Unlearning: A people development issue for sustainable change and innovation

In building an organisation’s innovation capacity, managers have to be aware of barriers to learning and have an understanding of the need to unlearn old ways. Unlearning is emerging as an important element of change and innovation in organisations. As the pace of change continues to increase, it is clear than normal processes of forgetting and transition may not be sufficient. Two key scholars in this area have proposed models of unlearning. Hedberg (1981) suggested that unlearning happens much like overwriting; new knowledge replaces or overwrites the old. Klein (1989) however proposed the parenthetic model, suggesting that the old knowledge remains (in parenthesis as it were), and may emerge in contexts where the new knowledge does not appear to apply. This paper reports on case study research aimed at further developing the concept of unlearning at the level of the individual to inform the consideration of unlearning at the organisational level. A process model has emerged from the data that highlights inhibitors and enablers of the unlearning process as identified by participants in the study. The findings will provide an opportunity for further research to test the model. In an applied sense, the model provides managers with identifiable enablers and inhibitors of individual unlearning; issues which must then be addressed in change strategies at the organisational level.