Are organizations like brains?
Examines the importance of information process, learning, and intelligence and provides a frame of reference for understanding and assessing modern organizations in these terms. It also provides a set of principles for creating “learning organizations”.
2. Contents:
• Introduction
• Brain
• Brain hemispheres
• Brain Metaphor
• Organizations as information Processing Brains
• Three types of brains:
• The Decision-making Approach
• The Decision-making Approach criticisms
• Creating learning organizations
• Creating learning organizations
• Cybernetics
• Negative feedback
• Cybernetics key principles
• Learn to learn
• Guidelines for learning organizations
• Strengths and limitations of the brain metaphor
• Organizations as holographic brains
3. Introduction:
• An organ of soft nervous tissue contained in the skull of vertebrates, functioning as the
coordinating center of sensation and intellectual and nervous activity
What is brain?
4. Introduction:
• A kind of television system with a capacity to reassemble coherent patterns and
images from millions of separate pieces of data
• A control system similar to a complex computer or telephone switchboard,
transmitting information through electronic impulses
• A sophisticated library or memory bank for data storage and retrieval
• A complex system of chemical reactions that transmit messages and initiate actions
• Holographic system or hologram, if broken any single piece can be used to
reconstruct the entire image.
The brain functioning as a processing unit has limitless possibilities.
5. Introduction:
"split brain" research.
This shows how the brain's right hemisphere plays
a Dominant role in creative ,intuitive, emotional,
acoustic and pattern recognition functions and
controls the left side of the body' The left
hemisphere is more involved with rational,
analytic, reductive, linguistic' visual' and verbal
functions while controlling the right side of the
body' There is undoubtedly a high degree of
specialization on the part of each hemisphere’ but
both are always involved in any given activity' It is
just that one hemisphere seems to be more active
or dominant than the other as different functions
are brought into Play'
Brain hemispheres
6. This may sound like a subset of the Organism metaphor (and there is some overlap), but there is a subtle
and important shift in emphasis from “life processes” to learning.
Organizations are information systems, communication systems, and they are decision-making systems.
we can thus go a long way toward understanding them as information processing brains!
Brain Metaphor:
Organizations as information Processing Brains
7. • The information processing brain (Decision making theory)
• The learning brain (Learning organization)
• The holographic brain (The whole in the parts organization)
Brain Metaphor:
Three types of brains:
8. Was pioneered in the 1940`s and 1950`s by Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon and colleagues like James
March.
This approach aimed exploring the parallels between human decision making and organizational decision
making.
Simon is famous for arguing that organizations can never be perfectly rational because their members
have limited information processing abilities.
Arguing that people
( a)usually have to act on the basis of incomplete information about possible courses of action
and their con-sequences.
(b) are able to explore only a limited number of alternatives relating to any given decision.
(c) are unable to attach accurate values to outcomes.
Brain Metaphor:
The Decision-making Approach:
9. Simon`s conclusion:
He concluded that individuals and organizations settle for a "bounded rationality" of "good enough"
decisions based on simple rules of thumb and limited search and information
Brain Metaphor:
The Decision-making Approach:
10. The information processing Perspective has created a fresh way of thinking about organization. But there
are two major criticisms, each of which opens a new line of development
Brain Metaphor:
The Decision-making Approach criticisms :
1. The first is that most decision-making and information processing views have had a “left-brain bias"
and an over centralized view of the nature of organizational intelligence.
11. Brain Metaphor:
The Decision-making Approach criticisms :
2. The too much emphasis has been placed on using the image of the limited information processing
capacities of a single individual, as model for understanding decision making in organizations
generally.
This is the implicit premise of Simon`s view of ”bounded rationality." The limited intelligence of individuals
is used to justify the limited intelligence of organizations
12. The term was coined in the 1940`s by MIT mathematician Norbert Wiener as a metaphorical application of
the Greek “kubernetes” meaning Steersman
Cybernetics is a trans-disciplinary approach for exploring regulatory systems , their structures, constraints,
and possibilities
• "The art of securing efficient operation.“ Louis Couffignal
• "The art of effective organization.“ Stafford Beer
• "The art and science of manipulating defensible metaphors.“ Gordon Pask
• "The art of creating equilibrium in a world of constraints and possibilities.“ Ernst von Glasersfeld
• "The science and art of understanding.“ Humberto Maturana
• "The ability to cure all temporary truth of eternal triteness.“ Herbert Brun
Brain Metaphor:
Creating learning organizations:
Cybernetics:
13. Wiener used this imagery to characterize processes of information exchange through which machines
and organisms engage in self regulating behaviors that maintain steady states.
The core insight emerging from this early work was that the ability of a system to engage in self-
regulating behavior depends on processes of information exchange involving negative feedback.
Brain Metaphor:
Creating learning organizations:
Cybernetics:
14. Systems of negative feedback engage in this kind
of error detection and correction automatically so
that movements beyond specified limits in one
direction initiate movements in the opposite
direction to maintain a desired course of action.
Brain Metaphor:
Creating learning organizations:
Negative feedback :
15. The principles of modern cybernetics provide a framework for thinking about how this can be achieved.
Brain Metaphor:
Creating learning organizations:
Learn to learn:
16. 1. Systems must have the capacity to sense, monitor, and scan significant aspects of their environment.
2. They must be able to relate this information to the operating norms that guide system behavior.
3. They must be able to detect significant deviations from these norms.
4. They must be able to initiate corrective action when discrepancies are detected.
Brain Metaphor:
Creating learning organizations:
Cybernetics communication and learning key principles:
17. Why Organizational Learning?
Organization depends on people
• For sharing knowledge
• For making the organizations smarter
"learning occurs whenever errors are detected and corrected“
"An error is any mismatch between intentions and actual consequences"
Brain Metaphor:
The learning brain (learning organization)
19. Brain Metaphor:
The learning brain (learning organization)
DATA
• Facts
• Observations
• Values of Results
• Quantitative
• Has not been processed
It is obtained from Observations (input)
INFORMATION
• structured data
• meaningful data
• describe a particular situation or condition
It gives us definitions (what, who, when, where)
KNOWLEDGE
• know-how
• truths
• perspectives
• concepts
• judgments
• methodologies
It is about action and decision-making capability
20. • Scan and anticipate change in the wider environment to detect significant variations.
• Develop an ability to question, challenge, and change operating norms and assumptions.
• Allow an appropriate strategic direction and pattern of organization to emerge.
Brain Metaphor:
Guidelines for learning organizations:
Cybernetics suggests that learning organizations must develop capacities that allow them to do the following:
Evolve designs that allow them to become skilled in the art of double loop learning, to avoid getting
trapped in single-loop processes.
Achieving these aims they through:
21. Strengths:
• Gives clear guidelines for creating learning organizations
• Shows how IT can support the evolution of organizations
• Gives a new theory of management based on the principles of self-organization
• Addresses the importance of dealing with paradox
Limitations:
• There could be conflict between the requirements of organizational learning and the realities of power
and control
• Learning for the sake of learning can become just another ideology
Brain Metaphor:
Strengths and limitations of the brain metaphor:
22. Organizations as holographic brains
The metaphor of a hologram invites us to think of systems where qualities of the whole are enfolded in all the
parts so that the system has an ability to self-organize and regenerate itself on a continuous Basis
Recall the image of a broken holographic plate, where any part can be used to regenerate the information
contained in the whole
Brain Metaphor:
23. Now think of designing organizations that possess these abilities.
They would be organizations that have wonderful memories that are organized and accessed in a highly
decentralized way. They would be Capable of processing massive a mounts o f information and of shaping
it for different Purpose.
Brain Metaphor:
Organizations as holographic brains
24. Thy would be organizations where individuals, teams, and other units are able to take on almost any
challenge and find ways of organizing for the needs at hand.
They would be capable of functioning when major sections become obliterated or immobilized they would
be organizations where capacities, intelligence, and control are distributed in a way that allows any single
element to become a vital part of the whole.
Brain Metaphor:
Organizations as holographic brains
25. They would be organizations that are able to grow, develop, and change their Personalities along with
changing experiences .
They would, in short, be intelligent, self-organizing brains that reflect all the qualities of what we have
described as a "learning organization,,.
Brain Metaphor:
Organizations as holographic brains
