Complexity as a Resource

Abstract

Before moving on to a more rigorous and systematic discussion in the following chapters, through diverse suggestions and references, this chapter intends to offer the reader a key to the theme of learning in organizations. We consider learning in organizations as an individual and collective response to the complexity that comes out of the encounter between the organization and its environment. We show that in this perspective, learning cannot be governed through the usual managerial logic based on control, standardization and planning, but requires new approaches and instruments. It is found in sense-making, meaning the capacity of individuals to reduce the ambiguity through the construction of plausible hypotheses and the production of convincing explanatory discourses, the starting point for the analysis of the process of organizational learning and the construction of new managerial tools.