In this paper we develop a dialectical approach to the organizational politics of learning, exploring complexity, tensions and asymmetries. Turning this kaleidoscopic lens on our empirical setting, a major city police organization, we mix the blue light of police vehicles into Driver’s (2002) ‘fluorescent’ light of office workplaces, fragmenting the brightness of ‘Utopian sunshine’ and the darkness of ‘Foucauldian gloom’ perspectives on organizational learning, and making visible a wider spectrum of political colours of learning. We identify four interdependent political modalities of learning: empowering, coercive, insurgent and palliative and explore how they interplay in complex and contradictory ways. We note that, whilst mainstream and critical literatures tend to focus on organizational learning as, respectively, empowering and coercive, and to a lesser extent insurgent, much of the politics of learning in our study converges in the palliative modality, where the emphasis is on learning-to-cope (rather than learning-to-thrive, learning-to-comply or learning-to-resist). We show that the palliative modality of learning is in many ways an outcome of the dynamic and complex engagement between the other three modalities. We discuss the implications of our findings for a more nuanced understanding of learning as political, and of the relationship between organizational learning and power.

在本文中，我们为学习的组织政治发展了一种辩证法，探索了复杂性，紧张性和不对称性。在我们的经验背景下（一个主要的城市警察组织），将这种万花筒镜转变为将警车的蓝光与驾驶员（2002年）办公场所的“荧光”灯混合使用，分散了“乌托邦阳光”的亮度和“富古里亚人”的黑暗gloom对组织学习的看法，并使学习的政治色彩更加广泛可见。我们确定了学习的四个相互依存的政治模式：赋权，强制，叛乱和姑息，并探索它们如何以复杂和矛盾的方式相互作用。我们注意到，尽管主流和批判性文献往往将重点放在组织学习上，如赋权和强制性，在较小程度上是叛乱的，我们研究中的许多学习政治都集中在姑息治疗方式中，其中重点是学习应付（而不是学习蓬勃发展，学习遵从或学习-抗）。我们表明，姑息学习方式在许多方面是其他三种方式之间动态和复杂参与的结果。我们讨论了我们的发现对于更深入地了解政治学习以及组织学习与权力之间关系的意义。我们表明，姑息学习方式在许多方面是其他三种方式之间动态和复杂参与的结果。我们讨论了我们的发现对于更深入地了解政治学习以及组织学习与权力之间关系的意义。我们表明，姑息学习方式在许多方面是其他三种方式之间动态和复杂参与的结果。我们讨论了我们的发现对于更深入地了解政治学习以及组织学习与权力之间关系的意义。