ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING AND HEIDEGGER’S

ONTOLOGY

Does Philosophy Matter for Information Systems Design?

Angela Lacerda Nobre

Escola Superior de Ciências Empresariais, Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal ESCE-IPS

Campus do IPS, 2914-503 Setúbal, Portugal

Keywords: Organisational Learning, Heidegger’s ontology, information systems design, socio-philosophy, social

context, situatedness, discursiveness, understanding and being-in-the-world.

Abstract: Organisational learning has gained wide recognition both among academics and practitioners. The need to

focus on core knowledge processes and to consider both their tacit and their explicit dimensions has led

organisations to value the contributions from socio-philosophy. Heidegger’ ontology, in particular, is highly

relevant because it radically shifts the attention towards the situated and discursive dimensions of

organisational social contexts. This attention, focused on social practices and on language use, has critical

implications to information systems design because it addresses the mechanisms through which work

systems and their supporting technology help to determine ways of being.

1 INTRODUCTION

Organisational learning is part of the broader and

more general area of organisational studies. The

‘organisational learning’ metaphor was first used by

Argyris and Schön, in 1978, and then it was

popularised by Senge (1990) and others through the

concept of the ‘learning organisation’. Ever since,

we have witnessed a growing interest in this area,

both among practitioners and among academicians.

The concept of learning is highly complex and

culturally marked (Cook, Yanow, 1993). As

individuals, we often recognise as learning only

external contributions to our knowledge, what

someone has taught us. We seldom value the

importance of our own experiences, attitudes,

efforts, values and previous knowledge that

apparently have a far greater importance to the

effectiveness of the learning process itself. This is

the argument of experiential based perspectives on

learning (Dewey, 1938). Our own attitudes and

mindset are deeply linked and intertwined with our

social environment, again, culturally marked.

The pace of change in our societies, the

technological evolution, the globalisation of

markets, and the centrality of knowledge, leads

organisations to value learning as an ongoing

process (Castells, 1998). This learning process, in

turn, needs to be understood, valued and mastered.

Living in a society that shows a prevalence for

‘individuality’ we seldom incorporate the lessons

from social theory into everyday organisational

practices.

Both management theories, that focus on

achieving results, and organisation theories, that

focus on the logic and structure, the organisation,

that is behind those results, are gradually showing a

new interest in the social aspects of human

interaction. This situation is particularly important

for knowledge-intensive organisations, or

knowledge-based, that can be described as

organisations where knowledge is valued and

understood as their core competence (Drucker,

1999). Knowledge, within this context, is interpreted

in a broad form incorporating technical, and explicit

and tacit elements (Polanyi, 1958), as well as

cultural and social aspects (Cook, Yanow, 1993,

Gherardi, Nicolini, 2001, Elkjaer, 2003). When

studying collective activity, behaviour and explicit

knowledge are the main visible elements. However,

behind observable behaviour we have meanings and

motives that direct and determine people’s actions

and decision-making processes (Gherardi, Nicolini,

2001). Organisational learning has to be understood

and analysed in a way that is consistent with this

background of social key concepts.

Organisational learning plays an active role in

every organisation as it is, in itself, a condition for

498

Lacerda Nobre A. (2007).

ORGANISATIONAL LEARNING AND HEIDEGGER’S ONTOLOGY - Does Philosophy Matter for Information Systems Design?.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - ISAS, pages 498-501

DOI: 10.5220/0002391704980501

 SciTePress

survival. Organisational learning already exists,

spontaneously and implicitly (Dixon, 2000). As

Burgoyne (1995) jokingly argues, organisational

learning, like the health state of individuals, “is

always there”; however, its quality and degree of

consciousness in relation to its actual state may vary.

2 HEIDEGGER’S ONTOLOGY

Probably one of the most interesting and

illuminating ways to grasp meaning creation within

a community is through Martin Heidegger’s [1889-

1976] thought. Heidegger’s work Being and Time

(1996), first published in 1927, in which he defines

the notion of ‘being-in-the-world’, proposes a

radically innovative ontology that has changed the

course of development of phenomenology,

contemporary hermeneutics and social philosophy.

Heidegger’s philosophy is centred on the

question of Being, and it develops a complex

account of our being-in-the-world (Heidegger,

1996). Heidegger believed that Western philosophy

had lost touch with the important questions of

human existence. He gave an urgent account of the

human search for the significance of our own

“being”, and of human life as a search for its own

meaning and identity, unaided by any external

authority or fixed values (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger’s phenomenology of everydayness works

to counteract the tendency toward the displacement

of meaning into subjectivity, which began with the

rise of modern science. By regarding the self as

nothing other than its meaningful expressions,

Heidegger is able to fully break away from the

Cartesian tradition (Guignon, 1983).

Since the seventeenth century there has been a

growth in interest in knowledge and cognition which

rose from the earlier development of modern science

in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Knowledge

had always been important to humankind but this

knowledge was previously understood as being

implicitly contextualised and embedded, while in

modern age it acquired as if a life of its own,

independent and autonomous from the contexts from

which it emerged. This process is explained by

Guignon (1983), an expert on Heidegger’s ontology

who claims that, with modernity, the

epistemological question gained precedence above

the ontological concern, and that the importance of

Heidegger’s monumental work is related with this

shift in perspectives.

Ontological concerns are inseparable from the

contexts where knowledge processes take place

(Guignon, 1983). In technical terms, with modern

age, the epistemologic concern of “knowledge about

knowledge” became prioritary. The ontological

question of the context of such knowledge, and of

who and what is this being whose knowledge is

being considered, was neglected (Guignon, 1983).

Guignon (1983), based on Heidegger’s work, argues

that any epistemology is necessarily based on certain

ontological assumptions, and though these may be

unacknowledged and unidentified they can never

stop being present. The dominance of epistemic

concerns over ontological ones needs to be balanced

in favour of further comprehension of reality as a

whole, and of the ontological dimensions of

knowledge (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger’s (1996) ontology developed from

Husserl’s phenomenology, which explicitly calls

attention not to individuals in isolation but to the

individual in context. Individuals are constantly

affected, determined and conditioned by surrounding

circumstances. There is a change of perspective in

phenomenological studies so that the focus of

attention goes to the overall environment, and to the

social embeddedness and continuous networks of

relationships which take place in such environment.

Almost every great philosophical work carries

with it a more or less explicit reinterpretation of the

nature of philosophy and the methods appropriate to

fulfilling its aims. As was referred above, Heidegger

shifts his orientation from epistemology to ontology

(Guignon, 1983). For Heidegger, the basic theme of

philosophy is being. The question of Being has this

central position because any inquiry into one of the

areas of philosophy, e.g., epistemology, logic, ethics,

or aesthetics, operates within a tacit set of

presuppositions about the being of the entities with

which it deals (Guignon, 1983). What is true of the

discipline of philosophy holds for the sciences as

well. Every science presupposes some conception of

the Being of the entities that are the objects of its

inquiry. The ontologies of the regional sciences,

Heidegger says, have already been worked out

“roughly and naively” on the basis of our

prescientific ways of interpreting and experimenting

domains of being (Heidegger 1996, Guignon, 1983).

Scientists work within frameworks that determine in

advance what sorts of question are appropriate and

what kinds of answer will make sense. Generally,

there is no need for scientists to question the

ontological frameworks in which they work. During

periods of crisis in science, however, it is precisely

these frameworks that are called in question

(Guignon, 1983).

When what are at issue in the sciences are no

longer questions within the frameworks of those

sciences but the very frameworks themselves, the

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ontological presuppositions of the regional inquiries

must be made explicit (Heidegger 1996, Guignon,

1983). Heidegger believes that philosophy alone can

fulfil this role. Philosophy that he sees as not itself

being bound by any framework, and which is the

study of frameworks in general. The inquiry into the

Being of entities in general Heidegger calls

“ontology taken in the widest sense” (Heidegger

1996, Guignon, 1983). It is a “science of Being as

such”, and its task is to provide “a genealogy of the

different possible ways of Being”. Ontology in the

widest sense lays out the conditions for the

possibility of any science. And philosophy, as

ontology in the widest sense, is the “science of

sciences” (Heidegger 1996, Guignon, 1983).

The Anglo-American tradition, according to

Guignon (1983), generally tends to see philosophy

as a set of current topics or problems that are to be

discussed within pre-given frameworks. The method

is argument and counter-argument along tacitly

agreed-upon guidelines. In contrast, Heidegger

maintains that it is these philosophical frameworks

themselves that are the source of traditional

philosophical problems (Heidegger 1996, Guignon,

1983).

Heidegger devoted a lot of time to the idea of

“being-with”, and talking and communicating was

one way to be with others: «Discoursing or talking is

the way we articulate “significantly” the

intelligibility of being-in-the-world.” (Heidegger,

1996). Discourse, for Heidegger, is broader than

talk, including all our inner and outer expression

which plays the same role as talking. According to

Guignon (1983), in Heidegger’s perspective, talk

and discourse «do not have the purpose of

transmitting messages of information, are not ways

of getting things we want more efficiently, and do

not give expression to “me-I”» (Guignon, 1983).

Rather, talk and discourse have the purpose of

finding significance and of sharing understanding,

and give expression to human being-in-the-world

(Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger (1996) refers to discursiveness,

situatedness and understanding as the basic

elements of rationalisation, i.e. how human beings

spontaneously use their rationality in everyday

situations, therefore including philosophical and

scientific reasoning circumstances as special cases

within this everyday use (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger’s ontology is profoundly marked by this

common use of rationalisation processes.

«If we are to understand the full import of

Heidegger’s conception of ‘meaning’, then, we must

avoid seeing it as referring to something inner in any

sense... Heidegger identifies three existentialia of

what is called ‘Being-in as such’: situatedness,

understanding, and discursiveness.... Meaning is that

which makes possible that projection of possibilities

in understanding... What is the source of this most

primordial level of intelligibility? Heidegger says

that it is ‘discursiveness’. The concepts of

‘discursiveness’ and ‘meaning’ are closely related,

so to clarify one is at the same time to illuminate the

other.» (Guignon, 1983).

Heidegger’s concepts allow for a rich

interpretation of the critical role of community life

for human beings’ organisation within a society, a

culture and a civilisation (Guignon, 1983). Life in

the knowledge economy of the information age

(Castells, 1998) continues to be grounded in the

same network of communities, and of social and

cultural embedded meaning creation processes.

Heidegger sees the world as expressing the aims and

interests of a culture (Guignon, 1983). This implies

that the concepts of “discursiveness” and of

“meaning” are closely related (Heidegger, 1996).

Social subjectivity becomes a central concept:

«To be Dasein is essentially to be a nexus of the

socially constituted relations of a culture...

Heidegger’s phenomenology of everydayness works

to counteract the tendency toward the displacement

of meaning into subjectivity which began with the

rise of modern science.» (Guignon, 1983).

3 RELEVANT APPLICATIONS

Outside the academic discipline of philosophy there

is a growing interest in the kind of ontological

approach to human phenomena that Heidegger

helped to establish and to define in its modern form.

According to Guignon (1983), the works of post-

structuralists thinkers such as Derrida and Foucault

may be understood as responses to Heideggerian

philosophy. Heidegger’s work was a critique to

traditional epistemology, and his thought provides a

key that opens up a wide range of problems and

presuppositions built into the Cartesian tradition.

Heidegger’s method breaks with traditional

philosophy to the extent that it is concerned less with

discovering obvious truths and providing proofs than

with unearthing the underlying meaning in what is

manifest in our normal lives.

K. Jaspers philosophy followed Heidegger’s

ideas and argued that only in “communication”

could man “become himself” (Young-Bruehl, 1981).

J. Habermas’ (1984) theory of communicative action

is also deeply rooted in Heidegger’s work. For

Habermas, to become more modern means to

become more rational. He stresses that

communicative rationality is about the achievement

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of shared understandings through language and other

means of communication, and it is about being open

to criticism, and able to give good reasons for our

own beliefs, decisions and actions (Habermass,

1984).

R. Rorty (1979), an American philosopher of the

analytic tradition and a postmodernist, considers

Heidegger, together with Wittgenstein and Dewey,

the three most important philosophers of the

twentieth century. Heidegger’s (1996) ontology has

influenced both organisational learning studies,

through the works of authors who explicitly focused

on social perspectives on learning (eg. Cook,

Yanow, 1993, Gherardi, Nicolini, 2001, Elkjaer,

2003) and computing science research, namely

through the works of Maturana and Varela (1980)

and Winograd and Flores (1986).

Heidegger’s work Being and Time (1996)

influenced Maturana and Varela’s work (1980) and

through them the work of Winograd and Flores

(1986), thus setting a tradition in computing science

and information systems design. Against a Cartesian

view of human beings as purely autonomous and

rational, perfectly in control of their consciousness,

Heidegger’s perspective on “situatedness” calls upon

the importance of human’s relationships with our

world and our surrounding environment. From this

perspective, information systems designers may

acknowledge the importance of their influence on

work systems and, through these systems, their

influence on the individual and the collective users

of the system.

Winograd and Flores (1986), following

Maturana and Varela’s work, explicitly refer to the

influence of Heidegger’s Being and Time (1996). Of

“comprehension that takes place in situations of

involvement in a practice when subject and object

are not separated” (Gherardi, Nicolini, 2001). They

explain their rationale the following way:

«All new technologies develop within a background

of a tacit understanding of human nature and human

work. The use of technology in turn leads to

fundamental changes in what we do, and ultimately

in what it is to be human. We encounter the deep

questions of design when we recognise that in

designing tools we are designing ways of being. By

confronting these questions directly, we can develop

a new background for understanding computer

technology – one that can lead to important

advances in the design and use of computer

systems.» (Winograd, Flores, 1986).

Through Heidegger’s being-in-the-world, it is

possible to promote and raise the awareness towards

the relatedness and sociality of human intellectual

enterprises.

4 CONCLUSIONS

The complexity of current organisational contexts

forces researchers and practitioners to explore new

boundaries and knowledge domains. Socio-

philosophy is critical if there is the recognition of the

central role of social and cultural factors in

determining informal organisational practices.

Information systems design has developed pioneer

work related with Heidegger’s ontology, and it is

crucial that this achievement is recognised,

disseminated and further developed.

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Castells, M., 1998. End of Millennium. Blackwell

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Cook, S., Yanow, D., 1993. Culture and Organisational

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Dewey, J., 1938. Experience and Education. Collier

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Dixon, N., 2000. Common Knowledge: How companies

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Drucker, P., 1999. Management Challenges for the 21st

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