1. How to adjust to company culture

2.  Understanding organizations  Language  Story-telling  Examples of change projects in organizations  Power without glory  Implications in relation to learning  Dewey model for learning  Some conclusions

3.  Language, language games, playing with language: Language as a toolbox for the construction of reality.  Hannah Arendt: The Human Condition, 1998, pp. 178- 179). People are characterized by their ability to construct and reconstruct stories. Stories are co- constructed, since stories emerge intersubjectively.  To speak a language = Actor: “…the action that he begins is humanly disclosed by the word, and though his deed can be perceived in its brute physical appearance without verbal accompaniment, it becomes relevant only through the spoken word in which he identifies himself as the actor, announcing what he does, has done, and intends to do” (Arendt 1998, pp. 178-179).

4.  David Boje: storytelling is the preferred sense-making currency of human relationships.  Organizations: People are engaged in dynamic interpretations and chains of interpretations whereby organizational and institutional artefacts, words, concepts, past stories, strategies, systems and symbols are given meaning

5.  From a bank case  Employee from a local department  Employee from the IT-department  What kind of organizational phenomena do you notice in these excerpts?  Professional values  Relations of power

6. Stories are situated in a culture Traditions, practices, conventions, institutions Situated in a historical and geographical context Stories give temporal and spatial significance to the activities in which people participate. Actors understand themselves socially Stories are important for peoples motivation for action and learning.

7.  Spontaneous and interactive  The stories are filled with gaps/holes  Conversation – negotation of meaning. Participants are filling in the holes, they use each others words, concepts to add to the storyline.  Collective storytelling – spontaneous conversations  The stories cannot be understood in isolation. There is a lack of past, present and future.

8.  Organizations are the results of interpretations piled upon interpretations piled upon interpretations.  Participants in organizational language games: competence – communicate and collaborate with others – add to stories, fill in the gaps, interprete what is in between the lines etc.  Organizations become through continuous interactions between actors in different positions and with different intentions: managers, employees, customers, suppliers, authorities etcs.  Complexity and pluralism of different voices and positions.

9.  What does this mean in relation to learning?

10.  Complexity of organizational life  Interconnectedness of organizational life  Motivation for participating in learning  Position  Intention  Stories express values: good - bad, appropriate – non- appropriate, moral – immoral  Individual values vs. organizational system  Learning and changes are often controversial: Spin-off of stories that support, contradict or resist learning activities  Course activities has to be translated to the organizational system in order to gain legitimacy and power.  They have to become part of language in organizations as well as trying to change this language.

11.  Power without Glory: A Genealogy of a Management Decision  Plot: Management decision in 1997 about the implementation of a new functional and geographical division of labour  1993-99: The value project, the technology project.  My project: My story was about the management decisions as a result of many different stories in the organization

12.  Manager, facilitator, consultant etc.  Organization of such changes  Co-construction of organizational life. Manager, facilitators, consultants have specific roles to play  Co-constructor of reality – as part of a game and trying to reach desired ends.  Didactic questions  Who are involved and what role they play/should play?  What learning tools are used?  How are these situations organized?  What are the circumstances

13. The value project  Problem  Unclear problem  Organization  The role of the external consultant  Internal organization of the project  Language  Abstract words, concepts, tools The technology project  Problem  Clear problem  Organization  The role of the external consultant  Internal organization of the project  Language  Bank language, very concrete, translation of abstract concepts to bank language.

14.  Individual learning  Simplicity  Focus  And something to work with  Loosen the organizational bonds on the learning situation  You make the organization stronger by making the individuals stronger  Organizational learning  Complexity  Interconnectedness  Relations of power

15.  Transform the organizational learning project to an individual learning project  Focus on actors  Focus on the context and circumstances in which they act

16. Close affiliation with PBL  Problem orientation  Thinking

17.  Education and learning has to be focused on concrete problems.  Problems: complexity, uncertainty, contradicion and value conflicts  Concrete problems are influenced by many different forces.

18.  Thinking is a tool to solve the practical problems of the world  Thinking is man’s tool for adapting to the environment  Thinking is where we put abstract concepts and models to work in relation to practical problems.

19.  Habitual thinking is not thinking in Dewey’s sense of the word  Reflective thinking: systematic and analytic approach to problem solving based on inquiring into the problem  Integration between theory and practice  Thinking = intelligent practice – systematically explorative and therefore also exhausting

20.  Specific competencies vs. General competencies  Learning how to learn  Collaboration  Methods for systematic collaboration  Methods for project management  Double nature of all kinds of learning  The specific problem that we want to solve  The more general skills in problem solving that is acquired through this process.