Thinking Historically about Organizational Learning

Abstract

Abstract The literature on organizational learning and evolutionary theories of the enterprise often evoke the phrase ‘path dependency’, a social science translation of the insight that ‘history matters’. History matters because learning-be it social, organizational, or personal-is a difficult process, requiring one to evaluate the past, and perhaps reconsider it, to alter the present and confront the future. Schiller (1784/1970) viewed history unfolding as ‘a long chain of events [that] extends from the present moment back down to the beginning of the human race, which mesh into one another as cause and effect’ (p. 370). If one agrees with Schiller, then persons, organizations, or nations can never entirely escape the past. In order to forge a new link in the historical chain, they must still acknowledge the past ‘chain of events’, even if they reject it by taking a stand against previous ways of thinking and acting. By definition, then, learning implies having some sense, some knowledge, of one’s accumulated experience so that one can initiate change.