Organisational learning as structuration: an analysis of worker-led organisational enquiries in an oil refinery

Abstract

First paragraph: Based on a three-year empirical investigation of an oil refinery, this chapter analyses organisational learning in terms of structuration theory. Structuration is the dynamic process by which an organisation’s rules and resources constrain individuals, while simultaneously enabling them to create new rules and resources. This was accomplished in the refinery by small groups of workers who conducted organisational enquiries into how to achieve the organisation’s purposes. The results were adopted as new organisational structures (norms, policies and procedures), which were then enacted by the workers. Through structuration, workers were able to exercise agency in redesigning their own work processes, and they emerged as self-directed, autonomous learners, who were knowledgeable about the grounds of their activity.