Organisational Learning, Politics and Change: The Mundane and the Extraordinary in Peacebuilding. A case study of OneVoice (US), Darkenu (Israel), Zimam (Palestine) and Solutions Not Sides (SNS) (UK)

Teller, Katelin (2023). Organisational Learning, Politics and Change: The Mundane and the Extraordinary in Peacebuilding. A case study of OneVoice (US), Darkenu (Israel), Zimam (Palestine) and Solutions Not Sides (SNS) (UK). PhD thesis The Open University.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21954/ou.ro.0001593d

Abstract

How do international hybrid NGO/SMOs learn to create political space for change and transformation in the context of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict? Addressing this overarching research question, this thesis concentrates on how organisational learning takes place and what its relationship with politics might be. Four peacebuilding organisations in Israel, Palestine, the US and UK are the focus of the research. These units of analysis, conceptualised as hybrid non-governmental (NGO)/social movement organisations (SMOs), are used to identify and analyse some of the as yet unexplored political dimensions of organisational learning which is understood as processes, mechanisms, sites and outcomes of learning. The thesis argues that organisational learning can provide a lens for understanding these organisations’ multiple levels of engagement with politics and change and transformation. The research uses mixed qualitative methods (interviews, focus groups, participant observation, documentary analysis of organisational materials) with multiple stakeholder respondents (activists, staff, trustees, external stakeholders) associated with each of the organisations. Politics is characterised as involving the exercise of power. Change and transformation are analysed and evidenced both through individual capacity building which leads to political participation as well as through organisations’ abilities to adapt in order to collectively influence norms and values and to lobby for national political change. The mundane of the thesis title can be found in the incremental organisational learning, which is part of working to bring about structural change for peacebuilding. Transformation is addressed as the extraordinary in the attainment of personal agency at the individual level, as organisational transformations and as transformations in wider local and national politics. This understanding of learning as political and potentially change-making adds to organisational learning, development management and social movement literature while expanding on the role of learning in social movement organisations.

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