Leading and learning in organizational contexts: a contribution from the new cognitive science

In economics, or engineering, the practice of building models to help explain complex phenomena is well established. In educational administration the practice is less familiar. This paper explores two approaches to a problem in organizational design. The design problem concerns the fairly complex issue of fitting together constraints that make hierarchy advantageous with constraints that favour organizational learning. The first approach seeks to understand matters by the traditional method of working with theoretical representations of the problem and pursuing possible consequences. The second approach examines an attempt to develop a model that captures the key constraints defining the design problem. This model is based on, and extends, attempts to use artificial neural networks to model aspects of individual cognition. Some of the more important consequences of the modelling exercise are discussed, with the approach being recommended as an additional tool for organizational analysis.