Government as a Learning System

Abstract

The present work [. . .] proceeds on the following assumptions:

The loss of the stable state means that our society and all of its institutions are in continuing processes of transformation. We cannot expect new stable states that will endure even for our own lifetimes.

We must learn to understand, guide, influence and manage these transformations. We must make the capacity for undertaking them integral to ourselves and to our institutions.

We must, in other words, become adept at learning. We must become able not only to transform our institutions, in response to changing situations and requirements; we must invent and develop institutions which are ‘learning systems’, that is to say, systems capable of bringing about their own continuing transformation.

The task which the loss of the stable state makes imperative, for the person, for our institutions, for our society as a whole, is to learn about learning.

Editor’s Note: The following chapter is taken from Donald Schön’s book ‘Beyond the Stable State’ which was first published in 1971. The first section comes from the start of the book and the rest is an edited version of his Chapter 5, leaving out some sections, his detailed notes and some of the specific examples of the times that would today be unfamiliar and require further description. Depending on the perspective taken, some processes and prevailing attitudes towards governments can be seen to have changed since this chapter was written, others remain unchanged. As the chapter concerns transformation and change, of various kinds, you might find it useful to read this chapter keeping the question in mind of what has changed since this was written. The concept of ‘the stable state’ is discussed further in the introduction to this part of the book. Schön’s reference to the ‘centre-periphery’ refers back to an earlier chapter in his book in which he discussed how social systems resist change. He observed that changing elements near the periphery require least disruption whereas changing elements at the centre would mean re-structuring the whole system. In the chapter following this one in his book, he went on to discuss the decline of the centre-periphery model in our society in relation to growth and diffusion of organisations and the shift towards the concept of a network as pivotal to learning systems.

Source: Schön, D.A. (1973) Beyond the stable state pp. 30, 116–179. The Norton Library, W.W. Norton & Company INC, New York.