbal representation and the sociocultural systems they belong to”

(Rouleau & Balogun, 2011, pp. 971–972).

Common and varying worldviews can influence how middle managers organise culturally to

form similar micro-practices of strategic sense-making and sense-giving, which may then

influence everyday routines and conversations. Rouleau (2013) observes that middle managers

are only human and subject to their own biases and mental models created through everyday

s-a-p and knowledge assimilation. This would have an influence on sense-making and

interpretation of the “contextual and hidden characteristics of strategizing” (Rouleau, 2013, p.

549) (i.e. their Knowledge as Practice).

3.3.1: Learnings synopsis for sense-making and sense-giving

Sense-making and sense-giving are the means by which middle managers can influence their

organisation’s ability to create learning capacity though s-a-p. The reason for this is due to the

fact that that middle managers help stakeholders (including each other) make sense of their

strategic realities through social interaction in s-a-p, and this develops knowledge and creates

actionable learnings.

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Social interaction is however influenced by culture and power, and these impact on how middle

managers organise culturally to form similar micro-practices of strategic sense-making and

sense-giving, which may then influence everyday routines and conversations. Conversation is

a key lever to allow for sense-making and sense-giving in that learning, sense-making and

sense-giving are intertwined in how knowledge is accumulated, assimilated, understood and

acted upon strategically in s-a-p, primarily through interactions during these conversations.

The efficacy of these conversations is influenced by the s-a-p “routinisation” of middle

managers, which in turn is influenced by an organisation’s culture. The more open the culture

to learning the more positive the socialisation, the greater the aggregated level of the middle

manager influences on these routines, enhancing the accumulation knowledge (particularly

tacit knowledge) developed over time.

The next section will focus on the Learning Organisation, its interactions with the environment

(both external and internal), and its impact on organisational culture (as well as micro cultures

within the organisation), organisational structure and strategy.

3.4: Learning Organisations

Learning organisations are essential in competitive industries. Dekoulou and Trivellas (2015)

assert that:

“Fierce competition, rapid evolution of information technology, economic uncertainty and

ceaselessly shifting consumer trends, have brought about for contemporary business world a

new era where the major source of competitiveness lies in a company’s ability to transform into

a learning organization, an organization which constantly generates, diffuses and integrates new

knowledge" (Dekoulou & Trivellas, 2015).

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Senge (2006, p4) agrees in his observation that:

“As the world becomes more interconnected and business becomes more complex and

dynamic, work must become more meaningful…it’s just not possible any longer to figure it out

from the top and have everyone else following the orders of the grand “strategist”. The

organisations that will truly excel in the future will be the organisations that discover how to

tap people’s commitment and capacity to learn at all levels in the organisation” (2006, p. 4).

In other words, organisations must become learning organisations. Dekoulou & Trivellas,

(2015) show their agreement by quoting Fang and Yang (2006) that "in order to deal with this

business volatility, to achieve superior organizational performance and sustainable

competitiveness, organizations imperatively need to base their action on regular creation and

integration of new knowledge, and thus, to adopt the model of learning organization for their

daily operation”.

Senge describes a learning organisation as one “where people continually expand their capacity

to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured,

where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to learn

together” (2006, p. 3).

Within this context, I reviewed other relevant literature pertaining to learning organisations and

their principles of development and implementation. The following four sub-sections detail my

findings, starting with organisational structuring and its influence on the ability of an

organisation to learn.

3.4.1: Learning organisation and structure

A company’s structure influences its s-a-p, and in so doing limits or acts as a catalyst in terms

of its ability to learn. The structure also determines how much formal power (versus socially

given informal power) is given to certain levels within the organisation. Power in an

organisation determines agency, with which comes strategic flexibility and adaptability.

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Fiol and Lyle (1985) state that being centralised in structure limits flexibility, because

concentrated power bases that socialise employees into recursive strategic behaviour, results

in limited learning that only reinforces past behaviour. They found that “an organic, more

decentralized structure tends to allow shifts of beliefs and actions" (p. 805), which means that

learnings can be used to action strategic changes that drive the business towards an improved

future strategic state.

Power distribution is thus crucial in any organisation, which in turn influences its strategy

practices. It also affects an organisation’s ability to learn from its strategic successes and

failures, which it needs to do in order to adapt to the ever-changing internal and external

environments impacting it. The following sub-section explores this influence on strategy and

its effect on becoming a learning organisation.

3.4.2: Learning organisation and strategy

Garvin (2013) argued that in order to develop a learning organisation, the organisation first

needs to develop skills in “creating, acquiring and transferring knowledge and modifying its

behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights” (p. 3). He adds that if knowledge were not

converted into action, there would be no strategic improvement. He believes that there are

various ways in which to develop a learning organisation, but the one that I feel is most relevant

is learning from strategic successes and failures. These learnings should be codified and

documented in a way that is easily accessible for employees, if one wants to learn from history.

This is in line with Weinzimmer and Esken (2017), who took the idea further by splitting

knowledge creation and use into two categories, namely: strategic exploration and strategic

exploitation. Weinzimmer and Esken (2017) contend that companies should have a balance of

both an explorative and exploitative strategy, but that the weighting should be on exploration

within an organisation. They argue that a company must push itself to become purposefully

“mistake tolerant”.

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A mistake-tolerant strategy within an organisation encourages knowledge creation that limits

future risk and creates new and innovative solutions. Weinzimmer and Esken (2017) cite Gatti,

Volpe and Vagnani (2015) to illustrate that this would allow “organizations to reduce their

dependence on the currently deployed combination of solutions which, at best, produce

decreasing marginal benefit to the organization over time” (p. 7). Ultimately, unless new

knowledge is generated, your competitors will overcome your initial strategic differentiation

advantage and overtake your company.

To adopt an exploitative/explorative balanced strategy, the internal and external environmental

impacts and contextual influencers (on becoming a learning organisation) are critical to review.

This is explored in the next sub-section.

3.4.3: Learning organisation and environment

To enhance an organisation’s ability to generate learning capacity through s-a-p,

Antonacopoulou & Sheaffer (2014, p. 6), emphasise that organizations must “adapt to frequent

environmental changes and refrain from repeating errors, to assimilate processes of learning

and draw lessons from the experiences they encounter if they are to cope with uncertainty.”

An organisation that promotes learning through being mistake tolerant stimulates an

environment that is conducive to innovation and advancement through knowledge creation,

leading to strategic advantage and potentially strategic differentiation. Key to this is the ability

to take this knowledge and integrate it into the existing business systems and procedures in an

exploitative way to generate action. Exploitative knowledge creation and its efficient use is

also a key component of the organisational learning cycle.

As leaders, middle managers are crucial for organisational communication. They drive

organisational resilience and adaptability through their promulgation and diffusion of

knowledge, which can help protect organisations from negative changes in their operating

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environment. This will also enhance positive change responses to improve the company’s

performance (Waddell & Pio, 2015).

The extent to which culture influences the learning organisational model will now be explored,

as it is crucial to enabling an organisation to become a learning one.

3.4.4: Learning organisation and culture

Senge (2006, p.3) described a learning organisation as one “where people continually expand

their capacity to create results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking

are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning

to learn together”. This is reinforced by organisational learning, which Popova-Nowak and

Cseh (2016, p.316) explained as a “social process of individuals participating in collective

situated practices and discourses that reproduce and simultaneously expand organizational

knowledge structures and link at multiple levels in the organisation”.

Senge (2006) laid out five key disciplines for establishing a learning organisation or promoting

organisational learning, namely: systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models, building

a shared vision, and team learning.

Culture plays a crucial role in establishing a learning organisation, not only at the organisational

level, but also at the micro and meso levels as well. Kofman and Senge (1994, p. 20) describe

the foundational values of a learning organisation as “love, humility, wonder (continuous

inquiry into the effects and consequences of actions on the system), empathy and compassion

utilising a set of practices for generative conversation and coordinated action through a work

and life flow that is holistically interconnected”. These are important concepts, but can be

difficult to put into practice. Marsick and Watkins (2010a) observe that “people have found the

idea of a learning organization to be inspiring, yet difficult to implement. It frequently involves

deep change in the mind sets of people as well as the culture of organizations and societies”.

This speaks to the organisation culture, how mental models stem from this culture, making

learning within an organisation difficult to implement.

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This is confirmed by the view of Kofman and Senge (1994) on the organisational challenges

of fragmentation, competition and reactiveness, which also speak to the organisational culture

and that of those who work within its structures. Fragmentation talks to our education and

socialisation into a world that requires “problem solving”, and the notion that each problem

can be separately addressed by breaking it down to its simplest state to find the underlying

cause. Given the complexity of the environments we operate in, it is impossible to simplify in

this manner; a holistic consideration rather than linear and analytical approaches is needed.

This talks to a systems thinking approach and the mental models required to help develop a

learning organisation.

Kofman and Senge (1994, p. 10) make a distinction between the problem solver who tries to

make something go away, and a creator who tries to bring something new into being. For this

reason, middle managers need to focus on becoming creators rather than problem solvers if

they wish to advance the learning organisation model.

Competition is also a mental model that challenges a learning organisation model. Irrelevant

competition between divisions is commonplace, and while healthy competition is invaluable

to an organisation’s development and growth, organisations “have lost the balance between

competition and co-operation precisely at the time when we most need to work together”

(Kofman & Senge, 1994, p. 7).

To strive to be a learning organisation, the organisation needs to overcome the fear of not

looking good based on short term competitive incentive schemes. Irrelevant competition

between management teams, divisions and management levels means that shared knowledge

is blocked, and the co-operation that is required to become a learning organisation is missing.

Reactiveness is a mental model that blocks the development of a learning organisation. The

organisation chooses to exercise authority through bureaucratic systems and procedures that

stifle creative, imaginative and experimental behaviour from employees; we do not try to break

the mental models created our whole lives as we have been socialised to “carry out orders”

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(Kofman & Senge, 1994, p. 9). Our organisational management mentality is socialised to be

one of problem solving rather than being a creator of new opportunities in a pre-emptive way.

If we want to strive towards being a learning organisation we need to create an environment

that has the requisite controls required in today’s working environments, while allowing

management to be creative and facilitate “practice” without the risk of negative consequence

in an environment that helps us learn pre-emptively for future real-world applications.

Nonaka (1991) views middle management as the aggregate layer that is able to synthesise tacit

knowledge from all levels and re-diffuse it, that is, middle managers are the “true ‘knowledge

engineers’ of the knowledge creating company”.

Waddell and Pio (2015, p. 473)’s perspective is that leaders (in this case middle managers) are

pivotal in creating a learning organisation through their use of a combination of leadership

styles. Through explorative leadership, they can foster relationships to create trust that allows

open and honest communication that stimulates learning through exploration and the open

sharing of learnings. Middle managers can also harness exploitative leadership styles to ensure

sufficient organisational controls and monitoring of organisational knowledge development, as

well as the actions leading from it.

Vera and Crossan (2012) argue that organisations that are “experiencing major difficulties and

disappointments” are more likely to culturally push the learning organisation initiative, in the

hope of transforming the organisation through challenging current assumptions and mental

models. They will culturally push for new ways of doing things and ways of communicating

this through feedback to the entire organisation.

Fiol and Lyle (1985) illustrate why the concept of a learning organisation may be of importance

to the organisation’s strategic practice of middle managers, arguing that “learning necessitates

experimentation, unlearning of past methods, and encouraging multiple viewpoints and debate

(Nystrom & Starbuck, 1984). The guidance of this process is an essential element of the

executive function (Andrews, 1980) - to ensure that learning is occurring and to assure the

organization's long-term survival” (p. 811). Again, there is this focus on culturally embedded

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experimentation or explorative learning to assist in the overcoming of mental blocks by

“unlearning” past methods of doing things.

3.4.5: Learning organisation interaction with contextual factors

Fiol & Lyles (1985) argue that there is a cyclical causal relationship between learning

contextual factors, which would reinforce the development of a learning organisation.

Figure 8 illustrates the authors’ interpretation of contextual factors that affect learning

probability by developing a corporate culture that is conducive to learning, combined with a

strategy that allows flexibility of the boundaries in which knowledge can be interpreted through

action to promote improved strategic performance.

Organisational structure is influenced by, and influences, culture, strategy and environment, by

providing both innovativeness and new insights through decentralising where possible. The

complexity of the environment impacts on the other three contextual factors and influences the

degree of learning possible, as well as action stemming from these learnings, the strategy

developed to leverage these learnings, and the structure adopted to execute on this developed

strategy.

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Figure 8: Authors’ interpretation of Fiol and Lyles (1985) contextual factors influencing a

learning organisation

3.4.6: Learning organisation capacity building through middle managers’ role in

knowledge development through s-a-p

So far, we have explored the learning organisation, how it works and what influences it. We

are yet to understand why the learning organisation is critical to organisational strategic

improvement, performance improvement, and the role of a middle manager in developing

knowledge through s-a-p.

Choo (1996, p. 340) purports that middle managers can make the difference by “attending to

and making sense of signals from its environment. By mobilizing the knowledge and expertise

of its members, the organization is constantly learning and innovating. By designing action and

decision routines based on what its members know and believe, the organization is able to

choose and commit itself to courses of action". The role that middle management plays in

developing this organisational learning ability is then central to unlocking the strategic

potential a company has to facilitate greater viability and sustainability.

• Strategy "determines thegoals and objectives and thebreadth of actions availablefor carrying out the strategy"(Fiol & Lyles, 1985, p. 805).

• "A centralized, mechanisticstructure tends to reinforcepast behaviors, whereas anorganic, more decentralizedstructure tends to allow shiftsof beliefs and actions" (Fiol &Lyles, 1985, p. 805).

• "Ideologies, establishedpatterns of behavior, sharedbeliefs and norms allinfluence action takingincluding strategic posture.To learn or become alearning organisation youneed to learn how to breakbad culture and developgood learning culture" (Fiol &Lyles, 1985, p. 805).

• "If either the internal orexternal environment is toocomplex and dynamic for theorganization to handle, anoverload may occur, andlearning will not take place(Lawrence & Dyer, 1983).Hedberg (1981, p.5) suggeststhat "learning requires bothchange and stability betweenlearners and theirenvironments" (Fiol & Lyles,1985, p. 805). Environment Culture

StrategyStructure

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Nonaka (1991) recognises the prevalence of a belief that measures performance against

financial achievement or return on investment, and acknowledges that little has been done to

measure this empirically. According to Ellinger, Ellinger, Yang, & Howton (2002, p. 6), Smith

and Tosey (1999, p. 70) acknowledge that ‘evidence is even harder to come by of organizations

linking learning to ROI [return on investment] and to the kinds of results that might convince

hard-headed business people to risk their money on a learning organization journey”.

Despite this, Ellinger et al (2006) conducted empirical research that concluded that a positive

relationship exists between a learning organisation and financial performance. However,

financial performance alone cannot result in long-term sustainability. Nonaka (1991) suggests

that knowledge creation in a learning organisation should be its way of “being”; it should not

be a separate thing that is there only to generate profits. A business needs to move to a level

where learning is inherent and natural, leading to emergent strategies that sustain perpetual

strategic advantage through continuous innovation and creativity. Organisations need to run

through cycles of exploration, transformation and exploitation, going back into exploration, in

an almost seamless way.

The two key findings from the literature review are thus as follows:

(i) Knowledge creation, sense-making and decision-making are interconnected and

“energise each other” (Choo, 1996, p. 338) and that notwithstanding this,

(ii) Often the middle manager or leader fails to see these links, resulting in

information and knowledge being created without ever being used for strategic

learning and decision making that could potentially improve the organisation’s

future state.

Choo’s (1996) study found that:

“People gather information ostensibly for decisions but do not use it. They ask for reports but

do not read them. Individuals fight for the right to take part in decision processes, but then do

not exercise that right. Policies are vigorously debated but their implementation is met with

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indifference. Managers observed in situ seemed to spend little time in making decisions, but

are instead most often engaged in meetings and conversations” (Choo, 1996).

Understanding a learning organisation and the role middle managers play is thus essential in

the effectiveness in improving an organisation’s performance. Choo (1996) saw organisational

knowledge as critical in three areas:

1. Making important decisions – to commit an organisation to action, be it strategic or

otherwise. Decision making options can only be generated through knowledge creation

and accumulation that is then utilised for the greater good of the organisation.

2. Sense-making – where strategic information can be used by the organisation to

understand and make sense of changes and jolting events in its external and/or internal

environment.

3. Organisational Learning - strategic information used to generate new knowledge

through Organisational Learning creates decision options for strategic initiatives.

Choo (1996) observed that the biggest obstacle is that “…organizations find it difficult to

unlearn their past--to question inherited assumptions and beliefs, to reject existing practices as

the only viable alternative” In other words, organisations battle to overcome their entrenched

mental models.

Organisational Learning is thus critical for a number of reasons including, but not limited to

the following:

1. Organisational learning enhances financial performance.

2. It helps organisations and the individuals within the organisations make sense of their

environment, aiding better strategic decision making.

3. It assists at all levels of decision making in the organisation.

4. It promotes innovation and creativity to allow a better strategic differentiation ability

through continual development of new ideas and processes.

5. It helps both exploration of new ideas and improved exploitation of current ones.

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6. It helps break bad cultures and develop good ones.

7. It allows companies to maintain relevance over time.

8. It allows knowledge conversion from:

a. Tacit to Tacit (socialised through something like an apprentice),

b. Tacit to Explicit (individuals’ knowledge is externalised in a fashion to be made

available to all),

c. Explicit to Explicit (through a combination of socialisation and externalisation),

and back from,

d. Explicit to Tacit (through internalising learnings and improving them through

experience), all in terms of company learning cycles (see Figure 9).

Nonaka (1991) acknowledges “…knowledge is transformed into organizational knowledge

valuable to the company as a whole. Making personal knowledge available to others is the

central activity of the knowledge creating company. It takes place continuously and at all

levels of the organization” (p. 3), all of which promotes the viability and sustainability of

an organisation over time.

Figure 9 illustrates a knowledge flow adapted from Choo (1996):

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Figure 9: Knowledge flow (Adapted from (Choo, 1996))

3.4.7: Dimensions of a learning organisation

How can one check if an organisation is transforming knowledge to create a learning

organisation? Moreover, if it is, then how can one assess whether it is gaining traction and

paying dividends for the greater good of the company?

Watkins and Marsick (2003, p.142) argue that a learning organisation “learns continuously and

transforms itself. Learning is a continuous, strategically used process—integrated with and

running parallel to work”. Their work resulted in the development of a set of seven principles

that influence an organisation’s ability to be a learning organisation. Table 5 shows the seven

parameters or dimensions of a learning organisation that are measured in the Dimension of a

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Learning Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ), which is a diagnostic tool developed to measure

the status of and changes in organizational learning practices and culture.

Table 5: Watkins and Marsick’s Dimensions of a Learning Organization (Marsick & Watkins,

2003)

Action imperative (dimension) Definition

1. Create continuous learning opportunities

(CL)

Learning is built into work so people can

learn on the job; opportunities are provided

for ongoing education and growth.

2. Promote inquiry and dialogue (DI) People express their views, listen and

inquire into the views of others;

questioning, feedback, and

experimentation are supported.

3. Encourage collaboration and team

learning (TL)

Work is designed to encourage groups to

access different modes of thinking, groups

learn and work together, and collaboration

is valued and rewarded.

4. Establish systems to capture and share

learning (ES)

Both high- and low-technology systems to

share learning are created and integrated

with work, access is provided, and systems

are maintained.

5. Empower people toward a collective

vision (EP)

People are involved in setting, owning, and

implementing joint visions; responsibility

is distributed close to decision making so

people are motivated to learn what they are

held accountable for.

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6. Connect the organization to its

environment (SC)

People are helped to see the impact of their

work on the entire enterprise, to think

systemically; people scan the environment

and use information to adjust work

practices; and the organisation is linked to

its community.

7. Provide strategic leadership for learning

(SL)

Leaders model, champion, and support

learning; leadership uses learning

strategically for business results.

The DLOQ is a measure of these key dimensions and an indicator of performance against them.

It can assist in developing correlations to diagnose possible improvement areas and track

overall progress of an organisation over time. The questionnaire includes measures of financial

and knowledge performance, that are used to assess factors that influence the organization’s

overall ability to adapt. The DLOQ has been extensively tested for validity and reliability and

found both valid and reliable (Yang, Watkins, & Marsick, 2004; Marsick, 2013, p. 129).

Results of the DLOQ measurement run in my organisation will be discussed in Chapter 5.

3.5: Conclusion

S-a-p, the principles of a learning organisation, and sense-making (sense-giving) are

inextricably linked in the literature. My insights from the literature review led me to conclude

that the middle manager must use his or her role to generate information and learnings through

s-a-p. This must then be converted into useful knowledge using the principles of a learning

organisation and then developed as a cultural element of the organisation’s DNA. If the

learning organisation principles are not lived, then knowledge is wasted and the potential to

improve a strategic situation will be lost.

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Key to tying this together is the strategic leadership that ensures learning principles are driven

from the top, strategy is in line with wanting to learn and improve through a balance of

exploration and exploitation, and middle managers are given the agency through company

structure and developing a learning culture. This enables middle managers to sense-make well,

and gives them diverse decision options that allow solid decision making and strategic diffusion

through relevant and clear sense-giving discursive practices.

Based on the literature, it is argued that if the company could harness the s-a-p ideology and

engrain it in the learning culture, the strategy would become an everyday consideration in

formal as well as informal situations. In so doing, the middle managers could help the

organisation to continuously evaluate its strategic learning on a regular basis, enabling them to

better navigate the ever-increasing complexity of the construction landscape, and perpetually

improve the organisation’s performance.

S-a-p can be used as part of the growth path to a learning organisation that allows strategic

differentiation, which may provide a competitive advantage over rivals and drive viability.

Löwstedt (2016, p. 12) cites Johnson et al. (2003) and Jarzabkowski et al. (2007) around s-a-p

and describes strategy as “…being a situated and socially accomplished activity, which is

consequential for the outcomes, survival and competitive advantages of an organization”.

To ensure it becomes ingrained in a company’s DNA, s-a-p must become a habit through

practice, which “implies repetitive performance; that is, to attain recurrent, habitual, or

routinized accomplishment of particular actions. Practice is thus a particular type of self-

reinforcing learning akin to single-loop or exploitative learning theories” (Jarzabkowski, 2004,

p. 531). No one is better positioned to drive this than middle managers, who have the crucial

role of translating and implementing strategic initiatives to those below them, as well as

reporting strategic progress to those above them.

S-a-p is essentially routinized practice that ensures solid strategic decision making that

improves company performance. Choo (1996) reinforces this when he states that organisations

must become learning organisations and utilise s-a-p as the source of generative strategic in-

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formation that can be used for sense-making and important decision making (strategic or

otherwise). All information created must be organised and processed to generate new

knowledge in a learning organisation, which then drives the decisions that commit the

organisation to action, which in turn perpetuates competitive advantage.

The diagram below illustrates my final interpretation of Choo (1996)’s use of information in

an organisation, using a middle manager as the unit of measurement and showing the link

between s-a-p (practice as knowledge), organisational learning and sense-making.

Figure 10: Link between s-a-p, sense-making and a learning organisation from a middle

manager’s perspective

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Findings and insights from this literature review will now be taken into the next chapter along

with an SSM action exercise in order to run the first Action Research cycle (AR1). This chapter

will then use this to develop the first theoretical “how the world should be” purposeful activity

model relating to how middle managers can develop learning capacity within an organisation

using s-a-p.

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Chapter 4: AR1 - Theory development: A Purposeful Activity Model

using SSM

4.1: Introduction

The theory development in this chapter begins with Soft Systems Methodology (SSM).

According to Checkland & Poulter (2010):

“SSM is an action-oriented process of inquiry into problematical situations in the everyday world; users

learn their way from finding out about the situation to defining/taking action to improve it. The learning

emerges via an organized process in which the real situation is explored, using as intellectual devices -

which serve to provide structure to discussion - models of purposeful activity built to encapsulate pure,

stated worldviews” (Checkland & Poulter, 2010, p. 199).

The objective of this chapter is to develop and build, through the first action research cycle

(AR1), a purposeful model. Using the stated unit of analysis (of the middle manager), I will

first use the SSM tools outlined under Chapter 2.3.2 to make sense of and gain insight into the

‘messy’ complexity that is the situation of concern. I will use various SSM recommended

sense-making tools to explore how middle managers can build organisational learning capacity

in strategy-as-practice..

Second, the purposeful models that are developed are then used to debate and rationalise new

learnings and ideas in order to sense-make in a way that allows action generation to improve

the situation through possible change initiatives. This rationalisation process allows a debate

to facilitate a meeting of the minds, in terms of “what can be lived with” by all the variant

perspectives at play in the organisation. The rationalisation process ensures a procedural rigour

that improves the chances of the intervention being a success. It further allows the choice which

is most “feasible and desirable” to arise. Underlying this is the messy situation that is created

from the daily intentioned interactive flux over time of ideas and events that involve human

worldviews and their need for purposeful action (Checkland & Poulter, 2010).

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The development of the purposeful activity model is central to the research because it will

allow the researcher to test and probe the situation of concern in iterative action research cycles

in order to find actionable ways to improve its future state. In order that the development has

rigour, it is essential that the development steps are detailed and followed meticulously to

achieve an outcome that has substance and meaning.

This chapter presents the steps involved in the development of the first action cycle of

purposeful activity model building, starting with the build-up of the researcher’s interpretation

of the framework used and the model that will guide the structure and sequencing of the chapter

in order to stay focused on the research outcome.

4.2: Learning cycles and SSM’s 7 steps

As discussed in Chapter 2, following an SSM-based research approach in practice enables the

researcher to structure a socially interactive and learning generative structure through action

research cycles that generate different learnings. This leads to iterative action to continuously

feed back into the problematic systems purposeful activity model, in order to develop new

learnings and refine the purposeful activity model with each action research cycle.

This first cycle (AR1) will take the key learnings already concluded in Chapter 3 and combine

them with insights and learnings gained from following the SSM methodological steps. This

will enable the generation of a purposeful activity model that makes these learnings explicit.

In doing so, the researcher hopes to generate further learning, debate and feedback amongst the

stakeholders involved in the problematic situation during further action research cycles.

According to Checkland and Poulter (2010) this is called “social learning” and this is essential

to the rigour of the process if one wants to produce valid pragmatic models.

Three SSM tools are outlined in the following sections: Analysis 1, 2 and 3 of worldviews,

cultural analysis and political analysis of our organisation (covered in sub-section 4.3),

CATWOE (in 4.4) and Root Definition (in 4.5).

4.3: Analysis 1, 2 and 3

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Analysis 1 identifies the worldview perspectives that should be considered in the CATWOE

analyses and guides suggestions on Activity Models that have relevance and can provide

maximum insights. Simply put, the method, practitioner, methodology application and the

situation are inextricably linked. The practitioner who wishes to find improvement

interventions for the problem situation, manipulates the inquiry method. As such, it makes

sense that understanding the perspectives to be considered is important, and one should define

and identify certain roles upfront, i.e. the client(s), the practitioner(s) and the issue owner(s).

(Checkland & Poulter, 2010). This process is shown below in Figure 11.

Figure 11: SSM Analysis 1 (Checkland & Poulter, 2010)

In this research effort, intervention is required by a practitioner in a problematic situation to

improve the situation’s future state. The researcher is the practitioner and the problematic

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situation is how to empower middle managers so that they can build organisational learning

capacity through their s-a-p.

The client is myself as the researcher as well as middle management as a group, with the

support of the organisation’s EXCO. The client’s aspirations may differ slightly in terms of

their various worldviews, but to keep the ideas all-encompassing I would summarise these

aspirations as perpetually improved performance, catalysed through enhanced s-a-p and

underpinned by middle management’s ability to build organisational learning capacity.

The list of issue owners creating the problematic situation could be summed up as

encompassing the following groups:

• The researcher

• Middle managers

• Senior managers

• EXCO

• C-Suite

• Board

• External clients

• External competitors

The most important worldviews are those of middle management (including the researcher),

EXCO and the Board. This is because they are the ones responsible for s-a-p in the business as

well as the strategic direction the organisation wishes to take. They are also the ones who drive

the company culture and organisational structuring of the business which, according to the

literature review, plays a big role in how empowered a middle manager is in terms of building

organisational learning capacity through s-a-p.

Analysis 2 is the cultural analysis of the social reality of the organisation within which the

problematic situation being investigated resides. It informs the feasibility of future developed

interventions, and how at a more micro level, culture would influence the implementation of

these potential change interventions (Checkland & Poulter, 2010). Under SSM we do not

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attempt to investigate and understand the true academic definition of culture, but understand

that there are ways to get a practical “sense of feel or flavour, of the situation and its social

texture” (p. 214). To do so one uses a tool that offers useful insights proven over time to hold

muster under both large and smaller organisational investigations, albeit theoretically

ungrounded (Checkland & Poulter, 2010).

When applying Analysis 2, I kept a diary that recorded the events that triggered insightful

propositions surrounding the interactions of the key elements influencing the culture (roles,

norms and values) that characterise certain socially textural insights of a group within the

problematic situation. Given the time constraints of this project it was not feasible to maintain

a researcher diary for an extended period sufficient to offer rigour to this effort, thus I relied on

Checkland and Poulter’s (Checkland & Poulter, 2010) statement that if you are familiar with

the organisation, you should have a good feel or sense of what the culture is like. Given the

almost three years I have been involved in this organisation, I felt I could offer important

insights from my reflections around the social texture to provide the requisite flavour that

Analysis 2 aims to provide to the study.

The Cultural Analysis can be explained as follows: Within our organisation, there is a sense

that strategy sits at the higher levels, which creates the norm that middle managers’ strategic

behaviour is to execute operationally only. The values or standards by which this behaviour is

judged seems to be purely economic. Being very hierarchical, the organisation is inflexible

and governed by systems and procedures that few challenge. Although s-a-p (in terms of

strategy practices and praxis of middle managers) is considered a waste of time, it is repeated

regardless. This norm results in a disconnect between what the middle managers want to do to

add value to the organisation in terms of s-a-p (and their learnings from experience) and what

is expected of them, or what they get socialised to do out of either fear or conformism.

Sometimes the values themselves are to blame, as certain roles in the organisation value pure

financial performance measurements in the short term only. Every year, middle management

presents plans to meet the shorter term financial goals, rather than addressing the longer term

strategic vision of the group or for that matter, addressing items from prior learnings.

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In terms of s-a-p, the culture is one of the organisation being more important than its clients

are. We often try to force our terms and conditions on the clients instead of trying to breed a

behaviour of flexibility and adaptability to work within the client’s requirements. This is seen

in the market as us being “difficult”. This same self-importance is also pushed onto

subcontractors and suppliers, which defines us as being adversarial as opposed to collaborating

for the betterment of everyone.

I reflected on incidents in the organisation where the strategy was developed by a certain social

level in the organisation, but was not supported with the correct risk approach, effectively

undermining themselves and others through s-a-p that at times works completely against the

strategy. The resulting values of measurement then never stack up.

Lastly, the single most important reflection was around communication; no matter the issue,

there are continual complaints that senior management keeps information to themselves that

others feel should be communicated, including individual BU strategies. Communication is top

down only (apart from reporting), which breeds this type of culture throughout the organisation.

Everyone then starts communicating downwards and very rarely requests or considers upward

communication. No organisation can hope to improve or become more of a learning

organisation in a communication void. In addition, while there have been times of great

strategic effort and pockets of excellence in areas of the business, the roles, norms and values

which should normally change dynamically over time seem to be stagnating.

Figure 12 provides a rich picture illustration of the cultural analysis:

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Figure 12: Rich Picture interpretation of Analysis 2 summary giving cultural flavour of the

organisation

Analysis 3 is a political analysis that gives insights into the politics of the organisation and its

power structures. What is done, and sometimes more critically what is not done, relies heavily

on these various organisational politics and power structures. Sometimes this power has

nothing to do with official organisational structuring, but is due to the internal politics

(Checkland & Poulter, 2010). In SSM, the model developed by Checkland and Poulter

(Checkland & Poulter, 2010) shows that to gain insights, one should keep a researcher diary

on the commodities of power and the processes associated with how these are “obtained, used,

protected, defended, passed on and relinquished” (p. 217). They also noted that culture and

politics are linked, thus it makes sense that Analysis 2 links to Analysis 3 and vice versa.

Again, given the time constraints, a diary was not practical; however, my time within the group

has provided important insights into the Analysis 3 type of politics currently at play that could

affect the problem situation: Deniability, communication and commoditisation.

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One political commodity I would define as critical in the organisation’s s-a-p process is

deniability; the company has undergone a number of right sizing (retrenchment) initiatives

due to a combination of poor decision making, poor performance and horrific market

conditions. This results in fear of failing to deliver, which of course is driven through s-a-p.

Given that the strategy is currently seen as residing with EXCO, this gives middle managers

deniability for failures that are seen as strategic, negatively affecting the quality, reliability

and robustness of s-a-p at middle manager level.

Another political commodity is communication, which links to Analysis 2. This can be seen

as part of the culture driven by senior management; however information is power, and

sometimes using this can put you in a better light with a manager. This speaks directly to sense-

making and sense-giving as per Chapter 3.3 where the key finding was around this only being

possible through conversation and communication.

Politically there is also commoditisation in terms of which divisional entity you are from. I

have seen the propensity for favouritism from senior management towards certain entities in

the organisation, which is mainly based on historical performance. This affects the ability of

senior management to overcome their bias when it comes to making some strategic decisions.

It also offers those who are in favour a strategic advantage to improve their s-a-p, given the

agency and autonomy advantage they may gain.

My observation is that there is little respect between ‘production’ and ‘support’ services.

Each apportions its worldview in terms of who is to blame for the current strategic bankruptcy,

which has resulted in very poor company performance the last three years or so. This

entitlement commodity has resulted in a substantial cultural rift in the organisation, where the

politics dictates an ‘us versus them’ scenario. Again, my view is that this is used for

deniability or an easier escape from responsibilities and accountability. In my opinion, it is

protected at the highest level, i.e. EXCO, who are unknowing enforcers of this culture.

Figure 13 illustrates the political analysis in a rich picture:

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Figure 13: Analysis 3 summary detailing political commoditization insights in my organisation

To conclude then, Analysis 1 has detailed the stakeholders and the criticality of the middle

manager’s worldview for the purposeful activity model. Analysis 2 showed that the cultural

flavour of the organisation currently is one that is bureaucratic, hierarchical, strategically

apathetic, risk averse and light on communication flow. Analysis 3 highlighted the fact that

political commodities of divisional mentalities, deniability mindsets, and information flow

(communication) can disrupt the ability of middle managers’ organisational learning capacity

through their s-a-p. These insights allow the researcher to iteratively improve the purposeful

activity model providing further comprehension into how to improve the future state of the area

of concern.

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It follows from Analysis 1,2,3 that a CATWOE analysis using the middle manager perspective

should be generated which is done in the following sub-section 4.4.

4.4: CATWOE analysis

According to Poulter and Checkland (Checkland & Poulter, 2010), CATWOE is a mnemonic

for the elements of the purposeful activity of interest which undergoes a transformation process

(T) towards becoming a learning organisation. This is informed by the chosen worldview (W),

which in this case is the middle manager as the unit of measure. This is chosen first before

detailing the balance of the CATWOE to generate insights for the root definition. In order to

achieve this there are certain actors (A) who are responsible for the activities that will result in

the transformation of the activity (T). In this research, these actors are primarily middle

managers, senior managers (EXCO) and the board. This research aims to understand the role

that middle managers play, as they are the crucial buffer between the board, senior management

and the rest of the organisation.

Any transformative process will have beneficiaries or victims, who in this case are what

Checkland and Poulter called customers (C). Should the transformation be strived for or

achieved, the clear beneficiaries will be the shareholders, EXCO, staff, suppliers,

subcontractors and clients, with the victims potentially being the staff and EXCO who would

bear the brunt of the workload in the efforts to make the unit a success.

Within the system there are individuals and aggregate groupings who have the ability to stop

the process (T), which are represented by the ‘O’ in CATWOE, which stands for owners. From

a middle manager’s worldview, these would be the same as the actors in this case. Lastly, the

environment (E) that interacts with the system is very important, as this governs the constraints

within which the transformation can take place. This, along with all the other CATWOE

elements, are detailed in Table 6 below.

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Table 6: CATWOE element definitions (Checkland & Poulter, 2010)

C Customers affected by the transformative process

A Actors required to enact the transformation

T Transformation process required to improve the situation of concern

W Worldview stated upfront

O Owners that either block or change the purposeful activity transformation

E External environmental constraints to the transformation

Using these defined elements, I took the worldview of the middle manager, with the

transformation being becoming a learning organisation, and detailed the elements of this

CATWOE below in Figure 14.

Figure 14: CATWOE Model

MIDDLE MANAGEMENT PERSPECTIVE

CUSTOMER

TRANSFORMATION

ENVIRONMENT

WORLDVIEW

ACTORS

OWNER

Middle Managers, Senior Managers (EXCO), Board Members

Shareholders, EXCO, Staff, Suppliers, Subcontractors, Clients

Non-learning organisation to building organisational learning capacity through s-a-p

Need autonomy and agency to execute works with the least red tape possible, Have been promoted on operation excellence not strategic ability. Corporate governance is seen as tick box means to an ends –works security. Have been socialised over time that production and discipline will deliver good results. Technically proficient and trained to solve problems but breaking down into the smallest components rather than looking at holistic systems.

Corporate climate, heavy on compliance and light on practicality. Mistrust in performance from senior management, frantic environment where balls are constantly being dropped is the order of the day. Highly corrupt contracting environment, hyper competitive, lack of liquidity in treasury to fund new infrastructure, lack of investor confidence in the country. Pressure to find profitable work to stop cash outflows and stem human capital losses through retrenchments. Fearful environment in terms of rife job loss with a lot of corporate governance steps. Cash flow and budgetary constraints play a major role as well.

Middle Managers, Senior Managers (EXCO), Board Members

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It is important that any transformation process is measurable to assess performance. For this,

Poulter and Checkland (Checkland & Poulter, 2010) suggested doing a three “E’s” analysis of

relevant criteria, in order to “sharpen thinking about the purposeful activity being modelled”.

“E1” is efficacy, which tests whether the transformation is actually having an effect; “E2” is

efficiency, which determines whether the resource allocation to achieve the transformation is

optimal, and “E3” is the effectiveness of the transformation on the longer-term goal at higher

levels of recursion, which would be the strategic differentiation of the organisation as a whole.

This is summarised in the Table 7 below:

Table 7: Definitional questions of the three "E's"

E1 Efficacy Does the transformation produce the intended outcome?

E2 EfficiencyHave optimal resources been allocated to the transformation to

achieve the intended outcome?

E3 EffectivenessDoes the transformation achieve a great good or higher aim than

the intended outcome?

I have detailed my three “E’s” analysis below in Table 8 which gives a firm methodoly and

performance measures that will be utiliused to moitor the efficacy, efficiency and

effectiveness of any inetreventions decided on to improve the situation of concern using the

purposeful activity model developed in this research effort through 3 activity research cycles.

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Table 8: Summary of my three ”E’s” analysis – Monitoring criteria of the transformation

process

The CATWOE gives rich insight that the middle manager in our organisation is in an

environment where short term financial returns are very important to stakeholders. This

means the perspective of middle managers can be culturally socialised to have a very narrow

non-strategic view that leans heavily to technical proficiency. Communication may be stifled

in a heavily systems orientated and bureaucratic organisation. Finally the middle manager

would want agency to make decisions and generate learnings from his daily interaction with

others and s-a-p. The environment must thus be conducive to promote this.

Following on from this then the key measures of whether or not a system is facilitating better

performance through middle managers building organisational learning through their s-a-p

would be as per those tabled in in Table 7 above.

Now that the worldview, its insights and measures of performance for a purposeful activity

based model has been concluded, the researcher needs to understand, in terms of the SSM

process steps, whether or not the model will be issues or task based. This discussion follows

below.

Efficacy

Utilise Dimension of a Learning Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ) as

the annual test for a sense of progress towards becoming a learning

organisation and the middle managers’ role.

Efficiency

ROE and cash flow analysis monthly and over the financial year to

determine whether optimal resourcing in terms of capital expenditure

and resource allocations has been achieved or not, and link to a feedback

system to correct as required.

Effectiveness

Guideline shareholder returns stabilised consistently to within target

ranges year on year will illustrate whether or not the ultimate goal is

being achieved over a longer- term duration.

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4.5: Task or issues-based transformation discussion

It is important to note that this transformation from a non learning to a learning oragisation

through capacity building using middle management s-a-p, does not talk to a single task within

a single internal organisational entity, but rather speaks to a purposeful activity that is

unbounded by organisational structures. The transformations basis hinges around the issue of

organisational learning and the middle managers’ role in building capacity in this regard

through s-a-p. As such, my purposeful activity model can be described as ‘issues-based’.

Poulter and Checkland (2010) found identifiying if the transformation discussion is task or

issues-based is useful in stimulating the thinking of those involved in the transformation to go

beyond the organisational politics and socialised organisational silos, and be creative in finding

helpful mechanisms to improve the situation.

4.6: ROOT definition

My declared unit of analysis in this study is middle management, and this focus informed the

key perspective that I sought to understand in terms of worldview before attempting to build a

Purposeful Activity Model of how middle managers should build organisation capacity through

learning.

The PQR method developed by Checkland is helpful in formulating a root definition that will

inform the purposeful model development. The root definition is one perspective of the

definition from the worldview of the middle manager, which must include the what (P), how

(Q) and why (R), amongst other things (Checkland & Poulter, 2010). The PQR method

describes what the purposeful activity model of the system does (P), how it does it (Q), and

why it does it (why is it purposeful?) (R). This then forms the basis or shape of the root

definition.

Using the PQR and CATWOE, the following root definition was developed to focus the human

activity system around which the purposeful activity model is built:

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This study is thus an inquiry into: A system which develops organisational learning as a

strategic differentiator (P), using the middle managers’ role in s-a-p (Q), in order to

improve the future state of strategic advantage (R).

4.7: Conclusion

This chapter outlined the first action research cycle (AR1) which was carried out to answer

how to best create a system that develops organisational learning as a strategic differentiator

(P), using the middle managers’ role in s-a-p (Q), in order to improve the future state of

strategic advantage (R).

AR1 develops a purposeful activity model outlined below in Figure 15, that draws from

learnings (L) generated through the literature review in Chapter 3 as well as the SSM tools

applied in AR1 in this chapter.

A synopsis of learning from the literature review and the SSM steps followed in this chapter,

led to insights incorporated in the purposeful activity model shown in Figure 15. I have

intertwined the learnings to give the flow of learnings that talks to the sequencing of the

purposeful activity model concluded below in Figure 15. The logic of this model is summarised

below.

The root definition makes it clear that the purposeful activity of creating knowledge through

organisational learning is driven through strategy-as-practice by middle managers. This

knowledge as practice is primarily influenced by four critical factors, these being structure,

environmental complexity, social dynamics (including power dynamics) and the dominant

organisational strategy. This was determined through insights gained during the data analysis

in Chapter 2.4 which developed the literature review of learning organisations and summarised

its findings in Figure 8.

To recap, this structure affects autonomy and to some extent the micro-culture of the middle

managers, and their practice as knowledge. Social dynamics and power distribution influence

the real agency of middle managers, affecting strategic development and practice through

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ability interaction and allowing adoption and diffusion of strategy for learning. The overall

organisational strategy also provides boundaries within which middle management practice

can take place within the external and internal complexities that exist, and which impact on

their practice as knowledge. It is key to note that organisation structuring affects social

dynamics and power distribution, which in turn affects internal environmental complexity.

All the interactions and discussions take place through practice and “routinisation” to allow

middle managers to make strategic sense of a situation, then assess and analyse it. In this way

they can sense-give their created knowledge to others in the organisation at all levels. This is

heavily influenced by superstitious learning (decision making under the contextual influence

of heavy loss making) and socialisation of routines that become so entrenched they actually

block the ability of a manager to pursue a change initiative or make him miss learnings,

resulting in recursive behaviour that blocks strategic learning and diffusion. The better the

manager’s sense-making ability, the more he can resist superstitious learning to offer clear,

concise and available knowledge to others in the organisation. This can help to break down the

mental barriers that lead to the socialisation of routines and recursive behaviours in s-a-p. This

is especially true if the knowledge created is codified, and explicitly made to be shared across

all levels in the organisation.

Superstitous learning pattrens and trends should be monitored and analysed through various

mechanisms culminating in feedback learnings that are used to optimise and adjust the

organisational strategy, and iteratively improve the middle managers’ practice and capacity to

build knowledge in a cyclically reinforcing way. This would be influenced by an organisation’s

tolerance for mistakes and its strategic balance between exploitation and exploration using

knowledge created through s-a-p.

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Figure 15: Purposeful activity model of what "should be" concluded in AR1

The purposeful activity model in Figure 15 concludes the chapter and highlights the insight

that middle managers can improve organisational capacity to learn and practice strategy

through using created knowledge in the sense-making and giving process. This allows middle

managers to sense-make more effectively, which leads to improved strategic action and

decision making.

The link between performance and the ability of a company and its actors to learn, is

demonstrated in the purposeful activity model. The middle manager is the key actor and has

the discursive ability to take created learnings and use them to make explicit knowledge that

drives the organisation’s learning.

InstitulionalisedKnowledge Creation

KonwledgeConversion into

InformedStrategic Action

Middle Manager Practice asKnowledge - Strategic Developmentand Practice through Interaction and

Discusion Routinisation)

MiddleManager

Sensemaking

Middle ManagerSensegiving

Socialisation /Recursiveness

SuperstitiousLearning

Social Dynamics and resultingPower Distribution

Organisational Structuring

OrganisationStrategic Adaptivity

ImprovedOrganisationalPerformance

Balance ofexploration and

exploitation

Mistaketolerance

Environmental complexity bothinternal and external

Organisational Strategy

Continuousiterative

feedback forstrategic

adustments orredirectioning

Codify and makeexplicit for all in the

organisation

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This assists strategic decision making and action taking in an iteratively accumulating way by

creating institutional agility for potentially perpetual strategic advantage.

The following chapter starts a second action research cycle (AR2) which will investigate the

case organisation relevant to the research and use these insights and learnings gained to iterate

the purposeful activity model and improve its validity and pragmatic use to generate

improvement options.

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Chapter 5: AR2 – Insights and Learnings from Organisational data

gathering and analysis

5.1: Introduction

In the conclusion of Chapter 4, a conceptual model that highlights how to improve the future

state of organisational learning through middle managers’ abilities to use s-a-p, was developed.

The objective of Chapter 5 is to run a secondary action research cycle (AR2) to investigate how

this purposeful activity model holds muster in my organisation and iterate any learnings from

this comparison to improve on the validity of the activity model.

This chapter will highlight the insights and learnings on s-a-p, learning organisation and sense-

making/giving that are analysed using the Gioia method.

As a reminder to the reader, the case company relevant to this research effort is split into three

business units: Construction, Manufacturing and Investments/Concessions (I&C). In general,

the Construction business is underperforming whilst the I&C and Manufacturing clusters enjoy

sustained performance that meets or exceeds expectations.

5.2: Learnings and Insights generated from Interviews and Questionnaires and

analysed qualitatively

As stated in Chapter 1 (subsections 1.6 and 1.7), I re-examined previously collected raw data

with new lenses (of s-a-p; organisational learning and sense-making/giving) for this research

effort, to gain insight into the ability to build learning capacity through middle managers’ s-a-

p. (As noted, I left the organisation midway through the research study necessitating this

revisting of data collected across previous assignments).

To remind the reader, I interviewed all divisional business unit MDs and the majority of EXCO

members. I also sent self-prepared questionnaires to lower levels of management (below

middle managers) for their perspectives, and re-examined all the notes and raw materials from

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the interviews conducted (and questionnaires collected), and extracted newly developed

propositions around the three themes of this study, namely s-a-p, learning organisation and

sense-making/giving.

I employed the Gioia method (Gioia et al., 2012) to synthesise and extract the key salient

variables that influence a middle manager’s role in developing learning capacity through s-a-p

within an organisation. The required grounded theory steps were as follows:

(i) Firstly, 1st order codification was done leading to minimal distillation and providing

a flavour only of the data at high level

(ii) Secondly, I reviewed the 1st order codification to reduce the codes to a manageable

number looking for commonality in theme, to allow initial sense-making.

(iii) Thirdly, I reduced this to overarching 2nd order themes (Deeper structure to the

larger narrative in the 1st order coding. In other words, a further level of abstraction)

(iv) Finally, this was crystallised through further focussed codification to synthesise

observations into 2nd order aggregate dimensions to explain the phenomenon in

question.

Figures 16 to 19 show the resulting data structure.

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Figure 16: (i) of (iv)

1st Order Coding (Concepts) 2nd Order Themes2nd Order Aggregate

Dimensions

First Order Coding Second Order ThemeSecond Order Aggregate

DimensionS-a-p boundaries defined by vision

Common vision gives boundaries for

learningTime and frequency is critical to value

add form s-a-p

Time and frequency determining learning richness

Leadership drives culture Leadership style

Internal circumstance can hinder learning

Goals clash (Strategic vs Annual Financial)

External factors play a big role

S-a-p and environment inextricably linked

Finance can constrain s-a-p action decisions

Environmental influence

Time and frequency is critical to value add form s-a-p

Time and frequency

Discursive ability

Language facilitates learningDiscussion is how learning happensSometimes the "sense" you give isn't

the "sense" that made

Ability to get your message acrossAbility to get your message across

Elevating the importance of the social

aspect key to sensemakingSocial interaction key to create opportunities to communicate

Known boundaries

Time and frequency

Environment internal and external

Communication skills

Social process

Discursion

Contextual emergence

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Figure 17: (ii) of (iv)


Dimensions


DimensionS-a-p purpose is to improve

performance through strategic

differentiation

Strategic differentiation

S-a-p leads to action for

operationalisationAction for operationalisation

Speed of decision making critical Decision making

S-a-p is not only development of strategy

Strategic differentiation

S-a-p must operationalise strategy

through actionAction is the key s-a-p outcome

Knowledge and practice linkedLearning from success and failure

Feedback allows iterative action and

learning cyclesDisconfirming data to overcome bias

Resist learning from the pastExploration of the future rather than

studying the past for answers

Diversity aids learningInclusion of perceptions - diversity

Knowledge generative processLearning must lead to action

Facts and data overcome bias -

Disconfirming dataDisconforming data

Pitch at the right level of your audience Social process

Ability to get your message across Communication SkillsMetaphors and analogies help make

senseUnderstanding

Reactive culture Culture

Strategy understanding underpins s-a-p

Metaphors and analogies help make

sense

Lack of rich understandingUse of external facilitators Communication skills

Time and frequency issues Time and frequencyUnderstanding from considering diverse

perspectivesPerspectives

Exploration of the future rather than studying the past for answers

Creation versus blind trust execution

Understanding

Learning capacity

Creation versus blind trust

execution

Perspectives

Knowledge generation

Knowledge beneficiation

Action for operationalisation

Learnt lessons value

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Figure 18: (iii) of (iv)


Dimensions


Dimension

S-a-p is a social process

Measurement is a primary learning tool

Lack of rich understanding

S-a-p can be formal and informal

Homophile affects value of s-a-p

Culture influences s-a-pMicro cultures block learning

Socialisation in a culture can cause

change resistance

Understanding affects culture

Bias, socialisation and culture

Reactive rather than pre-emptiveCreation versus blind trust

executionPerformance enhancement

Structuring of a company influences s-a-

p

S-a-p can happen at any organisational

level

Structuring of a company influences s-a-p

Management level

Centralised structuring

Feedback blockage / Centralised

structuring

Structuring affects learningClash between strategy and short term

results pressure

Goals clash (Strategic vs

Annual Financial)

Discussion and debate drives s-a-p

valuePerspectives

Trust and mutual respect is critical for strategic buy in

Trust and respect

Power affects knowledge transfer

"Clay layer" due to socialisation -

recursive behaviour

Tolerance for explorationSocialisation in a culture can cause

change resistance

Power affects knowledge transfer

Social issues create blockages to

sensemakingPower play and politics in the

organisation

Social Process

Culture

Organisational identity

Company Structuring

Trust and Respect

Culture

Power

Power dynamics

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Figure 19: (iv) of (iv)

Looking at the resulting aggregate dimensions and overlaying these on the purposeful model

created, I have been able to clearly indicate where these items have been catered for, or to

highlight their importance in the real world. This is shown in Figure 20 below, which indicates

that no changes to the purposeful activity model (of Figure 15) are required from these findings.

Instead the coding process reinforces the robustness of the model. The additional 2nd order

themes are all shown in blue on the originally produced purposeful activity model in Figure

20.


Dimensions


Dimension

Risk appetite influences s-a-p Risk Appetite

Leadership and boldness influences s-a-

p and its value addLeadership style

Tolerance for exploration CultureRisk appetite mismatch to group

strategy

Goals clash (Strategic vs

Annual Financial)

Measurement is critical to adjust s-a-p

Time and frequency issues

Measurement is a primary learning tool

Risk appetite

Measurement of performance

enhancementMoP

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Figure 20: Purposeful Activity Model overlain with research findings from previous interviews

and questionnaires

To clarify what this model highlights in terms of learnings and insights the following sub-

section details the second order themes shown in blue on the purposeful activity model along

with how these reinforce the purposeful activity model rather than change it, and under which

items the researcher feels they augment the model’s robustness.

InstitutionalisedKnowledge Creation

KnowledgeConversion into



Discussion Routinisation)

MiddleManager

Sensemaking









exploitation

Mistaketolerance



Continuousiterative




organisation

Contextual Emergence

Discursion

KnowledgeBeneficiation

Learning Capacity

Organisational Identity

PerformanceEnhancement

Power Dynamics

Risk Appetite

MoP

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5.2.1: Contextual emergence

“Contextual Emergence” is encapsulated in the “Environmental Complexity” variable of the

model. Working from the top of the model down, the external environment plays a critical role

in that there are certain contextual influencers that influence an organisation in an emergent

fashion rather than being predetermined; hence, the only defence against this is a learning

organisation that is flexible and can adapt to context through cyclical feedback through middle

management. In analysing the data, financial constraints and time, were identified as

environmental factors that had a great impact. In addition, the key importance of the company’s

vision was found to be providing contextual boundaries within the external and internal

environments. This is a key learning as they have a bearing on practice for middle managers as

they make sense of their strategic environment.

5.2.2: Power dynamics and organisational identity

“Power Dynamics” and “Organisational Identity” are intertwined second order themes found

that could be captured within the model variable of “Social Dynamics and resulting Power

Distribution”. It was noted that the company’s vision and its overarching strategy are the two

most critical business-focussing tools, and yet they are paradoxically at continuous odds with

the short term financial returns wanted by shareholders that seem to always come out on top.

This aligns with the type of reasoning by middle managers: In their interviews and

questionnaires, I noted that they were being tactical. I interpret this as indicating that perhaps

they are essentially making decisions under the duress of financial pressure, which is exerted

by EXCO in the operational financial year, as opposed to sticking to the company’s vision and

strategy that has a longer-term view. My interpretation is that middle managers are falling foul

of superstitious learning based on signals they feel they are getting from EXCO. In other

words, EXCO is unknowingly failing to project to middle managers a message to balance

exploration and exploitation and be tolerant of mistakes, which is key to a learning

organisation. Instead, there is genuine fear of retribution among middle managers of criticism

from EXCO based on short term results, and these limit the strategic “risk” middle managers

are willing to take. This might explain how the cycle of “rinse, wash and repeat” perpetuates.

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The study also found a disconnect between the financial and production teams, where the goals

appear to be misaligned. EXCO has come out strongly on ROE, whereas the middle managers

feel this cannot be the only measure. The middle managers also feel they are blocked by the

financial teams from executing their mandate, and that there is not a sufficient level of service

and support from the financial side of the business. Middle managers view the finance team as

‘opposition’ to some extent, as well as a unit that holds all the power.

The current power dynamic limits the speed of decision making, and blurs the lines of middle

management strategic boundaries and agency. Of concern is the seemingly different strategic

views between middle management and the EXCO team. This suggests that there is an

imbalance in informal power distribution that blocks EXCO’s (or middle managers) own

strategic intent, particularly with respect to the financial side of the business.

5.2.3: Risk aversion

The data revealed frustration with an organisational culture that is driven by senior

management’s risk aversion and its clash with the group’s vision and strategy. “Risk Aversion”

as a second order aggregate dimension can then be seen as part of the model dimension of

“Organisational Strategy”. Few want to take the risk of exploration because of limited budgets

and fear of senior management resistance. Drawing from the interviews, one MD stated that no

one in the strategic senior leadership (EXCO) has the “kahoonas” to pick a direction and back

it, no matter what the resistance is from the Board. Whilst there is a strong drive to improve

shareholder returns in a very risky business, the findings suggest that we are extremely risk

averse. Our systems and procedures to manage risk end up with us avoiding risk rather than

managing it. By the time we have finished exhausting the risk process for a potential project,

we either decide to drop the project, or are no longer competitive due to the excessive risk

premiums priced into the works.

The specific organisation’s risk aversion also means it is the proverbial boiling frog (Senge,

2006, p. 22). We have refused to leave the South African market with its more mature clients

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as these pose the “least risk”, yet the margin erosion and losses in the market have become so

severe that we have had to retrench our organisational capacity to the extent that when we pick

up work, there are insufficient employees to do it. Despite this, we continue to hope that at

some stage the market will turn around and save us.

5.2.4: Measures of performance (MoP)

The data produced learnings that highlighted a key issue working against becoming a learning

organisation. This was the organisation’s “obsession” (as one interviewee put it) with historical

performance and the thinking that this will generate our future performance. In the interviews,

there was a strong sentiment expressed that those business units making money want to be left

alone, and that this attitude is justified by profits they have made in previous financial years.

Whilst there may be some truth to history partially being able to assist future strategic planning,

the approach should rather be one of iterative learning feedback into the system to improve it.

This is the reasoning behind the researcher situating “MoP” under the variable of “Continuous

and iterative feedback”.

5.3: Conclusion

The aggregate dimensions of “Contextual Emergence”, “Power Dynamics”, “Organisational

Identity”, “Risk Aversion” and “MoPs”, have allowed a richer, deeper learning and

understanding of how middle managers are able to build learning capacity through s-a-p within

my organisation. Through AR2, learnings have been fed back into the model to test and debate

the legitimacy and robustness of the model and it has held muster.

The following chapter covers the third and final action research cycle (AR3). This cycle used

a standardised questionnaire to look into the organisation’s learning ability through “testing”

seven core dimensions of being a learning organisation. The intention is that this cycle offers

still deeper and richer understanding of the underlying causal mechanism that, if leveraged

correctly, will allow a middle manager to improve on building learning capacity through

improved s-a-p, in the hope of ultimately enhancing the performance of the organisation.

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Chapter 6: AR3 – Learning generation and insights from data

gathering and analysis using the Dimensions of a Learning

Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ)

The previous chapter covered AR2 and offered five core aggregate themes interpreted from the

data using the qualitative Gioia method. These dimensions are “Contextual Emergence”,

“Power Dynamics”, “Organisational Identity”, “Risk Aversion” and “MoPs”. They were added

to the purposeful activity model built at the end of AR1, to augment the model’s validity and

robustness in modelling how middle managers can augment their ability to build organisational

learning capacity through s-a-p.

The purpose of this chapter is to get a baseline idea of where the case study organisation

perceives itself to be in terms of a learning organisation. The researcher’s view is that it is

difficult to improve on something if you do not have an idea of the starting point or baseline

for improvement. Without this, your MoP’s are impotent, as one would have nothing to

measure performance against.

With this in mind, I took the Dimensions of a Learning Organisation Questionnaire (DLOQ)

developed by Marsick and Watkins (2003) and sent it out to all 154 of the middle managers,

senior managers and EXCO members our organisation. I did not modify any key content of the

original DLOQ, but did ask for additional information that would offer insight into some of the

managers’ s-a-p, as well as information relating to the respondents’ departments. It is noted

that I gained permission from the DLOQ developers (Marsick and Watkins) prior to its use.

The questionnaire and data is not included in the appendices but is available on request of the

examiner. The findings and insights generated from this will also be discussed in this chapter

with respect to its impact on any required modifications to the developed purposeful activity

model.

Watkins and Marsick (2003)’s DLOQ organisational questionnaire interprets (from

respondents) the level of organisational achievement across seven critical principle indicators

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of learning organisations, namely: create continuous learning opportunities (CL); promote

inquiry and dialogue (DI); encourage collaboration and team learning (TL); establish systems

to capture and share learning (ES); empower people toward a collective vision (EP); connect

the organization to its environment (SC); and provide strategic leadership for learning (SL).

In all, 139 Participants were asked to voluntarily (and anonymously) fill out the questionnaire

that I placed on an online platform. In response, 54 full responses were received (28 senior

managers and 26 middle managers).

I then analysed the data qualitatively against the averaged benchmark that Marsick and Watkins

(2003) have found during their own research efforts on companies around the world. I wanted

to use data comparison that was relevant to our environment and type of business, so I extracted

and averaged the data from Marsick and Watkins for national type businesses based in major

cities and only “for profit” businesses. This is demonstrated in Table 9 below.

Table 9: Benchmarking from Marsick and Watkins (2003)

Author Hernandez Elinger Average score (of a

possible score of 6 on the

Likert Scale)

Research case study

organisations score

Dimension

Continuous Learning A 3.9 4.1 4.0 3.6

Inquiry and Dialogue B 4.2 4.0 4.1 3.3

Collaboration and Team Learning C 4.0 4.1 4.1 3.5

Create Systems D 4.1 3.7 3.9 3.4

Empower People E 4.2 3.9 4.1 3.4

Connect the Organisation F 4.0 4.2 4.1 3.5

Strategic Leadership G 4.3 4.3 4.3 3.6

Financial Performance H N/A 4.3 4.3 3.2

Knowledge Performance I 4.3 4.2 4.2 3.0

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The findings from within my organisation were then collated and analysed. In the next sub-

section the results of this are represented graphically, each with a summary observation of

learnings drawn from it. The graphs show the relevant DLOQ calculated benchmark plotted in

orange against the measured criteria (in grey) for the business clusters tested and analysed by

the researcher.

In order to try to understand whether poor performing divisions had differing results from solid

performing divisions, the data analysis results were between senior and middle management.

This was done to offer insight into potentially differing mental models between middle and

senior management. I also chose to sample my own operating division (construction) which

has consistently poor performance as well as the manufacturing division, which consistently

improves and betters its performance. This was in order to provide contrasts and see whether

results differed between a poorly performing and solidly performing division. Aside from this,

I also sampled the business services division which operates across both the construction and

manufacturing divisions to see what insights and learnings this may offer.

6.1.1: Learning and Insights from comparison to DLOQ benchmark

In examining analysed data, the first insight was how close the Manufacturing Cluster is to the

norm developed by Marsick and Watkins, whilst the construction division and business

services results fell well below the norm. This links to financial performance and knowledge

management, which correlate well in Manufacturing to the high level of scoring on all seven

learning organisation dimensions. Manufacturing is a highly profitable business that prides

itself on being a strategic hub. It continually proves itself as it outperforms the market on an

annual basis.

In looking at the Manufacturing Cluster (in Figure 21), one can see that most indicators exceed

the benchmark, not least of which is strategic leadership. This should lead to empowered

people who, through dialogue and inquiry, push the boundaries of collaboration and learning

to continually improve and enhance company performance through feedback into the created

systems, which allows improved knowledge performance and ultimately improved financial

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results. However, it could be argued that strategic leadership is where it all starts and without

strategic leadership the organisation is strategically bankrupt and unable to drive the learning

organisation principles in a business. What is concerning is that this may start to unravel if

inadequate attention is paid to dialogue and inquiry, which is a potential Achilles heel to an

otherwise impressive business. The drop in knowledge performance may be related to this,

which in turn reduces the financial performance.

Figure 21: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) - Manufacturing cluster

By contrast, the findings for the Construction Cluster (Figure 22) shows that poor financial

performance and knowledge management within this division correlates to the Construction

sector’s poor performance on the seven DLOQ dimensions, compared to the benchmark.

The construction result is that it is very flat. This is potentially influenced by possible non-

truthful answers given the environment of ongoing retrenchments and business rightsizing. The

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scores show that the staff are not happy, but perhaps they are not fully truthful about how

unhappy they are, perhaps in order to make themselves feel better about the situation, or for

fear of what management would say about the results during these turbulent times. It must be

reiterated that ethically I had no idea of the name of any respondent. All were clearly told in

the email sent out that is was completely optional and totally anonymous survey.

Figure 22: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) - Construction cluster

Within the construction results, one can see items such as Knowledge Performance, Financial

Performance, and Empowering People scoring particularly low. What is more concerning

was that when broken down into senior and middle management responses (Figure 23), neither

senior nor middle managers were particularly confident in their strategic leadership ability,

as is illustrated by the poor scoring in this area. An underperforming business lacking strategic

leadership has little chance of righting itself, especially if it is unable to learn as an organisation;

this will only perpetuate a vicious reinforcing cycle of diminishing performance over time.

Senior management seem to be closer to the benchmark than middle managers except on

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financial performance. This tells the researchcer that senior management think that the

organisation is a learning one yet those required to build that capacity (middle managers) don’t.

That is a massive disconnect which would require to be addressed in interventions proposed to

improve the system.

Figure 23: DLOQ results (GREY – Senior Manager and BLUE – Middle Manager) vs.

benchmark (ORANGE) – Senior management in construction cluster

By comparison, the data analysis of the Business Services division (Figure 24) indicate that

they feel the group is not tracking well against learning organisation principles, regardless of

division. Although not a profit centre, Business Services provides centralised support for the

whole business. Their perception is untainted by any production team bias and is a good

independent indicator of the learning state of the group. Their analysed data shows their feeling

2,5

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2,9

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3,3

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Middle vs Senior Management Construction

Middle Manager Senior Manager DLOQ Interpretation Averages

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that the state of continuous learning and knowledge performance is particularly low relative

to the benchmark, and that strategic leadership is lacking.

Figure 24: DLOQ results (GREY) vs. benchmark (ORANGE) – Business Services

Another anomaly was identified in looking at the business services’ response to connecting the

organisation. Generally, this group was the most pessimistic in their responses, but within these

lower scores, the uptick on connecting the organisation seems out of place. This organisational

connection relates to seeing your work effects in the bigger picture, holistic decision making

through systemic thinking and adjusting work practice accordingly. I feel that this anomaly is

because the business services are not in touch with what happens at the coalface, which would

make learning and sense-making difficult for this group.They fail to link the holistic picture of

the system as a whole and consider on the internal encvironemnt and being required to be

connected as opposed to consideraing both internal and extrenal environments.

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6.2: Testing the DLOQ against the Purposeful Activity Model

Finally, having analysed the data in the various divisional groupings and extracted insights and

learnings, we can use this data to complete AR3, improve the purposeful activity model through

comparison against the DLOQ, and identify any possible gaps.

Looking at Marsick and Watkins (2003)’s dimensions of a learning organisation, I needed to

assess whether or not these critical dimensions were firstly catered for in the Purposeful

Activity Model before any comparison could take place. Anything not catered for would need

to be added either as a direct variable or as an influencing contextual issue. The table below

summarises this process.

Table 10: Critical Learning Dimension in the context of the developed Purposeful Activity

Model

Dimension of the

DLOQ

Definition of the dimension Associated Purposeful Model Attribute or

Variable

1. Create continuous

learning opportunities

(CL)

Learning is designed into

work so people can learn on

the job; opportunities are

provided for ongoing

education and growth.

Codification of learning to make it explicit to

all would mean that learning is designed into

work.

Feedback looping through discursive

practice and routines promotes dialogue,

whilst mistake tolerance and the balance

between exploration and exploitation caters

sufficiently for promoting inquiry.

Encouraging collaboration would be part of the

social dynamics and power distribution.

2. Promote inquiry

and dialogue (DI)

People express their views,

listen and inquire into the

views of others; questioning,

feedback, and

experimentation are

supported.

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3. Encourage

collaboration and

team learning (TL)

Work is designed to

encourage groups to access

different modes of thinking,

groups learn and work

together, and collaboration is

valued and rewarded.

4. Establish systems to

capture and share

learning (ES)

Both high- and low-

technology systems to share

learning are created and

integrated with work, access

is provided, and systems are

maintained.

In the model, the ability to codify knowledge

and make it explicit for all is central. This

requires systems to capture creative ways to

make learnings explicit so that it can be shared.

5. Empower people

toward a collective

vision (EP)

People are involved in

setting, owning, and

implementing joint visions;

responsibility is distributed

close to decision making so

people are motivated to learn

what they are held

accountable for.

Organisational structuring and

organisational strategy will determine how

close decision making is to distributed

responsibility. One needs to be careful that

informal power distribution and social

dynamics do not outweigh this; for me this

would sit squarely under strategic leadership,

which is not explicitly shown in the model.

6. Connect the

organisation to its

environment (SC)

People are helped to see the

impact of their work on the

entire enterprise and to think

systemically; people scan the

environment and use

information to adjust work

practices; and the

organisation is linked to its

community.

The model caters sufficiently for this through

the influence of internal and external

environment. The feedback for iterative

learning once this is codified and put into

strategic action to improve the situation would

allow work practices to be adaptable enough to

give the organisation a buffering resilience.

Again, the common factor here would be the

strategic leadership in place to drive it.

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7. Provide strategic

leadership for learning

(SL)

Leaders model, champion,

and support learning;

leadership uses learning

strategically for business

results.

This is the epicentre of all the dimensions in

my view. Without this, you cannot have the

other six dimensions in any purposeful form.

This is the pivotal dimension that is not

explicitly shown in the model.

From the above it can be seen that the purposeful activity model developed in AR1 and

expanded in AR2, needs to be further adjusted to incorporate the need for strong strategic

leadership. To keep this in line with having empowered people who have decision making

power and are motivated to align to a strategy they helped develop, one must have strategic

leadership at more than one level. Line management must arguably be fully responsible for the

strategy of their level, as opposed to being centrally controlled. All the business units must be

aligned to the group’s vision; however the strategy to get there should be developed and owned

by the business unit leadership best positioned to manage the associated strategic risks and best

positioned to learn from the strategic dynamics at play in the environment they understand best.

I have illustrated these insights by adding them in green to the developing Purposeful Activity

Model, as shown below in Figure 25. The blue text represents contextual issues influencing the

model, and the purple box is the key variable to unlocking an improvement cycle, as long as

the feedback looping moves from organisational strategy to the strategic leader who is integral

to the development of the organisational strategy.

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Figure 25: Final Purposeful Activity Model

6.3: Conclusion

This chapter synthesised the learnings from the data collection and analysis and applied it to

the purposeful activity model, to add robustness prior to considering possible interventions to

improve the system’s future state.

It was found was that strategic leadership is a key variable that is missing in my model, along

with some contextual items picked up through the aggregate dimensions found through

applying the Gioia method to interviews and questionnaires on s-a-p done at various levels of

InstitulionalisedKnowledge Creation

KnowledgeConversion into



Discussion Routinisation)

MiddleManager

Sensemaking









exploitation

Mistaketolerance



Continuousiterative




organisation

Contextual Emergence

Discursion

KnowledgeBeneficiation

Learning Capacity

Organisational Identity

PerformanceEnhancement

Power Dynamics

Risk Appetite

MoP

Strategic Leadership

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the organisation. These suggest that leadership must use the learning capacity built up by

middle managers strategically, through practice as knowledge, to improve business

performance and results.

Another notable insight was that the power dynamics are independent of the organisation

structuring (or power given through position). The power ‘earned’ through social dynamics can

block or augment strategic learning initiatives depending on the strength of the power dynamics

in play and the middle managers’ resilience to it.

Knowledge beneficiation also came out very strongly as a key finding; without it there is only

the potential to change something rather than the ability to do so. This finding suggests that

knowledge alone cannot action change, but must be beneficiated into change action. This

change action will also not materialise if strategy is stifled through insufficient or inappropriate

risk appetite. The two go hand in hand, and if not aligned will result in efforts to create a

learning organisation being negated.

Chapter 7 will conclude the study by exploring possible ways to influence contextual areas and

variables of the model, to try to find possibilities to improve the ability of middle managers to

create learning capacity through s-a-p.

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Chapter 7: The Learning Journey, Conclusions and Future

Study recommendations

7.1: Introduction

This research effort set out to explore how middle managers could build organisational learning

capacity through their s-a-p. Findings were generated using three action research cycles based

on SSM principles that offered a surprising key finding in the prior chapter – namely that

strategic leadership is the key. As shown in the final summarised model below in Figure 26,

strategic leadership is the start and the end of everything this inquiry has been about.

Strategic leadership drives strategy development at the organisational level, which is enacted

through s-a-p at multiple levels (key of which is middle management). This allows for the

development of strategic decision options for action through institutionalising knowledge that

becomes explicit for all in the organisation to use. The strategic action can then be evaluated

through real life testing from which extracted insights and learnings can be fed back to the

organisation’s strategic leadership for adjustments. The strategic leadership, with the obvious

exception of the environment, influences any external contextual influencers on s-a-p,

stemming from the four summary topics of structure, culture, power dynamics and

environment. Middle managers are hence impotent without strategic leadership - from above

as well as amongst themselves.

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Figure 26: Summary of the Purposeful Activity Model

The balance of this chapter speaks to my learning journey throughout this research effort and

outlines final conclusions and recommendations for future research projects.

7.2: My Learning Journey

During the research, I was able to control my engineering bias to “solve the problem” and

rather let the data collection and analysis guide the process of iteratively investigating the area

of concern and looking for vantage points that could be used to improve the situation.

This is evidenced by the findings and outcomes of the three action research cycles which show

the power that qualitative research (using SSM) has in contributing to academic research. I

started the project with a feeling that I already knew the answer, only to find that by putting

aside my own bias I could unlock the power to generate authoritative learnings that have the

ability to improve the future state of something very close to my heart, and hopefully also

contribute to the field of s-a-p.

InstitutionalisedKnowledge Creation Strategic ActionOrganisational StrategyStrategic Leadership Strategy-As-Practice

Continuousiterative



Structure

Power Dynamics

Culture

Environment

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7.3: Conclusions and recommendations for future studies

The conclusion of the paper is that a middle manager is impotent to improve the future state of

organisational performance through building learning capacity through s-a-p unless there is

strong strategic leadership in the organisation. The results were surprising in that strategic

leadership was not a considered concept at the start of this research effort. It emerged as the

central theme through rigour of the data collection and analysis.

What amazed me most during the process is the power of research using AR in SSM. No person

interviewed spoke to strategic leadership, regardless of his or her formal or informal standing

and power within the organisation. Yet when the collective answered the questionnaires, the

outcome was unanimous in terms of finding the strategic leadership of the organisation lacking.

Only through AR use in SSM was this possible.

Although other factors influencing the purposeful activity model proved correct in the DLOQ,

the strongest correlation to performance was strategic leadership. Future research within an

organisation struggling to build capacity for learning to drive strategy as practice to improve

performance, should focus on the building of strategic leadership as a focus and identify where

this influences middle managers and their practice as knowledge.

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Weinzimmer, L. G., & Esken, C. A. (2017). Learning From Mistakes: How Mistake

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Appendix A. Company Permission for the study

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Appendix B. DLOQ plus developers permission grant as well as

frequently asked questions around the DLOQ

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Dave Bennett

From: Karen Watkins <[email protected]>

Sent: Thursday, 24 August 2017 16:24

To: David Bennett; [email protected]

Cc: Marsick, Victoria

Subject: Re: Executive MBA

Attachments: non-techmanualADHR copy.pdf

Hi David, That sounds like a very interesting study! We are happy to grant permission with appropriate citation of our work both in the instrument used and in any subsequent publications including your dissertation. Good luck on the study, Karen

-- Karen E. Watkins, Professor Learning, Leadership & Organization Development Department of Lifelong Education, Administration & Policy The University of Georgia 850 College Station Road 406 River’s Crossing Athens, GA 30602 0: 706-542-2214 [to leave msg only] C: 706-340-6791

From: David Bennett <[email protected]> Date: Thursday, August 24, 2017 at 2:50 AM To: Victoria Marsick <[email protected]>, karen watkins <[email protected]> Cc: "Marsick, Victoria" <[email protected]> Subject: RE: Executive MBA

Hi Vicoria/Karen

Trust you are well. Was hoping for some feedback on my previous mail below.

Regards,Dave Bennett General Manager Roads, Earthworks and Pipelines Group Five Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd

Tel +27 10 060 1555 | Dir +27 10 060 2463 | Vax +27 86 609 9095 | Cell +27 82 578 9311 Address 9 Country Estate Drive, Waterfall Business Estate, Jukskei View, 1662, South Africa Email [email protected]

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From: David Bennett Sent: 21 August 2017 16:39 To: 'Marsick, Victoria' Cc: [email protected]; Karen Watkins Subject: RE: Executive MBA

Hi Victoria

Thanks for the quick response

My research question is what role middle managers play in building learning capacity through strategy as practice? I am reviewing three academic areas to research this; the learning organisation, sensemaking and strategy as practice (SAP). My unit of measure is middle management as an aggregate organisational level.

For the learning organisation portion, I am trying to get a baseline for whether or not we are a learning organisation. My feeling is that we are not close. We are in a terrible recession in the country and the complexity in the construction industry is immense. The organisation I work for, in my view, does not use its experience to create knowledge that helps us make smarter strategic decisions. Instead we repeat the same mistakes. In my dissertation I speak about a “rinse, wash and repeat” cycle that we run annually in terms of the strategic plans we produce through our strategy as practice.

The idea would be to develop a theoretical model of how middle managers SAP works through building learning capacity. This would be purely based on a literature review that I am currently busy with (when I came across a few of your papers that peaked my interest). I would then take the results from the DLOQ (also note that I am focussing the study on middle managers so I would limit the respondents within the organisation to Patterson levels of D3 and up) and see if this ties to the theoretical model in terms of the 7 critical dimensions. The fact that the DLOQ is split into these dimensions would help me narrow in on the area requiring the greatest of focus initially. Using a Soft Systems Methodology approach I would then holistically diagnose improvement areas that would modify the model or identify levers that could be triggered through safe to fail experimentation that could improve the organisations future strategic state. Using this the research would make recommendations.

I have developed an online questionnaire using an exact replica of yours using Google and would run it anonymously so that the respondents don’t feel restricted in their responses and I hopefully get truthful data returned that adds greater meaning to the research.

I would like to use this research also as a baseline of my organisation before any interventions. After the dissertation I could check on an annual basis how our initiates (recommended from my research) are faring if EXCO decide to proceed with them based on my research findings.

Warm Regards,Dave Bennett General Manager Roads, Earthworks and Pipelines Group Five Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd


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From: Marsick, Victoria [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 21 August 2017 15:57 To: David Bennett Cc: [email protected]; Karen Watkins Subject: Re: Executive MBA

Hi David

Sorry I did not check my linked in or research gate recently. Thanks for your email and interest in our DLOQ.

I am copying my co-author, Dr. Watkins. Could you send us more information about how you will use the DLOQ as part of the design? What are your research questions and how will this information fit with the design?

Thanks, Victoria Marsick

On Mon, Aug 21, 2017 at 9:08 AM, David Bennett <[email protected]> wrote:

Hi There

I have tried connecting on LinkedIn and via Researchgate but without success. I would like permission to use your DLOQ in my organisation as part of my dissertation research data collection process. I was hoping to get your written permission or discuss any queries/requirements you may have first.

I am studying my Executive MBA through the Graduate School of Business (University of Cape Town) in South Africa and dissertation topic is the role of middle managers in building learning capacity through strategy as practice.

Regards,

Dave Bennett General Manager Roads, Earthworks and Pipelines Group Five Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd

Tel +27 10 060 1555 | Dir +27 10 060 2463 | Vax +27 86 609 9095 | Cell +27 82 578 9311Address 9 Country Estate Drive, Waterfall Business Estate, Jukskei View, 1662, South Africa Email [email protected]

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Frequently asked questions about the Dimensions of the Learning Organization

Questionnaire (the DLOQ): A non-technical manual

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Karen E. Watkins

The University of Georgia

Judy A. O’Neil

Partners for Learning and Leadership

The Problem

Many people seek to use the DLOQ in research and practice with a host of

questions about its construction, utility, and reliability. To date, there has been no readily

accessible source of information about this.

The Solution

This article traces the development of the theoretical constructs which undergird

the survey, outlines the steps of survey construction, and responds to frequently asked

questions about the questionnaire.

The Stakeholders

Human!resource!and!organization!development!scholars!who!would!use!the

DLOQ in studies of organizational culture have a need for accurate information about the

instrument. HROD practitioners who plan to use the instrument as part of ongoing

organization development initiatives also need information about the utility and reliability

of the instrument to share with their stakeholders and to ensure high quality data will

inform their interventions.!

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Introduction

We!begin!by!tracing!the!evolution!of!the!construct!of!the!learning!

organization!by!Watkins!and!Marsick!as!it!has!evolved!in!their!writing!and!practice!

as!well!as!the!theoretical!origins!of!their!ideas.!We!then!discuss!the!construct!

validity!and!reliability!of!the!questionnaire.!Finally,!the!article!concludes!with!how!

the!instrument!has!been!used!to!guide!human!resource!and!organization!

development!research!and!practice.!

Where did the DLOQ come from?

In this section, we trace the evolution of our theory of a learning culture and its

assessment through the development of a questionnaire.

Theory Development.

In 1990, Marsick and Watkins collaborated on a book focused on the notion that

most of the learning in organizations occurs spontaneously and organically, evolving

from the work itself: Informal and Incidental Learning in the Workplace (1990). The

book drew from their research to demonstrate the nature of this learning. As they and

their grounding in the works of Polanyi, Dewey, Schon, and Lewin. Specifically, their

theory of informal and incidental learning included the ideas of making the tacit explicit

(Polanyi, 1966), experiential learning (Dewey, 1938), framing and reflection (Schon,

1983), and on Lewin’s field theory of learning particularly the influence of the social

context on learning (Lewin, 1951). Marsick and Watkins concluded the book, the authors

offeredwith a vision of a broadened conception of the field of human resource

development that involved a capacity to help individuals, groups, organizations and even

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the profession itself to create structures and cultures where learning is continuous,

ubiquitous, embedded in the context of the work itself, that draws on the strategies most

effective for informal and incidental learning—self- direction, proactivity, creativity, and

critical reflection.

This vision inspired an extensive review of the literature of organizational

learning, the learning organization, self- authoring and self- organizing organizations, and

related research over almost fifty years of writing on these and related ideas beginning

with Lewin (1948). At the same time, they examined organizational examples of

promising experiments in creating the capacities that allow the organization to learn.

Watkins began a long-term project with Argyris and Schon and colleagues to develop

understanding and capacities in implementing action science and Marsick began a similar

learning and development effort implementing action reflection learning as described

originally by Revans and reinterpreted by Lennart Rohlin and colleagues of the

Management Institute of Lund1.!!

As their concept of the nature of organizational learning and its embodiment in

organizations that called themselves learning organizations evolved, they began to

crystallize their thinking in a book entitled Sculpting the learning organization: Lessons

in the art and science of systemic change (Watkins and Marsick, 1993). In Sculpting the

Learning Organization, they described promising experiments to create a learning culture

along six action imperatives and concluded with changes needed at four levels of a

learning organization [individual, team, organizational, and societal]. Watkins and !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1 See Argyris, Putnam, and Smith (1985), Argyris and Schon (1978, 1996) and Revans (1980

1982), Rohlin (1984).

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Marsick began by noting how the metaphor of sculpting uniquely fits the learning

organization -- because it is more of a concept, uniquely shaped to fit the context, using

raw materials at hand. Watkins and Marsick (1993) said,

Our purpose in writing this book is to help you see clearly in your mind’s

eye the as yet nonexistent sculpture—the learning organization—and to

show how some forward-looking organizations have begun to transform

themselves into learning organizations. Ours is not a book of strategies but

rather an analysis of the characteristics, qualities, and efforts of emerging

learning organizations that will help you set a course and develop practices

to create your own learning organization. (p. xv)

They emphasize learning that transforms. Six action imperatives are essential

building blocks of a culture that transforms. The six action imperatives were:

• Create continuous learning opportunities

• Promote inquiry and dialogue

• Encourage collaboration and team learning

• Establish systems to capture and share learning

• Empower people toward a collective vision

• Connect the organization to its environment.

One can readily see the seeds of the DLOQ in the action imperatives. Indeed,

Watkins and Marsick (1993) noted that to begin to build a learning organization, one

must first audit the organization’s present capacity to learn and to change (Ibid., p. 262).

The four levels spoke to four capacities:

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1. Change in individual’s behavior, knowledge, motivation and capacity to learn

2. Change in a group’s capacity to innovate and generate new knowledge

3. Change in organizational capacity for innovation and new knowledge

production

4. Change in overall capacity of community and society through quality of work

life and other means.

They concluded with seven attributes or seven C’s of a learning organization:

continuous, collaborative, creative, captured and codified, connected, collective, and

capacity-building. These attributes evolve from the people themselves: “The learning

organization grows organically out of the drive of the people themselves to learn and

grow. . . . While changes explode around the organization, the learning organization is

created by implosion (Ibid., p. 279).

Following the publication of this book, the American Society for Training and

Development asked them to collect case studies of learning organizations. Watkins and

Marsick, through ASTD, solicited case studies from over 8500 individuals. From this

broad request, seventy individuals responded and thirty-two submitted cases. We selected

nineteen case examples of promising experiments across our action imperatives, and

three integrated systemic approaches whose organization-wide activities made the

cultural shifts we deemed essential to creating a learning organization. In action:

Creating the learning organization (Watkins & Marsick, 1996) gives the selected cases.

Watkins and Marsick concluded with their lessons learned. The learning organization

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is not a destination, but a journey; it is not a formula, but it does involve

some key principles that can be used to tailor a flexible structure to one’s

unique needs. A learning organization must do the following:

• Embed a learning infrastructure—not a training department, but a

widespread means of creating, capturing and disseminating

knowledge . ..

• Cultivate a learning habit in people and in the culture so that a spirit

of inquiry, initiative, and experimental thinking predominates

• Regularly audit the knowledge capital in the organization and

progress toward eliminating barriers to learning. (Watkins and

Marsick, 1996, pp. 282-283)

The theory was almost complete. In 1999, Marsick and Watkins collaborated on

another book, Facilitating learning organizations: Making learning count. Figure 1.1, (p.

11) of this book depicts the final model and includes the seventh and last action

imperative: provide strategic leadership for learning. The authors assert that their former

definition of a learning organization, “one that is characterized by continuous learning for

continuous improvement and by the capacity to transform itself” (p. 10) was no longer

adequate because it was more a principle than an operational definition. The model, then,

embodies their theory- seven action imperatives create conditions at four systemic levels

that produce valued outcomes thus: “(1) systems-level, continuous learning; (2) that is

created in order to create and manage knowledge outcomes; (3) which lead to

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improvement in the organization’s performance, and ultimately its value, as measured

through both financial assets and non-financial intellectual capital” (pp. 10-11).

This book focused primarily on strategies to create a learning organization and

introduced the DLOQ in Chapter Four: Charting the Journey (Marsick and Watkins,

1999). This chapter briefly described early use of the questionnaire in research and

consultation. The authors quoted their conclusions from the 1996 book that leaders

emerged as primary gatekeepers of change and those who must transform themselves to

model a learning process. They state:

The first step towards becoming a learning organization seems to be

changing leaders’ roles. Even though leadership for learning is often distributed, it

is also true that people cannot step out and change the way things are done unless

they are supported from the top. Leaders must provide a safe space in which

people can take on new behaviours and realize that it is expected that they

challenge the status quo. The ideal situation is one in which leaders themselves

model learning. (Ibid., p. 159)

The authors were influenced by Ellinger (1997) who studied managers as

facilitators of learning in learning organizations and found different outcomes with

different patterns and levels of personal transformation of leaders’ practice. The essential

role of leaders was affirmed as they looked across the book as a whole. They examined

each of the case studies in the book and noted,

In each case, there has been one or more individuals driving the vision,

believing that learning can make a difference. A sidekick, a person with

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knowledge of the change process, has helped to bring the vision to life and

to move people and systems without harming them. There has not always

been a clear diagnosis of how things are or a map of where the organization

is headed. Sometimes, the map changed mid-stream. Leaders were able to

admit that they were wrong and to redirect the change effort. They did this

in conversation with their employees. They listened, they talked, they

persisted. They saw a future that they could hardly describe but worked

creatively and collaboratively to tease that future out of the stubborn

marble of the organization as it was. And most of all, they realized that

becoming a learning organization is in the details of daily life--- how they

interact with their people. (p. 204)

Though the authors continued to conduct research on the learning organization and

to explore ways to create a learning culture, the essential model as presented in this book

has not changed and established the substantive component of construct validation

(Benson, .1998). Work with Yang established structural and external construct validity of

the model.

Questionnaire Development.

During the same decade, the authors gave a number of workshops with

individuals from numerous organizations. As they interacted with corporate trainers and

leaders, a consistent question was how to operationalize their model. What changes must

be made to change an organization from where they are now to where they would like to

be? As Marsick and Watkins and their workshop participants struggled to figure this out,

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the idea germinated of a questionnaire that might give individuals a baseline to determine

where they are now against the cultural action imperatives they’d identified.

Watkins and Marsick developed and refined numerous iterations of a

questionnaire with help from a survey research methodologist [Dr. Tom Valentine,

University of Georgia] and a statistician [Dr. Baiyin Yang, then also at the University of

Georgia, now Tsinghua University in Beijing]. They created items to capture the

indicators they had seen in learning organizations they looked for in those organizations

who would become learning organizations.

The template for the questionnaire included a consistent item format, visual

analog responses, and a six point Likert scale. The item format is designed to maintain a

focus on the organization, each item beginning with “In my organization, …” A visual

analog response scale was used to give a free range of responses along a continuum with

anchors on each end (Clark and Watson, 1995). The authors were influenced by Kelly’s

personal construct theory and scaling approach that argued that meaning is personally

constructed – and can be discerned by asking individuals to place themselves along a

dichotomous continuum, of responses. The authors anchored only the two poles of the

response scale with “almost never” and “almost always,” indicating how often the

statement is true for their organization. They used a six-point scale to distribute responses

and to avoid a clustering of responses at the mean, requiring; and asked respondents to

make a choice toward one side of the continuum or the other.

The pool of items were vetted with expert and student panels to ensure the

language was simple, straightforward, and at an appropriate reading level for a largely

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professional audience. The student panel hand-sorted items on index cards to verify the

fit of the item within each dimension. From early pilot tests, a dataset was created and

Cronbach’s (1951) coefficient alpha reliabilities and factor analyses conducted to identify

poorly worded and weak loading items. These items were revised or eliminated.

Through this iterative process, the questionnaire was completed and used in

workshops with the Columbia Business School and in other contexts. Students at UGA

used the survey in research in family businesses (Selden, 1998), non-profit organizations

(McHargue, 1999), government (Sta Maria, 2000), and South American for-profit

corporations (Hernandez, 2000) and at Teacher’s College in small businesses (Kim,

2007) and banking (Murugiah, 2008). Their cumulative work further demonstrated the

validity and reliability of different versions of the DLOQ by context and culture.

Dr. Baiyin Yang worked with the authors to complete the validation of the

instrument. Using a cumulative database of responses from multiple studies and

organizations (N = 836), they conducted reliability analyses, exploratory and

confirmatory factor analyses as well as structural equation modeling to test the construct

validity of the dimensions and the overarching theory behind the model—that

organizational knowledge and financial [and mission in non-profit organizations]

performance are related to the overall health of the organization’s learning culture.

Reliability results indicated high levels of reliability [.80 to .87] (Yang, Watkins, and

Marsick, 2004). The authors report the results of this work, verifying the structural

dimension of construct validity (Benson, 1998) of the model –

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The present study showed strong evidence of construct validity for the

scale measuring dimensions of a learning organization. . . .A nomological

network between dimensions of the learning organization and performance

outcomes was identified and empirically tested as an additional step toward

construct validation. Support for nomological validity was found from the

significant relations between dimensions of the learning organization and

performance outcomes and the model-data fit. (p. 50)

The external dimension of construct validity (Benson, 1998) was demonstrated

when the model generated showed the relative impact of different dimensions of the

learning organization on performance. In these analyses, individual and team level

dimensions had indirect significant effects on organizational outcomes, and

organizational level variables served as mediators of the relationship between individual

and team level dimensions and organizational outcomes. Interestingly, only “provide

strategic leadership for learning” had a significant direct effect on financial performance.

The other organizational level dimensions, “embedded systems to capture and share

learning” and “systemic connections,” affected financial performance indirectly through

knowledge performance (p. 49).

In 2003, we shared the work of several of our colleagues in a special issue of

Advances in Developing Human Resources. Studies using the DLOQ in different contexts

illustrated the value of the questionnaire, and the authors invited others to use the

questionnaire, including the questionnaire itself in the special issue. Since that time, over

70 published articles using the DLOQ demonstrate its usefulness in many contexts and

cultures.

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Frequently Asked Questions

As the DLOQ has been used in studies in multiple disciplines, multiple languages

and organizational contexts, a number of questions have recurred. Some of these follow.

Can I Adapt The DLOQ For My Organization?

The DLOQ is a copyrighted instrument which means that the items, the format,

the scoring, etc. may not be used without the express permission of the authors. If

adaptation is needed, the authors must approve that adaptation. Simple adaptations such

as saying the name of the organization in lieu of “In my organization” are readily

approved. Because it affects reliability, any change of language of the items to better fit a

context [e.g. public health, government, military, schools, etc.] have generally been co-

developed with the authors to maintain the integrity of the different constructs and to

ensure any new language maintains the spirit of the dimensions.

Other changes [e.g. eliminating some items in a dimension] change the reliability

of that dimension and are discouraged. Yang developed a 21 item short form of the

instrument that has acceptable reliability and thus offers a better alternative to a more

random elimination of items. Many who seek to use the instrument are familiar with 5

point Likert scales and thus want to change the scoring to a 5 point scale from the current

6-point scale. This adaptation we also discourage because it again decreases reliability of

the dimensions and causes regression to the mean.

Can I Translate The Questionnaire?

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Absolutely. We ask only that you follow the guidelines for validating your

translation, e.g. using back translation, expert review, and then use Chronbach’s (1951)

coeffiecient alpha to again ensure the reliability of each dimension is not significantly

lower from those obtained in our validation work. We also invite translators to share a

copy of the translated DLOQ with us for future scholars who also need that specific

language. Currently, it has been translated into 14 languages other than English that we

are aware of.

Can I Use Parts Of The DLOQ In Another Questionnaire?

Indeed, we have given permission to use shorter versions of the questionnaire or

all of it as part of larger questionnaires that measure additional variables. As long as the

DLOQ is appropriately cited, this is acceptable. Appropriate citation for the instrument is:

Watkins, K., & Marsick, V. (1997). Dimensions of the learning organization

questionnaire. Warwick, RI: Partners for the Learning Organization. and Marsick,

V., & Watkins, K. (2003). Demonstrating the value of an organization’s learning

culture: The dimensions of the learning organization questionnaire. Advances in

Developing Human Resources, 5 (2), 132-151.

Can I Use The DLOQ In A Study Looking At Individual Behavior?

This is another complicated question we frequently receive. The dilemma here is

we are asking for individual perceptions of organizational phenomena in the DLOQ. We

do not necessarily use the organization as the unit of analysis in our work, but we are

hoping to determine patterns that tell us something about differences across organizations

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and organization units regarding their learning culture. A study that then compares the

DLOQ scores to an individual construct such as emotional intelligence becomes hard to

interpret. So if the learning culture of the organizations responding is high in strategic

leadership for learning, and respondents scored low in intrapersonal behavior on the EQI,

what does this really mean? Do we argue that less reflective people perceive the leaders

in their organization are providing excellent leadership for learning? There are many

similar examples of logical conundrums.

We created two organizational performance measures – knowledge and financial

performance-- as part of the DLOQ and with McHargue (1999) a third – mission

performance. Others have used an array of organizational performance measures both

hard and soft to develop correlations between a given culture and its outcomes. This kind

of comparison is more fruitful since it fits with our theory of the learning organization as

a driver of organizational innovation and performance. It is also consistent with all

measures yielding individual perceptions of organizational attributes.

What Are Limitations Of The DLOQ?

All instruments are limited in utility. The best use of the DLOQ is to provide a

diagnostic of where an organization or a group of organizations falls relative to each

other and to others who have taken the DLOQ. It is not a measure of all that a learning

organization is, but rather an indicator that suggests that if these characteristics are

present, others equally essential to creating a learning culture are probably also present

and thus the organization may be understood to have a high or low learning culture.

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The instrument is a self-report measure and shares the limitations of all self-

report questionnaires. Individuals may not be truthful, may answer capriciously, in a

socially desirable way, or may lack information to answer accurately. We look at

responses in the aggregate, expecting that much of this potential bias will be addressed –

and even more will be identified statistically particularly through tests of internal

reliability. Razavi (2001) reviewing the concerns and limitations of self-report measures

concludes these issues must be taken into account in the design of the questionnaire, but

in regard to the purpose and theoretical considerations. Moreover, taken collectively,

individual perceptions of the learning culture are the strongest measure available of an

elusive and abstract construct.

Items in the DLOQ are positively worded- and a positive response set is possible.

On the other hand, we look at overall profiles- highs and lows rather than overall means.

Thus, an individual organization may appear to score much higher than our global mean,

yet the general pattern of responses is similar to the pattern of high and low dimensions

we’ve observed across many organizations.

The dimensions are highly inter-correlated. This multi-co-linearity makes

statistical analyses more difficult2, yet since the constructs operationalized with this

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!2!Naes!and!Mevik!(2001)!suggest!the!use!principal!component!regression!(PCR)!for!handling!the!

multiIcollinearity!problem!in!regression!and!discriminant!analysis.!See!also!Adnan,!Ahmad,!and!

Adnan!(2006)!who!compare!the!performances!of!ridge!regression!(RR),!principal!component!

regression!(PCR)!and!partial!least!squares!regression!(PLSR)!in!handling!the!multiIcollinearity!

problem!in!simulated!data!sets.!Ridge!regression!produced!a!more!precise!result.!

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instrument are all dimensions of a learning culture, it is intuitively reasonable for the

dimensions to be inter-related. Indeed, we conceptualized the learning culture as a

collective result of these seven dimensions. Of more concern to us are what dimensions

of a learning culture have we not captured in this instrument? Future scholars will need to

address this question.

What Forms Of The Instrument Are Available?

The authors worked with colleagues to develop a number of versions including

the original for profit instrument, a non-profit version, higher education and K-12

versions, government, and military versions. An on-line version is available and a self-

scoring version is available from the authors. Copies of translated versions may also be

available depending on the language requested.

Why Use The DLOQ In Practice?

Much has been written about why an organization might strive to become a

learning organization based on theory, research, and practice (Senge, 1990; Watkins &

Marsick, 1993; Marsick & Watkins, 2003). Since these earlier writings, both researchers

and practitioners have been using the DLOQ to attempt to provide more specific

examples from practice to make the case that learning in an organization can have a

positive impact on organizational outcomes. The following is a look at the areas most

examined in order to provide practitioners insight into where they might find available

data and ideas for their own exploration.

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Organizational performance. Early on in learning organization research,

Ellinger, Ellinger, Yang and Howton (1993) recognized the need to begin to build a

business case for the relationship between learning organization dimensions and an

organization’s performance. Their early research focused on financial performance and a

number of other studies continued that focus. Ellinger, Ellinger, Yang and Howton’s

(1993) study used four measures of financial performance including return on equity

(ROE), return on assets (ROA), Tobin’s q, and market value added (MVA). Davis &

Daley (2008) added to the data verifying the relationship of the learning culture to

financial performance by examining return on investment (ROI), earnings per share

(EPS), net income per employee, percentage of sales from new products, as well as ROE.

Fuentes (2008) looked at the link between Balanced Scorecard results and the presence of

a learning culture in US-based, for-profit corporations. The relationship between learning

organization dimensions and financial performance was also examined in Malaysia and

Sri Lanka (Kumar, 2005; Weerakkody, 2011).

Organizational impact. The concept of organizational commitment has long

been known to be of importance to the success of organizations (Brewer & Hensher,

1998; Leiriao, 2003). There is more renewed interest in understanding what might

contribute to engaging employees’ commitment based on the differing attitudes of newer

employees and the ongoing recession (Bourke, 2009; Solnet & Kralj, 2010). Researchers

and practitioners around the globe have looked at the relationship and impact of learning

organization dimensions on the possible various dimensions of organizational

commitment such as job satisfaction, interpersonal trust, and organizational culture

(Dirani, 2009; Song, Kim & Kolb, 2009; Salehi, 2005; Wang, 2007).

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“Innovation—the ability to define and develop new products and services and

deliver them to market—is the fundamental source of value creation in companies and an

important enabler of competitive advantage” (Bordia, Konenberg & Neely, 2005, p. 1).

Many researchers and practitioners agree on the importance of innovation to

organizations and have looked into the relationship between learning organization

dimensions and innovative behavior. Much of the research has been done with companies

in Malaysia (Ismail, 2005; Sta Maria, 2003) and China (Xiaojun, 2010) and has examined

the relationships in both individual innovative behavior and overall organizational

innovation.

A final area at the organizational level that has been of interest to researchers and

practitioners is the area of readiness for organizational change. The idea of organizational

change, and what might support and promote it, has been studied by many (Beckhard &

Pritchard, 1992; Burke, 2010), so those interested in learning organization impacts have

also looked at the relationship both in the US and internationally (Haque, 2008;

Mohammad & Gholamreza, 2011; Noubar, Rose, Kumar & Salleh, 2011).

Employee impact. There has also been research conducted on the connections

between learning organization dimensions and employees at various levels in an

organization. Marsick and Watkins (1999) emphasized the role of leaders and how they

“must transform their work in order to support the learning organization” (p. 159).

Researchers have continued to study leaders to better understand how leaders’ actions or

inactions impact employees in a company as the learning organization dimensions are

developed (Hawkins, 2005; Lu, 2010; Pimapunsri, 2008).

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The other area of interest for research has been at the employee level in the

organization. Historically, an employee’s career was developed in relationship with

his/her employer. Significant changes such as globalization and the increased use of

temporary and part-time employees has changed this relationship (Sullivan & Baruch,

2009). So researchers and practitioners have become interested in looking at the affects of

a learning organization on the employee’s ability to have a self-managed career (Berg &

Chyung, 2008; Park, 2009).

Over 70 research studies have been undertaken using the DLOQ. While this

synopsis provides some of the main research areas that might be of interest to

organizational practitioners, there has been research using the DLOQ to investigate the

relationship between learning organization dimensions and many other areas, some of

which are described in earlier chapters. Other research included the areas of knowledge

creation (Song, 2008), collaborative capacity (Getha-Taylor, 2008), adoption of

evidence-based practices (Bridges, Bierema & Valentine, 2007), and peer relationships

(Peroune, 2007).

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Song, J. H. (2008). The effects of learning organization culture on the practices of human

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of Training & Development, 12 (4), 265-281.

Song, J. H., Kim, H. M. & Kolb, J. A. (2009). The effect of learning organization culture

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Sullivan, S. E. & Baruch, Y. (2009). Advances in career theory and research: a critical

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Quarterly, 15(1), 31-56.

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Author’s Bios:

Karen&E.&Watkins.&Karen!is!Professor!of!Human!Resource!and!Organizational!

Development!in!the!College!of!Education!at!The!University!of!Georgia.!Watkins!is!the!

author!or!coIauthor!of!over!100!articles!and!chapters,!and!6!books.!Watkins!and!

Marsick!developed!and!validated!the!Dimensions(of(the(Learning(Organization(

Questionnaire.!

Judy O’Neil, Ed.D. - President of Partners for Learning and Leadership, Inc., and

adjunct faculty at Teachers College, Columbia University. She holds an Ed.D. and M.A.

in Adult Education from Teachers College, Columbia University, New York. Prior to her

work with Partners, Dr. O’Neil was managing partner of her own consulting firm. In her

25 years at AT&T, she held a variety of roles in human resource development and

organizational change.

!

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Appendix C. DLOQ Send Out Email

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Dave Bennett

From: David Bennett <[email protected]>

Sent: Monday, 28 August 2017 16:07

To: Abel Mudau; Ajit Maharaj; Alton Jooste; Andre De Wet; Andy Stott; Annish

Doorgapersad; Arie Nijhuis; Bruce Chiang; Carl-James Van Rooyen; Carmen Larsen;

Cedomir Djordjevic; Charles Cormack; Charles Mossop; Chris Agar; Chrisjan Willemse;

Cindy Smit; Clancinah Baloyi; Clerk Hill; Clinton Wade Van Der Merwe; Colin Campbell;

Craig Cronje; Craig Gainsford; Cristina Freitas Teixeira; Dallas Thackeray; Daniel Maritz;

Daniel Ranoko; Dave Morgan; David Bennett; David Blain; Des Muller; Devi Pertab;

Dineo Sekwele; Donovan Carroll; Dorita Smit; Eduan Van Rooyen; Edward Williams;

Enzo Ermacora; Ezmare Clifford; Filipe Marques; Fiona Park; Flynn Bedworth; Franco

Ermacora; Francois Stock; Frank Enslin; Frikkie Weeks; Gary Elliott; George Hammond;

Gerry Henny; Gert Botha; Glen Hockly; Gregory Skeen; Guy Mottram; Hans Van Der

Waal; Hendrik Eksteen; Hennie Davel; Honest Nyilika; Howard Wakefield; Humphrey

Makoe; Ian Theron; Igor Kruger; Isabella Makuta; Jacques Le Roux; Jacques Robbertze;

Jake Friis; Jennifer Taylor; Jerilyn Richards; Johan Nortier; John Wallace; Jonathan Ely;

Joseph Dickson; Joseph Khoza; Julio Cerqueira; Jurgen Stragier; Keith Pillay; Keri O'Brien;

Kevin Burnard; Kevin Strydom; Kishore Sewchurran; Kushil Maharaj; Laura Frittella;

Laurent Bouchacourt; Leslie Bosma; Louis Makumbila; Luckie Molubi; Magugu Mvula;

Mannie Kistnasamy; Mark Harris; Mark Humphreys; Mark Jones; Matuloe Masemola;

Michael Bolleurs; Michael Davison; Michael Hanna; Monty Soobramoney; Neelan

Govender; Neshan Sukdeo; Neville Gezwint; Nic Fee; Nick Everts; Nico Drotskie; Paul

Thiel; Peet Herbst; Peri Zagaretos; Peter De Vries; Petrus Erasmus; Phil Coleman; Pieter

Van Der Poll; Pravin Laljit; Quinton Warmback; Ray Govender; Retha Kriek; Richard

Adams; Richard Simpson; Richard Van Den Barg; Romay Rundgren; Ronnie Murugan;

Ross Scullard; Roy Thomson; Roy Von Pannier; Russell Deenik; Sashnee Naidoo;

Sechaba Moru; Stephen Trickett; Steve Ryninks; Themba Mosai; Themba Mthethwa;

Theresa Burdett; Thomas Moolman; Tienie Kruger; Timothy Nicholls; Tom Collins; Tony

Ruskovich; Ursula Mclaren; Wayne Dos Santos Niz; Wim Fourie; Wolfgang Kleer;

Wynand Adlem; Yusuf Chothia; Zander Van Lingen; Zo Hlongwane

Subject: Questionnaire

Hi everyone

Please could you kindly use the link below and take 15 minutes to complete this questionnaire by Friday 1 September 2015. By filling in the questionnaire indicates obvious consent to do so. You are under no obligation and I am unable to know from where the information has come – in other words it is completely anonymous. Thanks you in advance for your assistance.

https://goo.gl/forms/eacWKHJ1W2g1GpNm1

REQUEST FOR AN INTERVIEW/QUESTIONNAIRE AS PART OF A RESEARCH STUDY

In partial fulfilment of a Master’s degree in Business Administration specialising in Executive Management

(EMBA), I am conducting research that seeks to research the “role of middle managers in building organisational

learning capacity in strategy-as-practice”. Currently I feel that construction companies struggle to develop and

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execute relevant strategy and that middle managers play a crucial role in this. It is my hope that this study will

reveal practical insights into developing a a plausible theory on how the middle managers role can help diffuse

an organisational culture of learning that could rid organisations of layers of systems and procedure which limit

strategic adaptability.

There are no known risks or dangers to you associated with this study. The researchers will not attempt to

identify you with the responses to your questionnaire, or to name you as a participant in the study except with

your permission, nor will they facilitate anyone else's doing so.

Ethical consent for the study has been obtained from the UCT Commerce Faculty Ethics in Research Committee.

UCT requires that in agreeing to participate you acknowledge that you are participating in this study of your

own free will; you understand that you may refuse to participate or stop participating at any time without

penalty. Permission for the study has been obtained from Group Five Ltd CEO, Themba Mosai.

If you have any questions about this project or your participation, you can email the researcher

[email protected] or call on 0825789311 (alternatively email the researcher’s supervisor, Jennifer

McDonogh on [email protected]).

Thank you for supporting this initiative.

Kind regards,

Regards, Dave Bennett General Manager Roads, Earthworks and Pipelines Group Five Civil Engineering (Pty) Ltd


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Appendix D. DLOQ Send Out

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