Ambiguities of Experience

G. March James

Description

"The first component of intelligence involves effective adaptation to an environment. In order to adapt effectively, organizations require resources, capabilities at using them, knowledge about the worlds in which they exist, good fortune, and good decisions. They typically face competition for resources and uncertainties about the future. Many, but possibly not all, of the factors determining their fates are outside their control. Populations of organizations and individual organizations survive, in part, presumably because they possess adaptive intelligence; but survival is by no means assured. The second component of intelligence involves the elegance of interpretations of the experiences of life. Such interpretations encompass both theories of history and philosophies of meaning, but they go beyond such things to comprehend the grubby details of daily existence. Interpretations decorate human existence. They make a claim to significance that is independent of their contribution to effective action. Such intelligence glories in the contemplation, comprehension, and appreciation of life, not just the control of it."-from The Ambiguities of Experience In The Ambiguities of Experience, James G. March asks a deceptively simple question: What is, or should be, the role of experience in creating intelligence, particularly in organizations? Folk wisdom both trumpets the significance of experience and warns of its inadequacies. On one hand, experience is described as the best teacher. On the other hand, experience is described as the teacher of fools, of those unable or unwilling to learn from accumulated knowledge or the teaching of experts. The disagreement between those folk aphorisms reflects profound questions about the human pursuit of intelligence through learning from experience that have long confronted philosophers and social scientists. This book considers the unexpected problems organizations (and the individuals in them) face when they rely on experience to adapt, improve, and survive.While acknowledging the power of learning from experience and the extensive use of experience as a basis for adaptation and for constructing stories and models of history, this book examines the problems with such learning. March argues that although individuals and organizations are eager to derive intelligence from experience, the inferences stemming from that eagerness are often misguided. The problems lie partly in errors in how people think, but even more so in properties of experience that confound learning from it. "Experience," March concludes, "may possibly be the best teacher, but it is not a particularly good teacher."

Sujets

• Employabilité, métiers et formations
• Sociology

Informations

• Publié par: Cornell University Press
• Date de parution: 15 décembre 2010
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780801459016
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE AMBIGUITIES

OF EXPERIENCE

The Messenger Lectures

A book from The Center for the Study of Economy & Society Cornell University

THE AMBIGUITIES

OF EXPERIENCE

James G. March

Cornell University Press Ithaca and London

Copyright © 2010 by Cornell University

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House, 512 East State Street, Ithaca, New York 14850.

First published 2010 by Cornell University Press

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data March, James G. The ambiguities of experience / James G. March. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8014-4877-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Organizational learning. 2. Experience—Social aspects. 3. Intelligence—Social aspects. I. Title. HD58.82.M3668 2010 302.35—dc22 2009036384

Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu.

Cloth printing

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

Preface

CONTENTS

1. The Pursuit of Intelligence Prolegomenon Two Components of Intelligence Experiential Learning

2. Learning through Replicating Success Two Modes of Intelligent Adaptation The Replication of Success Complications in Success Replication Low-Intellect Learning and High-Intellect Explanations

3. Learning through Stories and Models Stories and Models The Stories of Organizations Mythic Themes Truth, Justice, and Beauty

vii

1 3 7 8

14 14 16 25

35

42 44 51 55 62

vi

CONTENTS

4. Generating Novelty Adaptation as an Enemy of Novelty The Novelty Puzzle Two Theoretical Tracks for Understanding Novelty The Survival of Mechanisms of Novelty The Engineering of Novelty

5. The Lessons of Experience Experience as a Useful Teacher Experience as an Imperfect Teacher Experience and Human Intellect

References Index

74 76 79 81 86 95

99 101 104 117

121 145

PREFACE

The chapters in this book are based on three Messenger Lectures given at Cornell University in October 2008. I am grateful to the university and particularly to my hosts, Vic- tor Nee and Danielle Adams, who made the visit a pleasure for me. Parts of the material are based on talks I have given at Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Tech- nology, and the University of California, Irvine. For their able assistance in preparing the manuscript for publication, I owe thanks to three Cornell University Press editors: Roger Haydon, Priscilla Hurdle, and Ange Romeo-Hall, as well as to Jamie Fuller. The index was prepared by Daniel Newark. The book focuses on a few small aspects of a simple ques- tion: What is, or should be, the role of experience in creat- ing intelligence, particularly in organizations? The chapters presented here are intended to provide fragments of a partial answer to that question. The fragments represent a sampler of possible ideas rather than a comprehensive encyclopedia

viii

PREFACE

of them. They provide incomplete ruminations on the ideas rather than thorough expositions of them. The small num- ber of words in the book may be somewhat balanced by the large number of references (a testimony to authorial inade- quacy), including an excessive number of self-references (a testimony to authorial self-indulgence). Although they might with justice claim that I have ex- tracted lessons from their teachings that are not what they intended, seven talented colleagues and friends have con- tributed substantially to the ideas here and must share some of the blame: Mie Augier, who bridges the chasms among Schütz, Kundera, Plath, Nietzsche, and Dosi with a combi- nation of enthusiasm and skepticism that I admire; Barbara Czarniawska, who has tried patiently for many years to teach me about stories, narratives, and organization theory; Jerker Denrell, who has made my life better through con- versations about endogenous sampling, learning, and the wonders of stochastic processes; Daniel Levinthal, with whom I have shared many years of conversation and collaboration on problems of organizational learning; Johan P. Olsen, whose wisdom, careful scholarship, and friendship inform everything I do, and particularly the topics covered here; William H. Starbuck, whose contributions to understanding the problems and possibilities of learning in organizations span almost as many years as mine; and Sidney Winter, whose reluctance to write his thoughts is matched only by their fruitfulness when he gets around to it. I will not try to list the many others to whom I owe debts. I once did that, and it took up several pages of text.

PREFACE

ix

I have benefited from generous financial support by the Spencer Foundation, the Reed Foundation, the Stanford Grad- uate School of Business, the Stanford University School of Education, and the Copenhagen School of Business. I appre- ciate both their support and the spirit of free inquiry in which it has been provided. Finally, I owe a large debt to the infinite tolerance of my wife, Jayne. With a grace that suggests some rare variety of benevolence, she has borne my presence for over sixty years. It is an achievement as inexplicable as it is appreciated.

Stanford University, December 2009

James G. March