Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Learning: Socio-Political Tensions in Organizational Renewal

Abstract

If organizational renewal (becoming) is key to organizational survival why is it so difficult to come about and how might it be supported? This is the central question this paper will seek to explore by problematizing the current conceptualizations of organizational renewal, which are often limited to dualisms between stability, order and harmony on the one hand, and on the other hand, conflict, change and transformation. These dualisms are reflective of the kind of 'distal' mode of thinking Cooper and Law (1995) refer to which, prevent us from understanding and supporting organizational renewal as integral to the emergence of organization. This paper, therefore, argues for the need to understand multiplicities of organizing through dualities that permit us to come closer to the dynamic interaction between apparently oppositional forces. The analysis presented, will show that at the core of organizational renewal lie the balancing acts between macro and micro forces as they interact and negotiate order and disorder, which are central to self-organization (renewal). The paper explores these balancing acts by drawing on two recent ideas in Organisation Studies, which seek to support organisational renewal; Dynamic Capabilities and Organizational Learning. The analysis focuses on the tensions that underpin the interaction between exogenous and endogenous forces. These tensions are examined through a socio-political lens revealing dynamic forms of organizing in the way macro (strategic activities) and micro (operational activities) practices are interconnected.