Three-Brains Learning in Organizations: A Complex Adaptive Systems Understanding of Organizational Change

• In Event: 35.079 - Sheraton Roundtable Session Five - Grand Centre
  In Roundtable Session: 35.079-4 - Organizational Theory at the Crossroads

Abstract

This research explores how cultural intelligence at the organizational level serves to guide the multi-faceted ways of knowing within organizations to allow organizations to learn from, initiate change strategies for, and adapt to environmental and systems contexts. The paper builds on empirical results of studies of cultural intelligence to present a complex adaptive systems perspective of a “three-brains” approach (Cooper, 2001) of understanding organizational learning and intelligence. Extending empirical findings of complex knowings, a model-focused approach (McKelvey, 2000) engages future explanatory, exploratory and investigative approaches to understanding how organizations develop and utilize systems-level intelligence.

Authors

• M. Jayne Fleener, North Carolina State University

• Christina Bode Irvine, North Carolina State University