Parallel Learning Structures:
Creating Innovations in Bureaucracies

Gervase Bushe, Simon Fraser University,
and A. B. Shani, California Polytechnic State University

1991 0-201-52427-9 280 pp. Softcover

Published by Addison-Wesley Publishing Company

This book addresses what the authors describe as a fundamental paradox of organizational design, the fact that the characteristics that lead to highly efficient, predicatable performance get in the way of the learning needed to sustain that performance. How can an organization optimize both efficiency and innovation? Parallel Learning Structures describes a technostructural intervention that promotes innovation and change in large bureaucratic organizations while retaining the advantages of bureaucratic design. There are five case studies to explore the following different purposes: adding an adaptive capacity to bureaucracies, solving complex, organization-wide problems, implementing system-transforming innovations, developing cooperative union-management relations, and transitioning toward sociotechnical redesign of the formal organization. At the end of each case, practical theories are offered for understanding and dealing with these different situations and sets of guidelines are included. The book concludes with a generic intervention model and a theoretical discussion of the practical issues of organizational learning and change.

Contents

• Introduction
• Pursuing Efficiency and Innovation Simultaneously
• Solving Problems Bureaucracies Cannot Hanle
• Implementing System Transforming Innovations
• Developing Cooperative Union-Management Relations
• Transitional Structure Toward Sociotechnical Redesign
• The Generic Intervention Model
• Organizational Learning and Metaphors of Change
• Conclusion
• Appendix A: Sociotechnical Systems Theory: A Brief Synopsis
• Appendix B: Parallel Learning Structures: A Simulation

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