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Chapter 22 A relational approach to organizational learning

Stanford's Organization Theory Renaissance, 1970–2000

ISBN: 978-1-84950-930-5, eISBN: 978-1-84950-931-2

Publication date: 25 March 2010

Abstract

In retrospect, one of the most extraordinary features of the support from faculty was that they encouraged me to follow my interests rather than being concerned about making sure that I would contribute to enlarging their research agenda. I say, in retrospect, because it has only been in seeing how often graduate students are given limited options by faculty that I have understood the model that I was taught at Stanford. Each faculty member I interacted with knew that I was developing a different agenda either because of my interest in ethnography or because of my interest in different disciplines than theirs. Seymour Martin Lipset, similarly, could clearly see that I was not following in his footsteps, yet hired me as a research assistant and provided important input for my dissertation work. When I returned from doing fieldwork in Washington, DC, Joanne Martin's expertise in studying culture and narratives helped me to make sense of my data and helped provide a different perspective to the ambiguity and choice scholarship. My work was more closely related to that of my dissertation advisor, Jim March, though he was also in a position to see how my ethnographic leanings would uncover issues that required me to move in directions other than his work. Yet, he defended and supported my choice even to the point of walking me through the conundrums that arose while I was working as a policy analyst and doing fieldwork.

Citation

Feldman, M.S. (2010), "Chapter 22 A relational approach to organizational learning", Bird Schoonhoven, C. and Dobbin, F. (Ed.) Stanford's Organization Theory Renaissance, 1970–2000 (Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Vol. 28), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 359-363. https://doi.org/10.1108/S0733-558X(2010)0000028026

Publisher

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Emerald Group Publishing Limited

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