liefs with new ideas, and thus can be detrimental to innovation and strategic planning. It is argued in this paper that the two qualities can be integrated, perhaps uneasily and not always satisfactorily, by creating a management structure that accepts both worlds. At one level of management, uncertainty and innovation should dominate activity; at another level of management, organization and performance should dominate. The tension between the two worlds can best be handled through a process of ôreleaseö and ôcapture.ö Top management must approach this dilemma by knowing when to release control over the strategic innovation component of a project and when to capture control once again to let innovation guide organization and to let organizational needs guide innovation.
Before discussing the literature on learning and change in management, some of the key concepts should first be defined. A ôrecipe ideaö is a set of ideas shared by managers. As a result of a variety of factors which influence the transmission of information, managers adopt a way of looking at their situations that is widely shared within their industry. A ôruleö is a principal which guides behavior. Meanwhile a ôrule of thumbö does not provide for an exact way of doing something and allows for exceptions and the possibility of learning through experience. ôOvergeneralized rules,ö on the other hand, are those rules which do not allow for exceptions or learning and are incorrectly applied to all situations. Consequently, overgeneralized rules oftentimes will not produce the desired outcome (Spender, 1989, pp. 195-197; Schauer, 1991, pp. 17-20).
Much of the management literature divides organizational learning into two types. For example, Argyris and Schon (1978) divide learning into single-loop and double-loop learning. Senge (1990) distinguishes between adaptive learning (learning to cope) and generative learning (learning to create). March (1991) ...