The Hunting of the Learning Organization
借鉴刘易斯·卡罗尔的《猎捕斯纳克》，从系统视角探讨学习型组织话语中的认识论问题，区分学习层次并整合学习与政治，质疑学习型组织状态能否通过意图和设计实现。
This article addresses the epistemology of learning, as reflected in some discourses of the learning organization. The article is inspired by, and draws substantially from, Lewis Carroll’s ‘Hunting of the Snark’. It employs a broadly systemic theoretical perspective. The article highlights relevant characteristics of Carroll’s fiction and argues for the importance of differentiation between orders of learning, following Bateson’s model of levels of learning. Building on this differentiation of orders of learning, and on the notion of the inevitable paradoxical nature of organizations, the article explores a possible conceptual integration of ‘learning’ and ‘politics’, which Easterby-Smith et al. consider desirable. A question raised is of whether experiences cited as paradigmatic of ‘the learning organization’ are most likely to be transient and emergent. The analysis questions the extent to which such states can be produced through intention and design, and therefore to what extent the wish for these to become permanent states may parallel the hunt for the Snark.