The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence. . - Other Reviews - book review

Administrative Science Quarterly, March, 2002 by Anne S. Miner

James G. March. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1999. 397 pp. $34.95.

Like a set of nested Russian dolls, March's The Pursuit of Organizational Intelligence layers multiple insights and stimuli beneath its surface, making it a must-read for organizational researchers and of interest to scholars, teachers, consultants, and a broad array of social scientists. March has assembled a coherent volume of prior work that explicates key issues in organizational learning and adaptation, provides insights about theorizing itself, and demonstrates directly what lively theory development looks like. He has included informal essays and commentaries along with academic journal articles to create an overall framework that provides value well beyond a mechanical Whitman's sampler of previous papers. For those who have appreciated March's work over the years, his book will reveal new connections between arguments, reveal deeper continuities in models and, for many, open doors to parts of March's work published in unfamiliar journals or areas. For those who have only briefly sampled March's writi ngs, the book offers an opportunity to dip into an ongoing conversation that will almost certainly yield unexpected insights and stimulate important ideas.

Although March presents crucial specific points and models, his work creates a sense of being in a conversation with someone who persistently points to important things that somehow lie just outside of our ordinary awareness. Because of this Greek-chorus role of commenting on our collective work, some readers see a trace of a contrarian spirit in March's work. They become slightly suspicious that, if the field had gone in a different direction, March would be pointing out the weaknesses of that approach (and explicating the virtues of the path the field actually did take). This volume does include careful explications of the details in the lack of clothes on a variety of emperors. Characteristically, however, these commentaries avoid cynicism and encourage a heroic combination of remaining aware of our limitations while sustaining passion for our scholarly missions. And the book offers an array of specific models and insights about organizational learning and adaptation. Although the papers here do not includ e theory-testing empirical papers, they underscore the criticality of empirical research in their careful review of existing empirical findings. Even readers who don't agree with March's perspective will find the papers worth revisiting. He dependably offers up insights masked by taken-for-granted social science theory and offers compelling substantive models for continuing work.

The book celebrates and critiques prior theories, but it also challenges the reader to face head-on some of the more difficult features in organizational studies. Chapters range from brief reflections on science and choice to full journal articles and are divided into four sections: "Decisions in Organizations," "Learning in Organizations," "Risk Taking in Organizations," and "The Giving and Taking of Advice." Discussed here somewhat out of order, each section makes a separate contribution, even as they work together as a web of work on organizational intelligence.

In "The Giving and Taking of Advice," my favorite and least conventional part of the book, March dispenses clear-eyed observations on what organizational scholars, teachers, and consultants have achieved in the past few decades and outlines specific research challenges still ahead. One chapter, "Organizational Performance as a Dependent Variable," pinpoints specific inference problems in conducting empirical research on organizational performance outcomes. In concluding this chapter, March points out that some difficulties arise from the differences between advice givers who are "quite unconcerned about research standards" and the research workers who are "quite unconcerned about organizational performance improvement ..." (p. 348). March notes that universities have long resolved these contrasts in the academic community by creating multiple departments and schools that place different weight on practice and theory. He spotlights the fact that for many contemporary faculty, however, "The soldiers of organiza tional performance and the priests of research purity often occupy not only the same halls but the same bodies" (p. 348). This paper continues to take on increasing value as the fields of organizational theory and strategy inform each other and tackle the crucial question of organizational performance. For every researcher, teacher, and consultant who routinely grapples with this two-people-in-one-body dilemma, the articles in this section provide individual views on ways to approach this challenge.

In a more informal chapter based on a talk, March argues that it is becoming popular to envision business schools as just another actor in markets, "...creating educational programs (or public relations activities) that satisfy the wishes of customers and patrons rich enough to sustain them ... 378). Rejecting this view, March argues that "a university is only incidentally a market. It is more essentially a temple--a temple dedicated to knowledge and a human spirit of inquiry. ... Students are not customers; they are acolytes. Teaching is not a job; it is a sacrament. Research is not an investment; it is a testament." These are strong words, but for many, they offer a surprisingly realistic portrait of the impulses behind much of what is done every day, even within imperfect universities. They offer a stark reminder that our choice of metaphors for what professional schools do goes far beyond convenience and may shape the destiny of universities. While providing no magic resolution, March's observations throu ghout this section advance the sophistication with which we address this issue and should encourage civil rather than demonizing approaches to the ongoing tensions within professional schools.