A relational re-view of collective learning : concerts, condiments and corrections

Abstract

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.

Work in organisations is a shared and joint endeavour often accomplished by
 groups, teams or other collectives. Yet groups at work do not always learn at
 work, limiting an organisation’s capability to thrive in knowledge economies.
 Research investigating collective learning at work continues to place the analytic
 focus on entities or abstractions representing the collective. For example, culture,
 power, group membership, group structure, group communications, motivations
 and skills are often examined to explain why groups learn or not in organisations.
 In contrast, this thesis investigates what it means to learn together when people
 act, talk and judge at work through their relational and responsive interactions.
 This relational orientation conceptualises learning as emerging from patterns of
 interactions that are responsive to local contexts and shaped by practical
 sensemaking that occurs in the everyday practice of work life.
 Specifically in the case study interpretive tradition, I investigate the relational
 practices of dyads and small groups in three disparate organisational contexts and
 professions. The organisational, group and individual characteristics differ widely
 for musicians in an orchestra, apprentice chefs in a commercial kitchen and
 rehabilitation staff in a corrections centre. Yet these three groups shared relational
 similarities in learning how to weave ways of acting, talking and judging together
 to make their work ‘work’. Such weaving together is enabled by shifting
 conceptually from notions of context as descriptive setting or situatedness to the
 notion of groups contextualising together.
 This thesis contributes to collective learning research by highlighting the
 significance of patterns of interactions and the dynamics of practice. The findings
 enhance existing collective learning theory by including spatio-temporal concepts
 from theories of organisational change and complexity. The findings have
 implications for guiding the learning of commencing practitioners into professions
 as well as for generating modes of transdisciplinary learning across professions.
 Re-viewing collective learning in relational ways recognises that learning is an
 emergent phenomenon, each time practised anew from interactions between
 people and the possibilities that lie within.
 The Latin prefix con means with. It seems appropriate that concerts performed by
 musicians, condiments added to dishes by chefs and the consequences of
 behaviours by corrections staff across diverse contexts of work can provide
 practical insights for better understanding how groups learn collectively at work.