Psychology of Learning and Power Bases

Learning

• Learning is a relatively permanent change in knowledge (behaviors, skills, values, preferences, understanding, etc.).
• Learning is a process.
• Changes in knowledge equal learning.

What is Knowledge?

• Knowledge is comprised of facts, information, and skills.
• Knowledge is acquired through learning (e.g., experience, education, reading, watching videos, training).
• Knowledge is an outcome of learning.
• Learning = Knowledge
• Knowledge is a resource.
• Knowledge is a base of power.

Power

• Power is the capacity to influence someone to act in a way they wouldn't otherwise.

5 Power Bases

• 3 Formal Bases:
  • Coercive: power based on fear, threats, and punishment.
  • Reward: power based on rewards, benefits, and advantages.
  • Legitimate: power stemming from position, hierarchy, and organizational structure.
• 2 Personal Bases:
  • Expert: power derived from knowledge, skills, information, and expertise.
  • Referent: power based on attraction, charisma, admiration, and likeability.
• 2 Add-on Bases:
  • Trust
  • Respect

Knowledge (Explicit and Tacit)

• Explicit Knowledge:
  • Tangible and codified.
  • Easily articulated.
  • Includes documents, databases, textbooks, policies, and procedures.
• Tacit Knowledge:
  • Intangible.
  • Difficult to articulate; it is hard to write down or explain.
  • Includes experience, insights, intuition, motor skills.
  • Often individual-based, context-specific, implied, or understood.
  • Includes norms, assumptions, judgements, not always recognized, and not always shared.

General Dependency Postulate

• Dependency and power are inversely related.
  • The more dependent B is on A, the more power A has over B.
• Dependency is related to supply versus demand.
• Dependency is proportional to:
  • Scarcity.
  • Importance.
  • Non-substitutability (lack of alternative sources, imitability).

Learning Challenges

• Learning = change
• Learning can be hard at times.
• Encouraging individual learning.
• Strategic unlearning.
• Myth of multitasking.
• Individual vs. organizational learning.

Classical Conditioning

• Based on Ivan Pavlov's experiments.
• Passive.
• Creating a conditioned response to an unconditioned stimulus.
• Making you react to something in a specific way that didn't trigger that reaction before.
• Not generally considered a good organizational tool.

Operant Conditioning

• Developed by B.F. Skinner.
• Applies to voluntary behavior, different from classical conditioning.
• All about reaction to feedback/reinforcement.
  • Reinforcement.
  • Punishment.
  • Extinction.

Reinforcement, Punishment, Extinction

• Reinforcement: Uses rewards to increase the likelihood of repeating a behavior.
  • Positive Reinforcement: Rewarding a behavior with a desirable stimulus (giving something good).
  • Negative Reinforcement: Rewarding a behavior by removing an undesirable stimulus (taking away something bad).
• Punishment: Uses punishment to decrease the likelihood of repeating a behavior.
  • Positive Punishment: Punishing a behavior with an undesirable stimulus (enacting something bad).
  • Negative Punishment: Punishing a behavior by removing a desirable stimulus (taking away something good).
• Extinction: Doing nothing to decrease the likelihood of repeating a behavior. This includes stopping to provide the previous reinforcement.

Social Learning

• Learning through the experience and observation of others.
• Learn to anticipate consequences once we have observed others.
• Good consequences = good behavior.
• Bad consequences = bad behavior.
• Danger: consequences are in the eye of the beholder.

Cognitive Learning

• Cognitive learning is not necessarily observed.
• Cognition is the act or process of knowing.
• Manifested by the capacity and skills to learn better.
• Reinforcement could include:
  • Intrinsic rewards: knowledge of results or feeling of accomplishment.
  • Extrinsic rewards.

Kolb's Individual Learning Styles

• Everyone learns through a 4-step process.
• Individuals have stronger and weaker stages or preferences (individual differences).

How do Organizations Learn?

• Organizational learning is a process of change.
• It's the organization's ability to acquire, process, exploit, apply, and disseminate knowledge to ensure success.
• It's an essential skill and strategic capability.
• It's the concept of individual learning applied to the organization as a whole, not just individuals.
• This approach is also one of the most criticized aspects of Organizational Learning.

Organizational Learning Challenges

• Summing up individual learning/organizational learning
• Fear of investing in individual development (fear of flight); no time for reflection/synthesis.
• Operational focus ("putting out fires").
• Learning = change (intangible).

Levels of Organizational Learning

• Individual, group, organizational, and interorganizational
• Sharing ideas, collaborating, developing knowledge across groups, and learning from competitors.
• Total system of interaction between levels to generate knowledge.

Organizational Learning Argyris & Schön (1978)

• Single-loop learning (Adaptive Learning): Coping by changing according to existing procedures and strategies. (Inside the box)
• Double-loop learning (Generative Learning): Creating by questioning existing procedures, policies, assumptions, and developing new ones. ("Outside the box").
• Triple-loop learning (Deutero learning): Learning to learn.

The Toyota Way

• A practical approach to continuous improvement.
• The example shows how a small problem (e.g., puddle of oil) can lead to broader organizational and strategic improvements, including purchasing policies. A short-term cost-saving measure should not be the sole factor on which a decision is based.

2 Ways Organizations Learn

• Exploitation: Refining and improving existing organizational activities and procedures.
• Exploration: Searching for and experimenting with new forms of organizational activities and procedures.

Recap: Learning

• Knowledge = facts, information, and skills acquired through learning.
• Knowledge = power (especially if unique/important).
• Different types of Knowledge (explicit, tacit, implicit).
• Learning: relatively permanent change in knowledge.
• Different kinds of learning (e.g., conditioning, reinforcement, social, cognitive).
• Individuals learn in different ways.
• Organizational learning is based on knowledge capture, transfer, etc. and is founded on individual learning.
• Relying on existing policies and procedures, training is NOT Organizational Learning.