The extent to which organisations operate as autonomous remains a matter of debate. This to Laegreid et al (2008) is highly applicable to public organisations that are dependent on Government and other agencies for funding and legislation, who strive to replicate private sector strategies in operating. Although private organisations fund themselves, they also rely on Government legislations to carry out their activities. It would be reasonable to argue that the autonomy of public and private organisations to operate and learn differs and so the level of control. Autonomy is the state of self-‐ governance (Collier, 2002). According to Lorsuwannarat (2007) autonomy is the extent to which organisations are free to make decisions about their operations and activities.
Similarly, it refers to the freedom of public agencies to make decisions concerning their management, inputs and processes (Verhoest et al 2004). The ability of organisations to solely direct their activities influences their learning. For instance, Bettis-‐Outland (2012) asserts that the method of decision making used by organisations results in their learning differently. When organisations make strategic decisions on their own it leads to generative learning; whereas when they consult with external parties like competitors and other agencies it results in transformative learning. Huber (1991), Dixon (1992) labels this form of learning as “vicarious learning”, while Nikolaos and Evangelia (2012) describes corporate intelligence as an organisation’s consultation with competitors in order to learn. Maula (2006) commends, autonomous organisations have strong learning culture and engage more in exploratory learning to build their knowledge base. Closely linked, Hanaki and Owan (2013) argue that “high-‐autonomy organisations promote individual initiatives to experiment with new ideas and building their strength on individual learning”, while Schuck (2000) counters this argument, acknowledging that institutional autonomy retards organisational learning as no control is in place rather change and feedback are often delayed. Autonomy therefore influences the learning in organisations as it is exercised by organisations.
3.5.1.3 COGNITIVE-‐CULTURAL PILLAR
According to DiMaggio and Powell (1983); Goffman (1967), Meyer (2008); Powell and DiMaggio (1991); Scott (2001), this pillar centres on shared beliefs that constitute the nature of social reality, creating the frames through which meaning is made. Old theorists (Zucker, 1977) of cognitive-‐cultural drew and focused on the cognitive dimensions of human existence: “mediating between the external world of stimuli and the response of the individual organism is a collection of internalised symbolic representations of the world” (Scott, 2008:67). According to this paradigm, the internal representation of an organism’s environment determines how it acts or behaves-‐gestures and signs-‐ and affects the meaning organisms attribute to activities and objects (Hoffman, 1999). Meanings and interpretations arise in interaction and are sustained and expanded upon as they are employed to make sense of ongoing events. To understand any action, both objective conditions and subjective interpretation of actors must be taken into account (Aguilera et al., 2004; Wicks, 2001). Mohammed (2008) stipulates that cognitive frames engage in information-‐processing activities, from identifying and selecting relevant
information, encoding, organizing, interpreting, retaining and retrieving; thus affecting people’s analysis, judgements and learning.
The new cultural perspective focuses on treating culture as not only a subjective belief but also symbolic systems seen as objective and external to actors (Sandhu, 2009). Xu and Shenkar (2002: 610) summarised that organisations are sedimentation of meanings in objective form. The label “cognitive-‐cultural” means that internal interpretive processes are influenced by external cultural facets (Lee and Pan, 2014). As Trevino et al (2008:121) propose, cultural properties drive and shape cognitive activities and containers (memories) in which social interests are defined and negotiated. Or in Hofstede’s (1991:4) thinking, “culture provides patterns of thinking, feeling, and acting mental programs, or the software of mind”.
Most times the constitutive function of the cognitive-‐cultural pillar, which is most fundamental, is overlooked. Symbolic processes work to give meaning to social reality; define the nature and activities of social actors and actions. According to Scott (2008:68) “cultural systems operate at multiple levels from the shared definition of local situations, to the common frames and patterns of belief that comprise an organisation’s culture, to the organizing logics that structure organisation fields, to the shared assumptions and ideologies that define preferred political and economic systems at national and transnational levels”. These levels are nested so that cultural frameworks diffuse and shape people’s beliefs on one end, and people’s interpretations can work to reconfigure archaic belief systems on the other end.
Cultural elements vary in terms of the extent of their linkage to and with the normative and regulative elements, the degree to which they are part of routines or organizing schema. Cognitive-‐cultural elements are more embedded cultural forms, “culture congealed in the forms that require less by way of maintenance, ritual reinforcement, and symbolic elaboration than the softer realms we usually think of as cultural” (Jepperson and Swidler, 1994: 363). Cultures are often perceived as unitary systems, occurring internally across groups and events. But cultural beliefs usually vary: beliefs are not held by all, but by some people. Individuals facing the same situation can judge the situation differently, in terms of reasoning and actions. Cultural beliefs differ and are
frequently contested, especially in moments of social disorganisation and change (Yeh, 2007).
For cognitive-‐cultural, compliance occurs in many different situations because other forms of behaviour are inconceivable; routines are carried out because they are taken for granted as ways things are done in a community or an organisation (Bruton et al., 2010). The logical justification behind conformity is that of orthodoxy, “the perceived correctness and soundness of the ideas underlying actions” (Scott, 2008: 69). Giving a different interpretation of social roles, from that of normative pillar, cognitive-‐cultural elements focus on the power of templates for particular kinds of actors and actions than stressing the force of mutually reinforcing obligations as in normative. In essence, the cognitive-‐cultural conception concentrates on the central role played by the social mediation of a common framework of meanings. For organisations, the cultural-‐ cognitive pillar involves “the shared conceptions that constitute the nature of social reality and the frames through which meaning is made” (Scott, 2001: 57). Organisations cultural-‐cognitive are evident in profile and mission, diversity and languages.
3.5.1.3.1 Culture
Culture can contribute to the learning in organisations. Culture according to Cyckowski and Grobstein (2008) is an account of how societies have developed over the years for people to conduct their lives and perform their tasks as a community; it is also a set of rigid customs, patterns and protocols that guides individual desires to accept or contradict other structures. To Lee (2007:3) culture is defined as “shared values, social norms, group learning and beliefs…and a significant force that influences people’s behaviour, attitude, and mental models. Accordingly, [it] plays an important role in organisations.” Organisations are makeup of individuals with difference in culture and beliefs and so their ideologies. These beliefs and culture defines who they are how they think and act as stressed by Barker (2002) culture is a way of life. Besides organisational culture, national/individual culture is known to shape the learning in organisations, as they learn through their members. Organisational members create and warrant knowledge through the primary weapons-‐ ideas and learning-‐ from which they exercise control in defining reality according to their cognitive and cultural principles and framework (Scott, 2008). Jenkins (2012) considers this as cultural authority, the construction of reality through the definitions of values, which plays a role in
supporting learning, the pursuit and organisation of knowledge. Research shows that differences in culture disrupt learning in organisations (Avny and Anderson). Conversely, Lopuch and Davis (2014) argue that culture fosters learning by creating diversity in all ramifications (unique contributions and inputs from organisational members) portraying culture as an influential element (Lee, 2007). It is important to examine the link between culture and the learning in universities in a multi-‐cultural context as there are limited studies on individual/ national culture and organisational learning.
In reality, the distinction between the regulative, normative and cognitive-‐cultural pillars is not always strict and might sometimes overlap. These environmental elements which are dynamic can impact how organisations operate and learn (Hult, 2003). Powell (2007:2) recommends that a key concern for institutional analysis is to ascertain important factors in particular contexts and the extent to which they influence the prevailing social order or undercut one another. Organisations tend to develop more internal administrative capacity, when organisational environments contain multiple influences (Meyer & Scott, 1983). Organisations can respond to environmental elements, changes and get to learn with modification in their “micro environment” i.e. organisational elements (organisational structure, culture, learning strategies, resources and organisational politics). Independently, the organisational elements can also influence and shapes how organisations learn. Just as Zucker (1987:446) asserts that institutional elements do arise from within an organisation itself “not from power or coercive processes located in the state or elsewhere”.