Organizational approaches to knowledge management are unlikely to lead to organizational wisdom unless the organization increases its awareness of factors that contribute to epistemological myopia--a nearsightedness that limits what and how the organization knows and how it learns. Contributors to this myopia include organizational learning pathologies, an unquestioning acceptance of fundamental concepts, such as time, and measuring success as the absence of failure. In many instances, the vocabulary, language, and business methods used by an organization, society, or culture reify these pathological factors and thereby further hamper the potential for learning. By raising our awareness of these contributors and the factors that support their reification and continued acceptance, we seek either to avoid these limitations or to develop corrective lenses that can extend the organization’s vision and enable it to resolve issues with greater clarity. The conceptual frameworks used in this chapter are drawn from four distinct areas of study: systems theory, organizational knowledge and learning, the organization as a learning community and community of practice, and linguistic relativity. The underlying theme is the organization as an

in Simulation and Gaming. Not to be quoted or cited without permission prior to publication. We wish to thank Claudy Jules and Alice Kolb for their thoughtful comments on an earlier draft of this paper. Teamwork is prevalent in organizations, yet it has pitfalls such as social loafing, groupthink, overdependence on a dominant leader, over-commitment to goals, and diffusion of responsibility. Such negative factors can be overcome and team effectiveness improved when teams intentionally focus on learning. This paper draws on the historical contributions to experiential learning in teams by Kurt Lewin and his colleagues and contemporary research on team learning based on experiential learning theory. Learning from experience is proposed as the process whereby teams develop in six areas-- purpose, membership, role leadership, context, process, and action. Teams learn differently in early versus later stages of development. The Kolb Team Learning Experience is designed to assist teams in learning about these aspects of team functioning through a structured written simulation. Upon completion of the simulation, the team has knowledge about the functions of teams in general, experience about the functions of its team specifically, and self-awareness of how it learns from experience.

Please do not quote or reference this manuscript. An updated version of this manuscript was published as Kayes, D. C. 2002. Experiential learning and its critics: Preserving the role of experience in management learning and education. Academy of Management Learning and Education, 1, 2, 137-149. Experiential learning critics 2 This paper considers John Dewey’s dual reformist-preservationist agenda for education in the context of current debates about the role of experience in management learning. The paper argues for preserving experience-based approaches to management learning by revising the concept of experience to more clearly account for the relationship between personal and social (i.e., tacit/explicit) knowledge. By reviewing, comparing and extending critiques of Kolb’s experiential learning theory and reconceptualizing the learning process based on post-structural analysis of psychoanalyst Jacque Lacan, the paper defines experience within the context of language and social action. This perspective is contrasted to action, cognition, critical reflection and other experience-based approaches to management learning. Implications for management theory, pedagogy and practice suggest greater emphasis on language and conversation in the learning process. Future directions for research are explored.

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