Individual and Organizational Development As Interplay: An Activity Oriented Approach**/Individuelle Und Organisationale Entwicklung Als Wechselspiel: Ein Tätigkeitstheoretischer Ansatz

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Individual and Organizational Development As Interplay: An Activity Oriented Approach**/Individuelle Und Organisationale Entwicklung Als Wechselspiel: Ein Tätigkeitstheoretischer Ansatz

1. Introduction

Many traditional approaches of learning in organizations either focus on the perspective 'individual' or 'organization'. Hence, individual and organizational development is often discussed separate from each other (Wilkens/Menzel/Pawlowsky 2004; Fenwick 2008). In human resource development until the early 1990s, and consistent with the dominant Piagetian constructivist and information processing paradigms in education, mainly the individual was seen as the 'unit of instruction' and the focus of research (Roth /Jin 2006). Although the question of how organizations learn and develop has been discussed since the earlier times of organization studies (e.g. Argyris/Schön 1974, 1978; Cyert/March 1963; Fiol/Lyles 1985), the approach to moving away from the 'individual' towards the 'organization' as focus of consideration gained growing popularity with Senge's fifth discipline in the 1990s (Senge 1990). Although the individual has still been considered as the origin of learning and development in organizations, the relationship between human actor and the entity of the organization is still neglected in most studies (Song/Chermack 2008; Virkkunen/Kuutti 2000). It is instead the change and development of an organization as a whole which is mainly taken into account (Bapuij/Crossan 2004; Fenwick 2008). Hence considering research and the practice of learning in organizations there are two main approaches that can be distinguished between: (1) In pedagogy, especially work based education, the learning of human actors at work is concentrated on (e.g. Boud/Garrick 1999; Dehnbostel 2009; Illeris 2004); (2) In organizational studies, mainly behavioural science, the organization as entity of consideration is focussed (e.g. Dierkes et al. 2004; Geissler 1996; Klimecki/Lassleben, 1998; Schreyögg/Noss 1995). Bapuji/Crossan (2004), Fenwick (2008) and Song/Chermack (2008) who discuss the relationship between individual and organizational learning based on comprehensive literature reviews, state that there is an apparent lack of dialogue across these approaches and the lack of empirical research between individual learning processes and organizational knowledge creation (Song/Chermack 2008, 424). Furthermore they suggest intensive case research as appropriate methodology. Our study pursues exactly these aspects: Subsequently we discuss an appropriate theoretical and empirical basis for the interdependency between individual and collective respectively organizational learning. We therefore follow an appeal by Lompscher and Giest who criticise that current work based learnin...

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