POWER AND EMOTION IN ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING

1 ,2
Russ Vince
The University of Glamorgan

ABSTRACT
This paper explores the difference between learning in an organisation and
organisational learning. I construct a conceptual framework for understanding
organisational learning at an organisational level of analysis. This framework is based
on the proposition that organisational learning is visible in the organisational
dynamics created from the interaction between politics (power relations) and emotion
within an organisation. Using a combination of psychodynamic theory and reflections
on the politics of organising I develop the idea that organisations are learning when
the establishment that is being created through the very process of organising can be
identified and critically reflected on. I use a case example of a change initiative
within Hyder plc, a multi-national company, to identify organisational dynamics that
limit organisational learning. In the final part of the paper I discuss the conclusions
that emerged from the case example and the implications of these conclusions for the
theory and practice of organisational learning.

Professor Russ Vince, The Business School, University of Glamorgan, Pontypridd,

CF37 1DL, Wales, U.K. Phone: +44(0)1443-482955 Fax: +44(0)1443-482380 or
+44(0)1656-890402 E-mail: [email protected]
2

This paper is currently in press with Human Relations. Please do not cite or quote
without permission from the author.

INTRODUCTION
In this paper I develop a conceptual framework for understanding organisational
learning at an organisational level of analysis. In using the phrase an organisational
level of analysis I am attempting to highlight the difference between individual
learning in an organisation and organisational learning. Despite widespread
theoretical acknowledgement that an understanding of organisational learning
requires analysis of individual, group and organisational phenomena (Crossan, Lane
and White, 1999), the thinking and practices associated with organisational learning
have tended to focus on the learning of individuals. In practice, the evidence for this
is the ubiquity of personal appraisal systems linked to both training and development
programmes and self-managed learning (Vince and Broussine, 2000). The in-use
idea of organisational learning therefore is that it happens as a result of the sum of
individuals learning within an organisation. The view presented in this paper is
different. When I refer to organisational learning I am not talking about the sum of
individual learning within an organisation and its possible eventual impact on the
organisation as a system. Instead, I am referring to organisational dynamics,
constructed from the interaction between emotion and power that create the social
and political context within which both learning and organising can take place.
Using a combination of psychodynamic theory and reflections on the politics of
organising I develop the idea that organisations are learning when the establishment
that is being created through the very process of organising can be identified and
critically reflected on. I argue that this combination of psychodynamic theory and
politics is an important addition to current thinking about organisational learning, and
particularly for developing an understanding of the relationship between learning and
organising. I use a case example of a change initiative within Hyder plc, a multinational company.
Hyder3 plc4 is a multi-utility and infrastructure management company that has grown
and changed considerably from its original organisation, Welsh Water. The emphasis
of this change has been in two directions. It has created Hyder Utilities, a multi-utility
business within Wales. It has also established Hyder Infrastructure Development,
which undertakes large engineering, consulting and infrastructure projects throughout
the world. One issue that these changes created for the workforce was how to move
from ways of reflecting and acting that remain rooted in their public sector, locally
focussed past towards clearer imperatives for commercial growth and global
development.
The conceptualisation of organisational learning in Hyder is that individual staff can
benefit from on the job learning and training which is highly practical and applied.
Hyder has a well-developed learning journey (Hurlow, James and Lenz, 1998)
available to staff, built on a link between various processes of appraisal and a variety
of approaches to training and development. Learning is transferred into action within
the company, and has an impact on working groups. The resulting changes and
developments in working practices and attitudes mean that the organisation is
3

Hyder (pronounced Her-der) is the Welsh word meaning confidence.

Hyder plc has provided permission to publish this case study.

learning. For Hyder, organisational learning is the result of the impact that individual
and collective learning have on the organisation. I critique this understanding of
organisational learning and show how difficult it is in Hyder to engage with the
impact of entrenched organisational dynamics and established power relations on
individuals and collectives. Managers believed Hyder to be a learning organisation,
however the evidence I present shows how difficult it was for learning to have such
an impact on organising. I develop an organisational perspective on organisational
learning, adding a critical view to the idea that it happens as a result of the learning of
individuals within an organisation.
Research Approach, Data Collection and Analysis
The case example I use to illustrate my conceptual framework is drawn from a wider
action-research project within Hyder designed to help the company think about the
further development of the learning journey. Action research is a broad term that
covers various qualitative methods linking inquiry with learning and change (see
Raelin, 1999). The study was interpretative and impressionistic, capturing examples
of the issues, meanings, relations and politics that were characteristic of the
organisation. It was an attempt to reveal what was hidden, stuck, obscured or
undiscussable. The research was not undertaken in order to provide evidence to
justify action, rather as the starting point of action that implies learning.
There are a variety of aspects to the method that gave it particular relevance to the
study of organisational learning in Hyder. Action research recognises that language is
not an individual act, assuming a complex, interpersonally negotiated processes of
interpretation (Winter, 1989). An important aspect of Hyders struggle with learning
was to move beyond the notion that individuals are the primary focus for learning, to
understand the relational and political dynamics (created through the interplay of
behaviour and structure) that are central to both learning and organising. Action
research is collaborative, it is research with people, not on them (Reason, 1988). It
does not seek a consensus, but engages with dialogue and difference. Hyder created
organisational dynamics that avoided and underplayed differences and therefore was
unable to practice dialogical forms of communication. Dialogue is acknowledged as a
key element of communication involved in generating organisational learning
(Schein, 1993b; Isaacs, 1999). Action research is a method that explicitly recognises
the interplay between reflection and action. In Hyder, managers place more emphasis
on action than they do reflection-in-action. For whatever reasons, they often ignore,
avoid or abandon meaningful processes of reflection and inquiry.
Seven Directors from different parts of Hyder were interviewed up to five times over
a period of two months. The interviews lasted ninety minutes each and were largely
unstructured. They were guided by an emphasis on the Directors understanding of
their role in the company. Through discussion of their role, and the relatedness
between person, role and organisation, the research sought to reveal and explore the
organisation-in-the-mind (Armstrong, 1991; Bazelgette, Hutton and Reed, 1997) of
these senior managers, to provide one possible map of the experiences, impressions,
understandings and interpretations of Hyder as an organisation. The data collected
was emotional, relational and political in nature, as well as reflecting the thinking of
the Directors individually and collectively.

The analysis of the interview transcripts sought to identify two areas of

understanding, the current themes and issues present for this group of Directors, as
well as their mental representations of Hyder. For the themes and issues, I identified
emergent categories within the transcripts, refined these categories and then grouped
the data from each Director around these categories in order to highlight a set of
broadly collective concerns. For the mental representations of Hyder I highlighted the
various images, metaphors and expressions within the transcripts and then grouped
these into different images of the organisation. The focus of the next stage of analysis
was both checking back and extending the number of interpretations of the data.
The participating managers were sent copies of the initial categorisation and analysis.
They were asked to comment and to reflect on the themes and issues that had
emerged.
The Create Our New Company initiative (CONC), that I use as a case example in
this paper, constituted one of twenty-four categories emerging from the overall data
on themes and issues. Discussion of the CONC initiative arose because the senior
manager responsible for it wanted to explore his role in developing and attempting to
sustain it in the company. The seven Directors reflected a wide cross-section across
the company, and each had views about the impact and relevance of CONC within
their part of Hyder. All the interviews were tape recorded and transcribed. All the
quotations that I have integrated into my descriptions about CONC are taken from
these transcripts.
POWER AND EMOTION IN ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING
In the past ten years organisational learning has become an important concept across
a wide variety of academic disciplines (Easterby-Smith, 1997) as well as a common
component of prescriptions for organisational design and change that are of
commercial significance to modern organisations (Lei, Slocum and Pitts, 1999).
There are now several reviews of the literature of organisational learning (Huber,
1991; Dodgson, 1993; Miller, 1996; Vince, 1996; Argyris and Schon, 1996; Crossan
and Guatto, 1996; Easterby-Smith, Snell and Gherardi, 1998), and the field is
currently characterised by a dual emphasis: on practical interventions to create
learning organisations (Pedler et al, 1991; Senge, 1990), and on scholarly observation
and analysis of the processes involved in individual and collective learning inside
organisations (Easterby Smith, Araujo and Burgoyne, 1999).
The current academic and scholarly work in the field of organisational learning has
moved away from an emphasis on organisational learning as a technical process (i.e.
learning through the effective processing of information) towards the social
perspective (Easterby Smith and Araujo, 1999). One key theme in organisational
learning as a social process is a shift away from the idea that politics is a problem in
the way of learning (Argyris, 1990); or that political activity is a constraint on
learning (Senge, 1990). Politics is seen as a natural feature of organising and
learning, and it is recognised that power relations directly mediate interpretative
processes within organisations (Coopey, 1995; Coopey and Burgoyne, 1999). It is
important to acknowledge the political nature of information and knowledge, and
how information and knowledge are expressed and mediated through power relations.

Many approaches to organisational learning have been rational and pragmatic,

focusing, for example, on the measurement of outcomes (Garvin, 1993), on specific
behaviour sets (Ellinger, Watkins and Bostrom, 1999), or in terms of gaining explicit
capabilities (Ulrich, Von Glinow and Jick, 1993). However, both learning and
organising are much more than rational processes. Learning in organisations and
organisational learning also happen by accident, from the unintended consequences
of action and through paradoxical tensions that are integral to organising (Vince and
Broussine, 1996). The challenge of learning can be expressed in attempts to engage
with the paradox, uncertainty and complexity of management and organisation
(Gherardi, 1999).
Such engagement requires an examination of the complex web of social relations
through which learning occurs as well as the impact of the emotions that are
generated by attempts to learn and to prevent learning in organisations. Although
there is widespread acknowledgement that emotions are integral to organising, this is
in itself uncomfortable knowledge, that prompts organisational members to try to
de-emotionalise emotions and make them seem rational (Fineman, 1993).
Learning primarily occurs in the context of social relations and as a result of complex
interactions, which are profoundly influenced by both individual and collective
emotions.
In addition to the central place of politics and emotion to the theory and practice of
organisational learning, it is important to understand how the words organisational
and learning connect, or indeed contradict each other (Weick and Westley, 1996). Is
there any way in which learning can be considered organisational? Perhaps the idea
of organisational learning is an anthropomorphic fallacy, that leads to an
inappropriate reification of the concept of organisation (Prange, 1999:27). However,
there is also the view that complex organisations are more than ad hoc communities
or collections of individuals. Relationships become structured, and some of the
individual learning and shared understanding developed by groups become
institutionalised as organisation artefacts (Crossan, Lane and White, 1999:524). In
other words, organisations can be seen as more than the sum of their individual or
collective parts. In order to further clarify the ways in which the words organisational
and learning fit together it is important to consider what is involved in organisational
learning at an organisational level of analysis.
There seems to be a continuous difficulty in trying to decide whether organisational
learning is a progressive or a regressive concept. In practice, processes associated
with organisational learning can lead to significant shifts of organisational design and
interpretations of organising and managing. They can also provide more sophisticated
organisational processes of compliance and control. It is useful therefore to think of
organisational learning as both a progressive and a regressive idea. Indeed, the
tension between these two possibilities constitutes a critical perspective on
organisational learning and thereby helps to sustain the value of the concept (Vince
and Broussine, 2000). The current perspectives and questions I have outlined suggest
the value of a framework for understanding organisational learning that integrates
politics, emotion and organisational level dynamics, and therefore one that
contributes to an organisational level of analysis of organisational learning.

Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework in this paper is based on the inter-relation between
politics, emotion and organisational dynamics. The framework is designed to
promote reflection on what the word organisational in organisational learning means.
Such reflection is useful to scholars because it attempts to provide greater clarity as to
what constitutes an organisational level of analysis. It is also useful to practitioners in
considering how organisational dynamics are created and expressed through
individual and collective behaviour and engagement, and therefore in assessing the
possibilities and limitations of learning within a specific organisational context.
There are three premises that underpin this framework:
Premise 1:

Learning processes are directly mediated by power relations.

Premise 2:

Emotion determines the possibilities and limitations of both learning

and organising.

Premise 3:

There exist organisational dynamics, which are more than the sum
of individual or collective learning.

My overall proposition, which combines these three premises, is that organisational

learning is visible in the organisational dynamics created from the interaction
between politics and emotion.
There are two particular aspects to the thinking behind the premise that learning
processes are directly mediated by power relations. One of these concerns theory, the
other is to do with practice. As theory, a political perspective widens our
understanding of the processes that constitute learning in organisations (Coopey and
Burgoyne, 1999: 292). It achieves this by addressing how employees relate to
organisational practices and constructions of reality, to the structural features that
locate them in positions of inequality or impotence. It addresses the interface between
structure and action, and shows how such interactions create and establish
characteristic power relations or regimes of truth (Foucault, 1979). From this
viewpoint, politics is neither a problem to be avoided, nor a set of conflicts of
interest. Rather, it affords a critical stance on the complexities of power relations
through which organising takes place. When I use the word politics therefore, I am
talking about the power relations that moderate how learning (and change) does or
does not happen in organisations.
As practice, a political perspective invites critical reflection on what managers think
they know and how they come to know it within an organisational context. Managers
can find ways to doubt taken for granted assumptions, and learn through their
capacity to question and to engage with the particular regime of truth that both they
and the organisation have jointly created. The political struggle in organisations in
terms of practice is often represented in the reluctance managers have towards
enacting their leadership openly and in public (Vince, 2000). The ways in which
managers are able to open out processes of leadership and decision-making to others
and to reveal rather than avoid power relations will be crucial for both management
and organisational learning in the future. Managers defend against the impact of
socially constructed power relations because of the anxieties that struggles with

issues of power, authority and responsibility provoke. However, engaging with such
issues can provide considerable opportunities for learning about the emotional,
relational and political processes involved in managing and organising (Vince, 1996).
The revelation of how power is expressed and enacted in organisations offers
opportunities to move beyond interactions that are created from managers
defensiveness and towards new forms and processes of communication and
interaction.
My second premise, that emotion determines the possibilities and limitations of both
learning and organising, is influenced by psychodynamic theory. The subject of
emotion in organisations has an established literature, reflecting both a socialconstructionist standpoint (Hochschild, 1979 and 1983; Fineman, 1993 and 1996) and
the psychodynamic exploration of emotion at work (Kets de Vries and Miller, 1985;
Hirschhorn, 1988; Trist and Murray, 1990; Hoggett, 1992; Obholzer and Roberts,
1994; French and Vince, 1999). Both approaches challenge the ways in which
emotion in organisations have been narrowly perceived (Hosking and Fineman,
1990), as well as a tendency to ignore the impact that emotions have on
organisational development and design.
There are two aspects to psychodynamic theory that are particularly important to the
understanding of emotion and organisation that is presented in this paper. First, there
is the idea that learning and change are inevitably associated with anxiety. At both a
conscious and unconscious level, the management of learning is the management of
anxiety and of resistance arising from the anxiety (Obholzer, 1999). In addition, this
implies something about the role of a manager, that such a role involves an emotional
connection to the anxiety arising from the nature of work. As several authors have
pointed out, anxiety is an important ingredient in managers understanding of
learning in organisations, both in terms of how learning occurs and how it is
prevented (Kofman and Senge, 1993; Schien, 1993a; Vince and Martin, 1993). Also,
Bain (1998:414) has identified the "absence of attention to unconscious processes
influencing individual, group and organisational functioning" in the writing on
organisational learning.
The second contribution that psychodynamic theory makes to this paper is with the
theory of relatedness the conscious and unconscious emotional levels of
connection that exist between and shape selves and others, people and systems
(French and Vince, 1999: 7). People in organisations are inevitably creatures of each
other (Hinshelwood, 1998), involved in a mutual process of becoming that obscures
the notion of a separate self. The Chief Executive of an organisation, for example, is
the focus of many different fantasies, projections, expectations, slanders and hopes
solely as a result of being in such a role. The ways in which he or she is experienced
both as fact and as fantasy has considerable impact on how leadership is enacted in
the organisation as a whole. Relatedness implies a range of emotional levels of
connection across the boundaries of person, role and organisation, which emphasise
the relational nature of organising. In using the word emotion, therefore, I am
talking about emotions (e.g. envy, guilt, joy and fear) that are ignored or avoided and
how these consciously and unconsciously impact on organising. To put this briefly, I
am saying that emotion is political.

My third premise is that there exists something that can be referred to as

organisational dynamics (see Miller and Rice, 1967). These are more than the sum
of individual or collective learning in the sense that they identify the system or more
precisely the establishment that is organisation. Systems theory is foundational
within the field of organisational learning because it implies a recognition of the
complex structures and patterns that are integral to processes like managing and
organising (Senge, 1990). However, politics has often been relegated to a peripheral
role in organisational learning (Coopey, 1995). In using the term 'establishment' in
addition to 'system', I am trying to find a way of bringing the politics back to the
forefront of theories of organisational learning. Establishment (as opposed to
family, community or all working together) is expressive of the connection
between emotion (relatedness) and power.
The idea that organising gives rise to establishment is useful in two ways. First, it
connects to insights about the ways in which an "internal establishment" (Hoggett,
1992) is created and perpetuated within individuals' inner worlds. In other words,
how individual psychology and organisational power relations combine to create the
temporary truths or realities that underpin individuals roles in organising. Second,
it implies a controlling force, which is inevitably brought to bear on new ideas in
order 'contain' them (Bion, 1985: Bain, 1998). An establishment seeks to contain
learning so that it can be assimilated into existing organisational power relations, so
that learning can be 'exploited' as much as 'explored' (March, 1996). This implies that
the juxtaposition of organisation and learning is desirable, as long as it is learning that
can in some way be 'managed', limited or controlled.
Organisational dynamics are created from the interplay between emotions and
(existing and emerging) power relations generated within and between individuals
and groups. I am using the term organisational dynamics to describe the
organisational characteristics that are created from individual and collective
experience and action (see Neumann, 1999). The term exists as a device to focus on
an organisational level of analysis. To refer to such dynamics both avoids the
problem of personifying or reifying an organisation, and acknowledges that as
behaviour and structure interact they produce processes that have an impact beyond
the individuals and/or collectives that imagined them. In the following section of this
paper I link my conceptual framework to a case example taken from my action
research in Hyder.
THE CREATE OUR NEW COMPANY (CONC) INITIATIVE
The case example I am presenting to illustrate my conceptual framework concerns
the development and implementation of a significant initiative (both in terms of staff
time and financial resources) aimed at increasing staff participation and involvement
in organisational change. On the surface the motives for the initiative were about the
empowerment of staff, however, the politics and emotions surrounding the initiative
were more a representation of competition between different parts of the business,
fears about conflict, and control.
CONC was created by senior managers and human resource development (HRD)
staff in Hyder Utilities. Their strategic focus was on doing something to marry the

very different management styles and organisational cultures that were represented in
the previously separate organisations, Welsh Water and SWALEC (South Wales
Electricity Company). The initial enthusiasm and desire that built the CONC
initiative was a genuine feeling that with time, this process will definitely improve
the shape of our business, that it was a nurturing process of change. The design of
the change programme was to take a cross section of the company staff (500 from the
5,000 in Hyder Utilities) away for a two and a half-day residential facilitated by
external consultants. The company ran twenty-six of these seminars over three
months. The brief for the participants was to look at visions and values for the future
and to develop a change model that will take us from where we are, to the company
we want to create. The workshops were developmental in the sense that the first
twelve were used to bring out ideas. The next ten reviewed, reflected on and
developed the ideas from the first stage of workshops. The final four workshops
asked staff to pull all the ideas and actions together into the vision and values of the
new company. A small, steering group of participants was created to sustain and
develop the initiative.
CONC was initiated in the Utilities business a few months after the launch of a
company wide re-branding that created Hyder as one organisation. Corporate Human
Resource staff in the Group Development section of the company led the re-branding.
The idea of One Hyder was to identify a market position and to represent a
promise to customers and other stakeholders. The underlying value seen to be
driving the re-branded organisation was the earning of confidence (hence the name
Hyder). Internally, this would happen because managers had the self-confidence to
go forward and to create a confident business, one that generates external business
confidence, both from the client and the Stock Market. However, at the time when
the action-research was initially undertaken Hyder was still in practice a divided
company:
The idea of One Hyder is a very strong desire, but a very bad
representation of what it is actually like (Hyder Senior Manager).
Managers in Group Development saw CONC as a waste of time and money. It
seemed to them to cut across the re-branding exercise and to have very different
organisational aims and purposes. The dynamics between the CONC initiative and
the corporate re-branding exercise were to an extent expressive of tensions between
managers who wanted the company to remain focussed on its core (utilities)
business in South Wales and those who wanted growth in the company towards
becoming a key global enterprise. The organisational dynamics being played out over
CONC were constructed from the tensions between the desire to assert Welsh
Waters public sector values in the face of an evolving and demanding commercial
imperative within the new company (Hyder). The CONC initiative can be
understood as a process designed to promote change within the Utilities division. It
can also be understood as a reaction against changes taking place within the company
as a whole.

Organisational Dynamics
The key proposition in my argument is that organisational learning is visible in the
organisational dynamics created from the interaction of politics (power relations) and
emotion. I suggest that organising generates an identifiable establishment, created
from the interaction between emotions and power relations, within which both
behaviour and structure are contained and constrained. The following quotation offers
an insight into the contextual dynamics characterising Hyder at this particular point in
the history of the organisation.
That Create Our New Company initiative is very, very similar to a
considerable other number of initiatives during recent years which have been
undertaken with the best possible motives in mind, they really are, they are
quite laudable, it is about empowerment, it is highly participative, with the
right objectives in mind, but we do seem to struggle if we revisit only a
handful of the ones that I have been on myself, as to what on earth happened
afterwards.
The interviews provided the impression of an organisation where change initiatives
were enthusiastically created yet could not be sustained and fully implemented. As
another senior manager put it, they sort of sink into the sand. One reason why
CONC sank into the sand was because it was designed to represent a political
position within Hyder Utilities, as well as an emotional and strategic response to
attempts at organisational change emerging from Group Development.
The dynamics created from politics and emotions that were visible in the CONC
initiative reflected the wider establishment in Hyder. Managers were working in the
context of a continuous pull between two directions or dual identities. For some
Hyder was a (Welsh) utilities company, for others it was a global, commercial
company. Communication between the people with these two perceptions was not
good: it is almost like the old iron curtain. The tension between managers wanting
to develop the utility business and the commercial business became a powerful
underlying aspect of the organisational design of Hyder. As one senior manager
remarked:
If you structure a business to be split down the middle thats what you are
going to get.
The politics of this split did not only concern the difference between discreet
divisions of the organisation but also different perceptions of the organisation. As
these perceptions were reinforced through everyday decisions, interactions and the
avoidance of interaction, they created an organisational dynamic. The emotions
connected to this split were primarily fears about the conflict that might arise between
the two sides, and such emotions promoted a lack of communication in the company
as a whole.
I think the big problem with the organisation is that everybody knows what
needs to be done, but everybody is dead scared of doing it because of the
consequences and the fall out and the issues that come with it.

10

Discussions with senior managers on the CONC initiative revealed that the emotions
and politics mobilised around two competing organisational change initiatives were
ignored and avoided. There was little or no communication about the ways in which
the CONC initiative and the re-branding exercise might conflict or complement with
each other. Managers in Utilities and Group Development ignored, avoided and
undermined the change initiative that least represented their view of the company,
thereby sustaining the competition between them. The unresolved competition and
the inability of the CONC initiative to make the desired impact created defensiveness
and consequently a desire to protect and justify the initiative. The CONC initiative
was set up (in part) to compete with the re-branding exercise. It was a process
designed to promote change, but at the same time it was a reaction against Group
Developments view of change.
Politics and Learning
I have argued, along with other commentators on organisational learning (Coopey,
1995), that inquiry into the politics of organising widens our understanding of the
processes that constitute learning, and the internal and external structures that locate
people in positions of inequality or impotence. My conceptual framework emphasises
that the power relations that organising has generated moderate how learning happens
(or not) in organisations. The way in which the CONC workshops were set up meant
that promises about involvement, participation and empowerment were made to staff.
They were sold the idea they were being involved in the creation of a new company.
The senior manager responsible for CONC reported that the staff members involved
in the workshops were pleased and excited by this idea. However, these staff were
not involved in the creation of a new company, rather they were pawns in a power
struggle between two versions of the organisation. The eventual impotence of staff
involved in CONC was an inevitable aspect of the process. The initiative certainly
gave rise to considerable enthusiasm from a group of staff who believed that they
were being empowered to be involved in organisational change. Despite the overt
response from Group Development (broadly, go ahead and do it if you think it will
work'), there was a lack of interest and commitment from the part of the organisation
most responsible for organising corporate change.
The power relations surrounding the CONC initiative were cautious and controlling,
motivated by fear of failure and reinforced by a fear of conflict. Conflicts tended to
be covered over rather than dealt with. Managers feared that things will get
personal, and as a consequence interactions were motivated by the question how do
I avoid this row. The difficulty that managers had with conflict undermined the
extent of their authority.
We dont explore the differences long enough to actually expose the
differences and therefore to deal with those differences and actually
understand them.
That sort of intelligent inquiry without fear is something that is absent from
our behaviours. Of course you end up having a conversation where one thing
is being said but something else is being thought.

11

The politics of trying to initiate change in a climate of mistrust between two

competing perceptions of the organisation made the Director of Group Development's
espoused view of "collegiality" in the organisation look (at best) optimistic. The
power relations that were created in Hyder, visible in the CONC initiative, were not
about collegiality. Managers did not enact their authority and leadership openly
through dialogue, and they were unable to open leadership and decision making to
others in ways that might address rather than avoid these power relations. This meant
that opportunities to move beyond defensive interactions were lost, excluding the
possibility of effective communication across organisational sub-systems.
Emotion and Leaning
I have argued that individual and collective emotions, generated through organising,
come to define characteristic organisational politics or power relations. These power
relations then have an impact on what are possible (or legitimate) emotional
responses. I summarise this idea by saying that emotion is political. An understanding
of organisational learning involves asking how emotions are ignored or avoided in an
organisation, and how what is ignored or avoided impacts on organising. Corporate
HRD managers in Group Development felt that CONC was "unnecessary" and
"divisive", since it cut across their corporate re-branding exercise. In addition they
did not rate the initiative highly. For them, the conclusions that emerged from the
workshops were values that we have probably been espousing since about 1986,
there wasnt anything new about it. Managers within Group Development felt that
the outcome was built into the process, you got the impression that there was a
certain leading going on, and that the steering group arrangement was an artificial
expression of authority.
So it seemed to me that it reinforced the divisions it seemed to vest in a
group of people quasi decision making authority which is artificial, and I
think it told of a prospectus of change which was not as vigorous as it needs
to be.
In turn, the HRD managers in Hyder Utilities didnt rate the re-branding exercise. For
them it was seen to come from a corporate communism mentality. Their imperative
for undertaking CONC was an urgency to get on and do something because Group
Development werent attempting to shape anything. It was felt that the re-branding
exercise did not represent the needs of staff in Hyder Utilities, and that the Director
of Group Development (who led the re-branding exercise) was to blame:
Now there is someone who should actually be representing the interests of
the people and this is a very positive, people based initiative, there is someone
who should be on board helping to lead it and yet feels threatened by it.
Managers both in Hyder Utilities and in Group Development acted as if the
competition, envy, mistrust and lack of communication between them did not exist or
have an impact on the organisation. However, it did, and the avoidance of the
powerful emotions surrounding the CONC initiative both represented and reinforced
existing organisational power relations.

12

Managing learning means managing anxiety, that the role of manager involves an
emotional connection to anxiety at work. Anxiety is a key element in understanding
how learning both occurs and is prevented (Schien, 1993b; Vince, 1996). In Hyder
there was considerable anxiety surrounding the expectations both on individual
managers' commercial success as well as the commercial success of the organisation
as a whole. In all organisations, expectations are handed up and down, consciously
and unconsciously through relations between individuals, and between sub-systems,
as well as through political processes of action and avoidance. Expectations can have
a powerful impact on the ways in which organisational members feel about and do
their jobs. This, in turn, shapes organisational habits and characteristics, creating
established ways of organising.
An emotional pressure on managers was the high expectations of people to deliver.
Such expectations were both managed from above and self-imposed. The imperative
from above was for commercial success, and the internal experience of this was the
pressure to be successful, always right and to stay in control. Managers lived
with considerable anxiety about not achieving what one imagines one ought to
achieve. In terms of the CONC initiative, 'what one ought to achieve' was the change
that staff had been promised. The managers and staff responsible for CONC became
protective, defensive and ultimately controlling of the initiative as they saw it
sinking. Their defensiveness meant that the CONC initiative had to be kept alive in
peoples minds which, given the organisational politics, involved much frustration
and anxiety. In an effort to keep things alive the CONC steering group members
devised statistical measures and processes to monitor the behaviour of managers.
Controlling the behaviour of managers would be achieved through monitoring their
improvements in relation to a prescribed list of acceptable behaviours.
We put that pamphlet out to all of our people and it shows the behaviours
and what some of those behaviours look like in practice. We are going to
build that into development reviews with people and also use the same values
in appraisals for managers We will do that in a way in which we can
actually get a fix on what peoples perceptions are, of how they are
operationalising those values. So, if we get an overall score, which is a very
crude score admittedly, that says our managers have been scored at sixty-six
out of a hundred so to speak, the next time we get the fix on it is a score of
seventy. I want to measure how well managers are developing against those
values, not to stifle them but to say to people, look, last year we looked like
this, do you think we look like this now? There is more sort of empowerment
if you like in this process, you feel more relaxed about yourself and we try
and build positives to encourage people to do more and not less.
The steering groups policing strategy generated even more direct criticism, and
this in turn produced more defensiveness and self-justification.
Some people have said that this thing is very manipulative and it is not
consciously designed to be manipulative but we have been very definite to put
a framework around it.
As it gradually but inevitably sank into the sand, the frustrations over the apparent
failure of CONC were most powerfully felt by the managers and staff in the steering

13

group. They saw themselves as the guardians of all the enthusiasms and expectations
that had been generated in the workshops, as well as being responsible for the
impossible task of sustaining and developing the initiative. They were angry about
the consequences of the failure to implement the vision that they had been
responsible for creating. The manager in charge of the steering group felt that failure
would be an ongoing black mark against the organisation forever and a day that
would live in the ongoing mythology of the organisation.
DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION
In the previous section of the paper I have described some of the organisational issues
associated with the CONC initiative, highlighting various aspects of the politics and
emotions that gave rise to CONC and contributed to its demise. My impression, based
on experience within various organisations, is that Hyders story is a common one. In
fact, Hyder is a good example of an organisation that is doing much to support
learning within the organisation. The problem is that managers have not done what
they could to support organisational learning, by reflecting and acting on
organisational dynamics, on the establishment that organising has created and that
limits learning and change. In this part of the paper therefore my focus is on the
conclusions that have arisen from the case example and the theoretical implications
of these conclusions for organisational learning.
Establishment was created and reinforced through the underlying emotions and
power relations in Hyder. Power is not something external to organisational members
or relationships, it penetrates the very essence of our being (Knights and McCabe,
1999). Power can not be separated from the emotions and relations that reinforce it.
There are three inter-linked organising processes that have helped to construct
distinctive power relations in Hyder. First, all organising for change took place in the
context of strong emotions and political manoeuvring between organisational
members who supported the core work of the company (Hyder Utilities) and
members within other parts of Hyder (particularly Group Development) where the
desire was to progress commercial growth. Second, such different political
perceptions of the business and the emotions attached to them led to an iron curtain
between the core and growth parts of the organisation. Relations between Utilities
and Group Development were based on attempts at control rather than dialogue.
Third, as the emotions and politics surrounding this difference became more
entrenched, their separateness needed to be protected and justified. Power relations
shifted from being concerned with organisational change to being concerned with
protecting the rights of these two parts of Hyder to create organisational change in the
ways that they wanted, as well as defending their part of the organisation from the
others perceptions of change.
In an organisational context it makes little sense to talk about emotions in
organisations separately from organisational politics. Emotions were politically
expressed and enacted in Hyder in the following ways:

Competition, driven by emotions like envy, mistrust, or personal dislike, was

ignored or avoided.

14

The CONC initiative invested in its participants an unrealistic feeling of

involvement or empowerment in organisational change. The initiative did not
have the wider political legitimacy it needed and therefore it could not create the
necessary authority and ownership for the implementation of change.
In whole organisational terms the initiative generated conflicting emotions. The
enthusiasm of utilities staff was concurrent with a lack of enthusiasm from
managers within Group Development responsible for re-branding.
The motives driving some of the managers in Utilities were aimed at protecting
their own turf. They were trying to build a groundswell of values unique to Hyder
Utilities that would counteract the commercial values at the base of the rebranding exercise.
The initial enthusiasms for CONC could not be sustained because it did not have
the wider organisational legitimacy it needed. There was disappointment that it
was not progressing as planned, defensiveness towards the criticism that it
engendered, and anger at the failure of impact of a large and expensive initiative.
The emotions generated around the CONC initiative both connect to and mirror
company wide emotions generated from expectations about delivery. Managers in
Hyder are generally anxious about failure and the potential destructiveness of
conflict. The avoidance of conflict reinforced communication difficulties between
the different sub-systems of the company.

Differences of thinking within sub-systems of the organisation, and the emotions and
politics mobilised around them, were organised into an inability to communicate
across organisational boundaries. Such differences exerted increasing influence on
the behaviours behind managing and organising. The resulting sensitivity to criticism
and reluctance to debate promoted further attempts to control, protect or justify what
was communicated between different organisational groupings, thereby reinforcing
difficulties of communication. The dynamic was circular and self-limiting, unlikely
to assist in the promotion of organisational learning. Managers espoused a desire to
promote dialogue within the company, to involve staff and take the organisation
forward. However, in practice they felt threatened and acted defensively. They
focussed on the development of their own part of the company to the extent that
considerable competition, mistrust and envy was generated between sub-systems,
undermining communication across organisational boundaries and reinforcing a lack
of confidence in the whole. To express this another way, the company formally
became one organisation and changed its name to mean confidence at the time
when there was very little confidence inside the company about its ability to
communicate and develop as one organisation. At this time in its development the
company was not concerned with organisational learning but with creating an image
that contradicted the actual organisational politics.
The learning that emerges from this case example and theoretical implications
The case example in Hyder reveals how particular organisational dynamics were
being constructed and maintained (see Figure 1).

15

Figure 1:

Strong emotions and

political manoeuvring
between organisational
members in different
sub-systems

Protecting and
justifying
the separateness of
sub-systems

Development of
ways of avoiding
communication
between sub-systems

Organisational dynamics were constructed from strong emotions and political

manoeuvring between organisational members in different sub systems, which led to
distinctive ways of avoiding communication, which led to their separateness being
protected and justified. This circular, organising process provided further
opportunities for reinforcement of the emotions and politics originally involved.
Differences of understanding between competing perspectives of Hyder, and the
emotions and politics that sustained them, became organised into an inability to
communicate across boundaries, were further limited by protection and control, and
by attempts to cover up the importance of these differences. Given these
organisational dynamics, an initiative constructed on the basis of empowering staff to
make change happen came to represent and mirror ways of working that mean change
does not happen. To put this simply, the case illustrates how a collective desire for
empowerment became a collective representation of the establishment.
The organisational dynamics I have identified in Hyder are helpful in beginning to
pinpoint key aspects of a theoretical approach that seeks to map the connections
between learning and organising. My reason for doing this is to learn more about the
components of an organisational analysis of organisational learning. The case
example in Hyder provides a vivid picture of the difference between the idea of
learning in the minds of managers and the implementation of learning in the context
of emotions and power relations that underpin organising. Organisational learning is
not only represented in the ability of individuals in an organisation to have an impact
on the ideas and practices that characterise the organisation. Organisational learning
is demonstrated through the ability of an organisation to transform the self-limiting
establishment that it has developed (deliberately, through its history, through habit,
by default, through the very action of organising). Both in theory and in practice, this
implies some collective effort to understand the nature and impact of the
establishment that organising creates, as well as its consequences for learning.
16

One of the key theoretical implications of my conclusions is therefore that an analysis

of organisational learning will go beyond the question of the collective impact of
individual learning and identify the characteristic organisational dynamics, emotions
and power relations present in organisational attempts at learning and change.
Current writing on organisational learning acknowledges that all different levels of
analysis are important (Crossan, Lane and White, 1999) yet it is the organisational
dynamics surrounding learning that have been least well theorised and thoughtthrough in practice. Strategies for the development of learning, both individual and
collective, benefit from being informed by an understanding of organisational
dynamics. Learning can then be seen as organisational as well as individual, based on
the interaction between the relational role that an individual occupies and the
established and evolving politics of the organisation. The benefit to Hyder of an
organisational level of analysis of learning is that it makes their characteristic ways of
organising visible and provides opportunities for reflection and action based on these
characteristics.
Politics, emotion and the ways in which politics and emotion interact, are an integral
aspect of understanding organisational learning. This interplay between politics and
emotion provides scope for an understanding of organisational learning that
represents the complexity of social and political interaction in organisations. Learning
and organising are not therefore limited by a perspective that focuses on individuals
power to achieve personal advantage or preferred outcomes (Pfeffer, 1981). Neither
is the relationship between learning and organising distorted by those writers who are
ambivalent about politics (Argyris and Schon, 1996; Senge, 1990). My discussion of
the interplay between politics and emotion in Hyder offers an additional development
to the perspective that political activity frees people up to voice their opinions and
generates a creative dialectic of opposites (Coopey and Burgoyne, 1999: 286). I
would say that political activity may also mute peoples voices and distort their
opinions, generating a defensive practice that reiterates differences and promotes
scepticism about the point of dialogue. It is an understanding of the interplay between
the politics and emotions involved in organising that make it possible to identify how
such different 'feelings' are being enacted and expressed within an organisation, and
how they contribute to defining the boundaries of inequality or impotence. Whatever
the individual or collective feelings expressed by organisational members it is likely
that there will be both desire and ambivalence concerning organisational learning.
The case example shows Hyder as an organisation that organises, consciously and
unconsciously, both for and against learning and change. Any analysis of
organisational learning will therefore need to take account of this dynamic, that
learning is simultaneously likely to be both desired and avoided.
Reflecting back on attempts at learning and change such as CONC offers managers
opportunities for a retrospective interpretation of organisational dynamics. Such
reflection means that the companys understanding of organisational learning can be
underpinned by an analysis of the establishment that is being created and reinforced
through the very process of organising. An organisational approach to learning in
Hyder will be assisted when a number of organisational dynamics are thoughtthrough and worked through. These organisational dynamics highlighted in the case
example reflect particular tensions at work in processes of managing and organising.

17

I will summarise what these tensions are and their theoretical implications for
organisational learning.
The tension between the idea of learning and the implementation of learning
Managers in Hyder believed that learning and change were possible. Hyder had a
clearly identified learning journey for individuals, and many initiatives, like CONC,
were designed to make change happen. However this study showed how difficult it
was in the organisation to sustain and implement the initial enthusiasm generated by
idea of learning. Whatever the individual and collective enthusiasms may have been
for learning in the organisation, the organisational dynamics identified in this study
revealed emotions and power relations that restricted learning. An analysis of the
interplay between emotion and power relations in Hyder is the starting point in
helping to make sense of organisational barriers in relation to learning.
The tension between empowerment and establishment
Organising in Hyder was undertaken in the context of a characteristic dynamic, the
confusing interplay between involvement and control, between attempting to change
and trying to remain the same. The espoused desire for collegiality in managing
and organising sat alongside power relations motivated by fear of failure and a
perceived need for control. Cynicism about learning and change occurred when
empowered individuals were confronted with the actual organisational power
relations that blocked learning and change. The discovery of the limitations of
involvement after the event reinforced managers cynicism and confusion. This study
has identified the contradictions that surround learning and change in Hyder. To
break free of such contradictions would involve attempts to reflect on the power
relations that limit learning and change at the very beginning of any initiative
designed to make change happen.
The tension between individual learning and organisational learning
Hyders experience of learning was built on the companys commitment to individual
development and the collective difference that this might make. Whatever the
managers involved in the CONC initiative learned as individuals their learning
actually had little impact on established organisational power relations or on
organising processes. However, the analysis of the emotions and power relations
involved in learning and change undertaken in this study provided scope to interpret
why Hyders strategic emphasis was on the individual learning journey. An
emphasis on the learning of individuals within the organisation placed the
responsibility for learning with individuals. In this sense, learning was linked to
individual and collective experience but not explicitly to organising.
The tension between creating a new organisation and recreating the old one
It was easier for a lot of the people involved in the company when Hyder was a
public utility serving South Wales, rather than a global enterprise. There was
considerable resistance in parts of the company towards the type of learning and
change that would give rise to a shared, commercial future. As the CONC initiative
showed, an initiative designed explicitly for creating something new can represent
the desire to recapture the past as well as a desire to design the future. In practice, the
research reveals Hyder as an organisation with a complex mixture of emotions and
politics that depict the capacity both to embrace and to avoid learning.

18

The CONC initiative was explicitly set up as a process for building organisational
learning and change. An analysis of the initiative shows that it was also created to
represent a political position in the organisation; it was an emotional response to
others attempts to change the company; and it was an attempt to recreate the
organisation as it used to be. What can be learned from this case example is that an
understanding of the emotions and power relations that underpin initiatives designed
to promote learning is a necessary aspect of any attempt to organise learning. The
study of the impact of emotions and power relations on learning initiatives
particularly provides an opportunity to understand learning at an organisational level
of analysis.
The organisational tensions that I have identified in the case example can be
summarised in terms of their theoretical implications for the study of organisational
learning at an organisational level of analysis. This particular theoretical perspective
on organisational learning involves:

A collective inquiry aimed at understanding the nature and impact of the

establishment that organising creates and its consequences for learning. Critical
reflection on what has become established provides a way out of self-limiting
organisational dynamics.

An inquiry that identifies organisational politics or power relations and the

potential impact that these might have on initiatives designed to promote or
defend against learning. Such inquiry would be the starting point of learning
initiatives.

A focus on the organisational dynamics that underpin and impact on both learning
and organising. Such a focus implies attempts to understand learning from
organising (Vince, 2001) as much as the (individualised) notion of learning
from experience.

An analysis of the interplay between emotions and politics, and how this links to
the paradoxical desire within organisations both to promote learning and to avoid
learning. This recognises emotion as politics, adding something more to the
analysis than the idea that emotions are feelings located in individuals or
collectives.

In addition to providing a theoretical approach to organisational learning at an

organisational level of analysis, the discussions in this paper help to further our
understanding of the recent idea that, organisational learning would not appear to be
a comfortable state (Palmer and Hardy, 2000:223). In fact, learning implies some
discomfort with the state we are currently in, some desire to change. Organisational
learning requires changes in the State or establishment that has been constructed
through the very processes of organising. This involves inquiry into the power
relations that characterise an organisation as well as the identification of conscious
and unconscious dynamics that guide the internalisation of the organisation in the
minds of its members. In practice, making power relations, emotions and
organisational dynamics visible in order to create new mental and structural models
for organising is not an easy task for either individuals or organisations to achieve.
Organisational learning is not a comfortable state precisely because to learn is to
19

challenge the current State. Learning provokes anxiety, defensiveness, fear and
retrenchment as much as it excites, stimulates, motivates and empowers
organisational members. The tensions inherent in organising reflect the continuous
pull between the desire to learn and the need to avoid learning, and the ways in which
desire and avoidance are played out in organisational processes.
The organisational focus outlined in this paper makes a distinctive contribution to
advancing understanding of theory and practice in organisational learning. It does this
by emphasising the importance of organisational dynamics created from the
interaction between emotion and power. Inquiry into organisational dynamics offers
an opportunity to frame an organisation not only as a system of complex patterns and
structures (Senge, 1990) but as an establishment of emotional and political processes
that restrict the relationship between learning and organising. The advantage of this
perspective is that it makes a contribution to critical thinking on organisational
learning (see for example: Reynolds, 1998, 1999a, 1999b and Vince, in press). A
critical approach to organisational learning is concerned with encouraging doubt
about established habits, processes, assumptions and attachments. The focus of the
approach is on the social rather than the individual, and therefore it pays particular
attention to an analysis of power relations, and to the politics and emotions mobilised
around learning in organisations. The framework outlined in this paper provides the
theoretical foundations for going beyond an understanding of individual learning in
organisations and challenges both academics and practitioners to think critically
about processes of organisational learning.

20

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