Globalizing the Intelligent Organization

Abstract

This article contrasts exploratory with exploitative learning, in order to argue for the importance of both-not just the latter. It considers three case studies briefly: Microsoft, Berlei and Patricks. While Microsoft may often be thought of as the epitome of an `intelligent' organization, the company has a reputation for unreliable products. Although the employees at the Lithgow plant of Berlei achieved world's best practice, their jobs were exported offshore, on the basis of the learning that they had achieved for the company. In the case of Patricks we can see the effect of managerial cleverness (advised by some of the best legal and accounting expertise available), producing fundamentally flawed attempts at re-organization that failed to consider the social, political or organizational dimensions or consequences of the type of learning unleashed. At the same time, this article argues a particular case for organization studies that situates itself within a classical tradition of sociology that stretches from Max Weber, through C. Wright Mills, to the present.