quarterly essay review

WRITING & PUBLISHING

Jess Hill and Sarah Krasnostein on writing Quarterly Essays

Jess Hill and Sarah Krasnostein are the two most recent authors of Quarterly Essays. Jess released The Reckoning: How #MeToo Is Changing Australia in late 2021, and Sarah released Not Waving, Drowning: Mental illness and Vulnerability in Australia in early 2022. Quarterly Essays are prestigious, but they are notoriously difficult and always come with intense time pressure. In this interview, Jess and Sarah discuss how they did it and why they signed up for it.

Jess  is an investigative journalist and the author of See What You Made Me Do . She has been a producer for ABC Radio and journalist for Background Briefing , and Middle East correspondent for  The Global Mail . Her reporting on domestic abuse has won two Walkley awards, an Amnesty International award and three Our Watch awards.  See What You Made Me Do  won the 2020 Stella Prize and the ABA Booksellers’ Choice Adult Non-Fiction Book of the Year.

Sarah  is the multi-award-winning author of  The Trauma Cleaner and  The Believer .  Her writing has appeared in magazines and journals in Australia, the United Kingdom and America. She holds a doctorate in criminal law.

ASTRID: Welcome Jess Hill and Sarah Krasnostein. I can't believe the two of you are appearing together on The Garret.

JESS: Here we are.

SARAH: Today.

JESS: Thank you both for joining us. And today I want to be really nerdy, which works for The Garrett and The Garret's audience. I want to talk about the Quarterly Essays now.

Jess Hill, you wrote your first Quarterly Essay last year, published at the end of 2021, about #MeToo. And Sarah, you have just released your first Quarterly Essay about mental illness and vulnerability. I'd like to ask both of you, what does a Quarterly Essay represent? And why have you both put yourself through the sheer horror and pain and suffering of writing one?

Jess, yours was published first, so we'll start with you.

JESS: Oh, I've already gone through part of the amnesia process, because it's been several months since I finished it. Look, I've always been a fan of the Quarterly Essay format, partly because it's substantial enough to be a thorough investigation of a topic, but it doesn't carry the pressure of a book because it's only around for a few months. Well, unless you write a classic.

And to be honest, Chris Feik from Schwartz had been asking me to write a Quarterly for a while and I sort of had been resisting because there's just a lot going on. And then, then he said, ‘Well. Like, okay, what about #MeToo? Write about #MeToo’. And I'm like, ‘Okay’.

So as usual, like my life just kind of carries me along this drift. Because people asked me to do things. It wasn't burning inside me to write a Quarterly Essay about the #MeToo movement. And much like when I wrote about domestic abuse for the first time, I actually was a bit like, ‘Oh, what am I going to spend 20 to 40,000 words writing about #MeToo? Hasn't it all been written? It's something that's been flogged to death, this subject’. And sure enough, within days, you realise, well actually, as usual, it has been written about a lot, but certain narratives have solidified that really need messing with and reinterrogating. Of course you could actually write that much just on the last 12 months in Australia, let alone the developing weather system that exploded into me too. So I wish I could say, ‘Oh, this has been formulating in my mind for months and finally I got the opportunity to put it on paper’. I wish I was like a more meaningful person sometimes like that, when really a lot of the time I'm just a hack who's been asked to write something.

SARAH: You have to refer to that as negative capability, Jess. You are a meaningful person, you're just waiting to use it.

JESS: That's right. I think my internalised self-critic stops me being a deeply meaningful person on that level of driving forward. It's just like, ‘Oh, they think I'm good enough to write about that. Okay. I guess I will’.

ASTRID: Look Jess, being thought of as good enough to write a Quarterly Essay is a compliment. But also Sarah, and I are both going to make you leave behind or put aside for now your self-deprecating way and really embrace the fact that you are one of the authors of a Quarterly Essay that has written a classic, right? No, one's going to forget the Quarterly Essay on #MeToo.

JESS: Oh, thanks Astrid.

ASTRID: And Sarah, you now have also written a Quarterly Essay. It just has hit the shelves. You went in knowing this was a tough gig. Why and how?

SARAH: I wrongly, as it would turn out, thought this would be refreshing sorbet between books. I thought, ‘Oh, like that's not book long. That's fine. You can't really go past 40,000 words. And it's an essay. I love an essay. So I'll do that between my last book and disappearing into the next one’. And I was a 100 per cent wrong about the refreshing palette cleansing character of what this is. But at the same time, everything about it is quirky.

So the style notes that you get from Chris are a word discursive document about... [Laughter] A very loose dos and don'ts. And I am such a nerd that when I read these notes, I teared up because it is the ideal form for me to take. It's noteworthy in its lack of prescription on the format. Apart from that there shouldn't be too strident a policy analysis, which is the reason why I left my legal work. And it should be the largest possible view of a current issue. You have the freedom to do that in a formally inventive way or not, or whatever, as long as you're coming at it originally in the substance, and the form is flexible enough to allow you to do that.

Wonderful, very touching, poignant, lovely. And then there's the horror of that degree of freedom when you're just trying to come up with something original. And it's a lot.

ASTRID: I've previously spoken to others who have written Quarterly Essays, including Ben Law. And everybody seems a little bit shell shocked afterwards because of the intense time period that all the research has to happen. A Quarterly Essay is of course published four times a year, and you can't push the deadline back in any significant manner.

You both are writing about nuanced and complicated areas of life. You are also writing about them two years into a global pandemic that has directly impacted the subject matter that you are writing about. How does that change your approach? So for example, rates of domestic abuse. Potentially terrifying when we think about lockdowns in Australia, Jess, and I don't know a single person whose mental health is as good as it once was, particularly in Melbourne that experienced the very long lockdowns. So when you are putting out such a document, how do you even place it in the context of a global pandemic?

JESS: It's been interesting the way that #MeToo had such a resurgence in Australia right in the middle of COVID. We were so stuck within our four walls, and even when we weren't in technical lockdown, everything was pretty much lockdown. There was so little interaction. And yet there was, in terms of the so-called women's movement or women's issues, this massive public reckoning. And very public. On the streets and are coming together and are dividing apart. And all these things was going on at a time when we weren't even really seeing each other in person, which flavours it in a way, because it's easier to objectify people, even from within your own movement or on your own side, for want of a better word, when you don't see them in person for a couple of years. So, you can start to get very heady about things and not drop into the humanity of it.

When it came to writing about it, I don't think I was really conscious of placing it within the conditions that we were in. Because I think with the Quarterly , even though it is transient in its format, I also think you're writing a historical record. So that was really, for me, the most important thing was to write a clear... And as Sarah's saying, like do it from the broadest possible view... Record how #MeToo came about, or my personal view on that, because there will be a million different interpretations of that, and then how it bounced through Australia to what it became in 2021 and how it exploded in Parliament. And so that for me was more important.

I have to say also is that as personally, just coming off the back of a lot of work. The SBS series had just finished earlier in the year, then I did a podcast series and there was no break in between at all. And I was pretty burnt out. And poor Chris and everybody at Black Inc, I feel like I owe just unrelenting gifts because from the time that I started writing, I had seven weeks until print. I submitted the last chapter the night before we went to print! So in a way, that rushed, very rushed, very quick period of writing and editing meant that I couldn't get too carried away with even placing it in any context. It had to roar out of me, and I had to not make any mistakes.

I'm sure Sarah had this too, that thing of being so responsible for people's not just individual stories, but the stories that unite so many stories. You have a lot of responsibility to get that right. You have a lot of responsibility for your sources. A lot of my focus was just on how can I make sure that I am doing the best by the people who are named in this essay, and that I am representing the people who are not, and who have not been platformed. And the rest was just like cross fingers and hope.

ASTRID: Your topic is slightly different, Sarah, and you do draw the linkage between mental health and Jess's essay. For example, instances of mental ill health turn up in the system, first and foremost, through instances of violence in the home. What do the two of you think – and I know you didn't pre-plan this, Jess, I don't think you would've known whose essay was coming after you – but what is the statement of two Quarterly Essays coming out that are about not traditional policy issues, not traditional men's business, if I can be so broad as to label it like that? We're talking about women, we're talking about #Metoo, we're talking about mental health, which affects everybody but is so often stigmatised and not admitted to. What is the cumulative impact of two Quarterly Essays ?

SARAH: Well, I've been thinking about not this exact question, but these issues for something else I'm working on, which is much more creative writing, but I think the point transposed as well onto that question.

One of my many bug bears is a focus on the discourse, national history, or the sections of a newspaper along entirely arbitrary, and now canonical lines, so there is such a thing as ‘economics’ or ‘economic history’ or ‘political history’ or ‘military history’, when it's all social history. And it is all inexorably co-created, relationally sourced issues manifesting in different parts of our institutional collective life. So I think it's not inevitable in the sense that nothing's really inevitable, but it makes sense to me that there would be two gal writers having a go at examining our collective life through the prisms that Jess and I have chosen to look at a very complex – I'm trying to phrase this without swearing –

ASTRID: You're allowed to swear.

SARAH: – clusterfuck of national policies through our chosen lenses… That I think the significance. Rather than writing more abstractly about politics as a separate entity or international patterns or relations separately, we are looking quite clearly at what we value and the gaps between our national rhetoric and our enduring collective behavioural patterns, whether they manifest as seemingly intractable patterns of interpersonal violence in the home or the workplace (where the overwhelming majority, but certainly not all victims are female), or whether it manifests also in the home, but in our public life and in our criminal justice system, in our educational system, in our healthcare system, as this kind of compulsively repeated pattern of caring about fixing these problems only so much and no further.

So that's a very long way of not answering the question, I apologise.

JESS: Oh, that's really made me think a lot just when you were talking there, Sarah, about Martha Gellhorn, who was one of my sort of original journalistic heroes. And for those who haven't heard of Martha, one of the first female war correspondence, very much of her own making, known for instead of reporting the ‘game of war’ and what's going through the minds of the strategists and the high profile commanders, she got like right down onto the street and with the people. And particularly the story about the invasion of Finland where she's like... It was really a different way of doing war reporting. And I think that through the prism of what people might see as the softer – not softer in terms of their impact, but the sort of like more touchy feeling of feminine issues like mental illness or domestic abuse, or #MeToo, is that actually, as you say, you are talking about very serious political and policy issues, but you're coming through the prism of human experience rather than keeping it in this sort of unreachable cerebral level. But there is still very much a contest of ideas, but making sure that it doesn't get separate from the grassroots, from the actual experience of the living people who are subject to the whims and fancies of all these great thinkers and strategic masterminds and politicians.

Sometimes I think the more feminine issues, what they do is actually just bring us back to Earth and give us a better chance at finding better solutions than just talking at the policy level.

SARAH: And I think it's also a way of short circuiting a lot of the debate about issues on which we have too much empirical data for this to be a debate. It goes straight to the human heart of the matter. It's the so what of these potentially rarefied debates about what it looks like to do institutional reform in late stage capitalism, blah, blah blah. So what? How does it impact us on a daily basis in the home, all of us together? That makes a something much more pressing.

JESS: When we continually relate it back to the grassroots, it also takes those academic ideas about reform or about smashing systems or about... I think when you are really reporting from that level of the personal, you have to take those ideas through to their end point. Like okay, if we were to do this really interesting reform, how would it affect X, Y, ?. Or if we were to just forget reforming the system, because the system is so entirely buggered, what is the actual effect of that? Because I think we can get stuck – I mean, everywhere in the world, but we can get really stuck in these academic sort of niches and new sort of normal niche comes along that academics and thinkers want to explore, but can so often be disconnected from. Well, how would that actually work in reality? Instead of just like, how does it make us feel or how interesting is it to explore?

SARAH: Yeah.

ASTRID: I don't think I would be able to find a reader of either of your Quarterly Essays who didn't feel and understand and empathise with what you're writing about. But the Quarterly Essay is a niche audience, Quarterly Essays aren't read by everyone. And so a question for both of you. Who is the audience of the Quarterly Essay ?

JESS: There is the subscriber base. So there's the rusted ons, about 9,000 or 10,000 people. And then it's really, I think, a matter of who do you reach with it? There are obviously people who are going to be more inclined to buy a journal of this kind, just exploring ideas. They're probably more likely to be the Radio National audience, for example. God bless the a Radio National audience. But what I found really interesting is – especially going to events in the last few weeks, and one in particular at the Adelaide Writers Festival, where I appeared with Grace Tame – is that when it came to the signing line, these were not just standard Quarterly Essay readers. And in fact, many said they'd never bought a Quarterly Essay and were now really interested in finding out more about it. I had high school girls buying the Quarterly Essay . Teachers. So sometimes, I think the Quarterly Essay audience is to an extent what you can make it and to an extent related to the topic. So when Alan Finkel writes about are getting to zero emissions, he's going to get a different audience to the audience that me and Sarah are going to get for our essays. And fortunately, writers festivals and other institutions are quite keen to promote Quarterly Essays , like they've got a reasonable amount of status. So yeah, sometimes it's just about what can you generate and what audience can you generate?

Sarah: The thing that's always struck me about it is how it punches above its weight, not just with the leadership, but with the potential influence, if it resonates in a certain way. It can set an agenda in more daily newspapers, for or against, whatever. It gets topics ventilated outside a rarefied circle. So, I mean, I like a rarefied circle very much, don't get me wrong. But if you want to do this professionally, you can't just live there. So it is the best of both worlds in that sense. It first has to pass through a very considered, particularly literary, I want to say, or engaged audience before it gets into the discourse more generally (if it's going to do so).

JESS: That's, that's a really good point. I think because there are some journals that do tend to remain much more within the readership, like sometimes the Griffith Review and other journals. It'll be very rare for them to go outside of their known audiences, but because the Quarterly Essay is topical, it becomes news just by being a quarterly. And yeah, like I mean, extracts go in the paper. And I think if we look at these things as a system, that even if people don't actually read the whole essay, that they'll probably engage with some of the ideas that were presented in it, through all of these other... Through your podcast, and through the ways in which it's promoted.

ASTRID: This is a podcast for writers, and I often speak to writers about how they represent the viewpoints and the voices of others. I want to ask you that, but before we get there, I want to just stay on the Quarterly Essay topic. Because the Quarterly Essay is a thing, sometimes rarefied, sometimes breaking out to a whole lot of a wider audience. What does it take to get selected to be the writer of a Quarterly Essay ? Because I feel like that's a rarefied list. And if I can insert myself with an opinion here, it is changing over time, the list of who gets to write a Quarterly Essay . So my question to you both is, who gets to write a Quarterly Essay, and why do you think you were picked?

Jess, you're laughing at me. I know there's thorny things in there.

JESS: No, no, nothing. Nothing particularly thorny. Who gets picked? There's a very large conversation about who gets chosen to represent the intellectual side of Australia. And this is not to cast shade on Schwartz, but more just how that landscape gets created in general. The list is still pretty overwhelmingly white. That needs work. You know, when I was a producer at the ABC, you needed to really consciously... I actually needed to consciously when I was putting panels together, make sure that they were 50 per cent women represented because 10 years ago that was actually the work that needed to be done. And now there is much more work to be done that is close to the surface.

I think that the Quarterly Essay , it strikes me that it is a pretty rare person that writes long form in Australia and long form journalism. You do have to have the experience, and I guess some runs on the board to be able to write something like this in such a short period of time. I couldn't have written this before I wrote my book, I think that was a really great sort of staging ground. I know other writers of Quarterly Essays who maybe haven't written a book before have been really shocked at how hardcore it is. And I guess to an extent, there needs to be some name recognition, I think, because the Quarterly Essay does, as Sarah saying, try to set a bit of an agenda. So some expertise in the area that you're writing about or some name recognition. But yeah, aside from that, I don't know.

SARAH: I would second all that. And I think that observation just about kind of the dearth of spaces to write at length factually and creatively is not something that we really have a lot of. And if it's the length that you are... My background was academic immediately before I wrote my first book, and I would get more scared by 1,200 words than 40,000 words, which is my length. And I enjoy having the space to do that. And even in the compressed kind of deadline, it's still time to let the issues aerate and marinate, and it's a really unique space. So, I think it does select people that have that experience and are sufficiently masochistic that they are enthusiastic about doing it.

But I agree also, Astrid, that it is changing over time. I mean, when I think back to my favourite ones before it even occurred to me that I too might throw my hat in the ring for it, it was Anna Krien – both of her’s, but particularly the live export market, Jess's now, and the observations from Rebecca Huntley. And I'm not looking for the gal writers specifically, I'm looking at these topics and also the way in which most of them were written. So I have other ones that I really enjoyed as well, but what I can tell you off the top of my head, these were the ones that made me think that I too would be good at doing that, or at least capable of asking, of pitching without having a laugh come back. They are the female ones. But yes, I agree. The diversity issue does need to be addressed.

JESS: I think also there's obviously a crossover with Black Inc authors and the Quarterly Essay , although after what I put the team through with See What You Made Me Do around deadline, they should have known it would be probably repeated.

It was interesting seeing Lech Blaine's essay that came before mine. That's not a diversity on a cultural level, but on a class level, it represents something very different for the Quarterly Essay . Having come from writing memoir –  memoir that obviously is doing a lot more heavy lifting than just telling a story with car crash, talking about masculinity and so many other things, and trauma – his style of writing the Quarterly Essay was very unlike almost any Quarterly Essay that came before it.

You know, he wrote quite consciously on and off in ‘Boganese’. It was very much writing... Almost like Gonzo writing on lyricism. The whole writing style is lyricism. And I was really inspired by what he did with the form, which was very different. Coming from a very working class background brought a totally different sensibility. I think that was really... I would love to see more chances taken on people who don't come out of the mould. I don't think myself or Sarah come out of a mould per se, but I think that Lech was the furthest outside what you would expect as an author of a Quarterly Essay .

SARAH: That is such a good point, Jess. I think that it also speaks to a new way of looking at Australian history that is the thread that the last... Well, I think like you can trace in the last two, two or three years worth of Quarterly Essays . It's a new way of looking at what in the world are the enduring persisting patterns that takes it out of where... To whom those traditional modes of history and historical debate have been assigned. As, you know, ‘This is the way of looking at credible academic or scholarly history’.

Lech is a perfect example of that, seeing these continuities, these patterns, these values, their expression, how it falls on the ear, how we are meant to understand things said and things meant. He brings all of his particular background characteristics to understanding that and illuminating that terrain. So I think that's another kind of subtle trend.

ASTRID: Another thing about the Quarterly Essay is the correspondence at the end and the right of reply. So Sarah, this hasn't happened to you yet, but it will in about three months.

JESS: You wait.

ASTRID: In your essay, Sarah, there are letters published in response to Jess's previous essay. And of course your right of reply, Jess. So, two questions. Firstly, how does that feel personally, because this is not something common in widely available non-fiction published in Australia, the fact that you reprint the supporting or opposing views? And what is the role of that correspondence in the Quarterly Essay ?

JESS:  You know, I was having a chat to Anthony Lowenstein about something kind of corollary to this yesterday. And it was about sort of the dearth of intellectual disagreement amongst Australian writers, particularly at writers festivals, which is both, I think, a symptom of how Australia has become quite anti-intellectual, and also of the fact that many on the Right who get platformed fall into a pretty narrow band of culture warriors. I think the so-called Right or conservative media has become pretty bad at platforming its intellectuals, because that wasn't what was getting bang for their buck.  So there's a paucity there. And of course, writers festivals, they're a bit of a circuit and getting writers to come across for $300 a session, coming interstate, I guess maybe some writers would be turned off if they were heading into a sparring match. But there is that sort of... As you say, there's not a lot of space for disagreement. And even in reviews it can be that you find that person writing the review of that other person's book, they're friends, they're mates. It's a very small writing community. So what's great about the Quarterly Essay correspondence. It's not that you have some sparring match at the back, but it's that it is encouraged. This is not going to risk your connection with that person, that we are supposed to be interrogating the ideas. It's not personal. It'd be great if there was more of it.

Now, when it came to the correspondence to mine, most of it was just lovely. I was really lucky. I was really wondering like, ‘Oh, what's this going to be like?’ And some of it was... Certainly some of it interrogated things I hadn't managed to interrogate, and added new things that I hadn't even thought of.

The only real challenge came from Janet Albrechtsen. And I really wanted that challenge to be nuanced and sophisticated. I wanted that even against my own better knowledge. And look, there were parts. But again, it was just in that culture warrior frame where it felt like to engage with it critically was being sucked into that vortex. And even points that she made that just, given a bit more thought, would've had more meat on their bones just came across quite shallow. Such as, ‘If I'd been a more curious writer, I would've looked at how certain people, read women, have taken advantage of the #MeToo movement for their own ends’. There's a point to be made there about how #MeToo can be used in all different ways, but the inference there is really clear that it would be women who are trying to corner men. I think we've seen from both sides various types of ways that me too has been weaponized. But not really so much in terms of false allegations – in fact, that was more heralded as a likelihood by people like Janet and her ilk, and didn't come to fruition, not in any high profile way that we've seen. So there was just things like that where I thought, ‘A bit more thinking in this response would make this a really interesting sort of debate’. But instead I feel like I didn't really even give what you are saying that much attention because you're coming at it from a warrior perspective and it's really boring.

So there's a bit... I think what the correspondence does, even when it's not disagreeing or trying to spar, is it does bring out your blind spots. And I thought it was a great response to Lech's essay before mine from Allison Pennington, really talking about his focus on male larrikin figures and where were the female larrikin? Where was the Julia Gillards, those sorts of figures? And that was a blind spot in Lech's approach, or perhaps just it wasn't a narrative he was exploring. It's great just to open up that whole concept to other eyes because you can't, in that short amount of time (even if you do use up all of your words as Lech and Sarah and I have), you're just not going to get everything. You've got your own path that you're treading.

SARAH: And we're not unfamiliar when you publish... The exception isn't hearing back from readers, the exception is having a right of reply. We mostly have to tolerate definite legitimate criticism which improves our endeavours, and equally many criticisms that are ideologically driven and factually lacking. We just have to suck that up 99 per cent of the time, because it doesn't behoove the position to get into a shit slinging match with readers that just don't like your work. That's part of the job. You develop a scab or a bruise or techniques of taking it on and forgetting or what have you. So to have that dialogue format is really rare and, I think, precious.

Because like Jess said, when you write about life, it is in ineluctably partial and selective. And we have our own focus areas for our own reasons and to be able to speak and disagree in a respectful environment – or, if it's not respectful, at least in an environment where people are equally heard. I mean, that is really a beautiful thing… So I'm telling myself this now and I'm going to play it back when the bile is rising, I'm sure, in three month’s time.

JESS: Oh, what you have to look forward to, Sarah.

ASTRID: Sarah and Jess, I would like to thank you both for speaking to me, but I would also like to say as an avid fan of the Quarterly Essay series, with all its ups and downs, I do think that you have both written classics. Jess, your work on me too, Sarah, your work on mental ill health are exceptional.

My favourite ever Quarterly Essay was Karen Hitchcock's from 2015, I believe, Dear Life: On Caring for the Elderly. And I cried the first time I read that, and she identified everything that went wrong with the aged care system through the pandemic, and we all found out the hard way, the brutal way. That's how important I think Quarterly Essays are – they give us the understanding of what we should have about what matters.

Thank you so very much and may everybody start to read the Quarterly Essays .

JESS: Thank you, Astrid. Thank you, Sarah.

SARAH: Thanks.

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Quarterly Essay

Quarterly Essay is the leading agenda-setting journal of politics and culture in Australia.

Established in 2001, Quarterly Essay presents the widest range of political, intellectual and cultural opinion, and aims to foster debate. It offers a forum for original long-form investigations, profiles and arguments. Each issue contains a single long-form essay, followed by correspondence on previous essays.

Quarterly Essay has always been at the forefront of cultural discussion, with award-winning essays including Political Animal and Power Trip by David Marr; That Sinking Feeling by Paul Toohey; and Stop at Nothing by Annabel Crabb. Authors include Tim Flannery, Don Watson, Robyn Davidson, Germaine Greer, Robert Manne, George Megalogenis, Laura Tingle, Anna Krien, Waleed Aly, Inga Clendinnen, David Malouf and Noel Pearson.

Our readers are highly educated, socially aware, and interested in culture and Australia’s constantly shifting political landscape. They are professional people with refined tastes.

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In A Time for War , John Birmingham ponders the Australian way of war. After East Timor and Bali, a combination of primal fear and primal ambition has transformed attitudes to our region, to security and to war as an instrument of politics. Australian defence policy has become more assertive and our armed forces are being radically restructured and hardened. Australia now has the capacity, and even the will, to act as a military power in its region.

A Time for War begins with a gripping account of Operation Anaconda, the 2002 battle in Afghanistan to which Australian special forces made a crucial contribution. Birmingham also looks at our war dreaming: the sanctification of Anzac Day and the eclipse of the Vietnam Syndrome.Ranging from Sir John Monash to Peter Cosgrove, from Rudyard Kipling to The One Day of the Year, he finds that our armed forces can now do no wrong, and that politicians have taken note. The new militarism is not simply a response to September 11, he argues - it marks a deeper shift in the culture.

'It being an RSL, we would stand each night at six o'clock for the praye rof remembrance. It was always a moving occasion, a strange suspended moment when the pokies and racing channel, the piped music and the drunken bullshitting all fell away … Friends from overseas who witnessed the quiet ceremony never failed to be impressed. One, a poet from Czechoslovakia, had always thought Australians to be a shallow, soulless, materialistic people, but she changed her mind after her first experience of the ode to the fallen among the half-empty schooners and chip packets." John Birmingham, A Time for War

This issue also contains correspondence discussing Quarterly Essay 19, Relaxed & Comfortable , from David Kemp, Graham Richardson, David Corlett, Don Aitkin, Ian Marsh, Matthew Sharpe, and Judith Brett

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Clive Hamilton is an Australian author and public intellectual. For 14 years, until February 2008, he was the Executive Director of The Australia Institute, a progressive think tank he founded. He is now Professor of Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University in Canberra.

He has published on a wide range of subjects but is best known for his books, a number of which have been best-sellers. They include Growth Fetish (2003), Affluenza (with Richard Denniss, 2005), Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the truth about climate change, (2010), Earthmasters (2013), What Do We Want? The story of protest in Australia (2016) and Defiant Earth: The fate of humans in the Anthropocene (2017).

In 2018, his controversial and influential best-seller, Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia, was published by Hardie Grant. A follow-up book, written with Mareike Ohlberg, Hidden Hand: How the Chinese Communist Party is reshaping the world, was published by Hardie Grant and Oneworld in 2020. It was an instant best-seller.

His memoir, Provocateur: A life of ideas in action, will be published in September 2022.

Clive has held visiting academic positions at Yale University, the University of Cambridge, the University of Oxford, University College London and Sciences Po in Paris.

The co-founder and director of AlphaBeta Strategy & Economics, Andrew Charlton is a highly respected and internationally renowned economist who has served in a number of vital senior government positions. Charlton’s foresight regarding the influence of future economic trends has proved to be invaluable in a number of circumstances, and he has published several essays and books outlining his predictive analyses and economic philosophies, including Ozonomics and Fair Trade for All, with the latter of the two being published in 13 languages and co-authored by Joseph Stiglitz, a Nobel laureate.

Anna Goldsworthy is an Australian classical pianist and writer. In October 2009 her memoir Piano Lessons was released in Australia and it won Anna the title of Newcomer of the Year at the 2010 Australian Book Industry Awards.

In November 2010 it was published in the US by St Martin's Press (Macmillan). Anna is Artistic Director of the Port Fairy Spring Music Festival, a Board Member of the Australian Book Review, Artist-in-Residence at Janet Clarke Hall at the University of Melbourne, and a founding member of the Seraphim Trio.

http://www.annagoldsworthy.com

http://www.pianolessonsthebook.com

http://twitter.com/annagoldsworthy

I am a researcher, writer and broadcaster, passionate about climate change. I am the mother of three girls, living in Sydney Australia. I am never happier than when I am walking around a farmers market.

Jess Hill is an investigative journalist and author who’s been reporting exclusively on domestic abuse since 2014. Prior to this, she was a Middle East correspondent, and producer/reporter across ABC TV and radio. Her reporting has been awarded two Walkley awards (Australia's highest journalism prize), an Amnesty International award and three Our Watch awards.

In 2019, published her first book, See What You Made Me Do, about the phenomenon of domestic abuse. It was awarded the 2020 Stella Prize, and has been shortlisted for several others, including the Walkley Book Award. The book has since been revised extensively for both American and British readers, and was published internationally in September 2020.

Sarah Krasnostein is a writer and a lawyer with a PhD in criminal law. A fourth generation American and a third generation Australian, she has lived and worked in both countries. Her essay, ‘The Secret Life of a Crime Scene Cleaner’, was published on Longreads and listed in Narratively’s Top 10 Stories for 2014. As a law lecturer and researcher, her areas of specialization are: the history of crime and punishment, comparative criminal law, sentencing law and criminal justice policy. She lives in Melbourne and spends part of the year working in New York City. The Trauma Cleaner (Text Publishing / St Martin’s Press) is her first book.

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Quarterly Essay is an agenda-setting journal of politics and culture. Each issue contains a single essay of about 25,000 words, followed by correspondence on previous essays. QE presents the widest range of political, intellectual and cultural opinion and aims to foster debate. It offers a forum for original long-form investigations, profiles and arguments.

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Alan Kohler’s housing essay resonates — but some economic forces remain absent

Most readers will learn plenty about housing markets and policy from The Great Divide, but the author's big-picture view needs sharpening.

Cameron Murray

Nov 28, 2023

Housing has been a hot topic at Australian barbecues for decades, but the rapid and unexpected changes in rents and prices since the COVID pandemic have boosted the public’s attention to the market. The latest communication from financial journalist Alan Kohler — a Quarterly Essay titled The Great Divide: Australia’s housing mess and how to fix it — is, therefore, a timely contribution from a master communicator, one who has probably done more to communicate economic ideas in his articles, newsletters and nightly ABC news segment than all of Australia’s university professors combined.

Like all of Kohler’s writing, it is also an enjoyable tale. We follow stories of his family’s home-buying experiences across the generations, get to the niche problems of renting with pets, and even delve into the puzzling difference between fixed-rate and variable-rate mortgages in Australia and the United States, which evolved from the formation of Freddie Mac and Fannie May financial institutions after the 1930s depression.

For a reader interested in housing markets, a comprehensive zoomed-out view of the housing elephant is always more useful than a collage of close-ups. But for a housing economist like myself who has also studied the elephant from every angle, there is also plenty about The Great Divide that resonates, especially on the politics of housing.

However, a few important economic questions remain. On the politics, I am in complete agreement with Kohler that we all too often jump to our preferred policy before we properly diagnose the problem. This is as true in housing as it is elsewhere. Kohler writes: “What are we trying to achieve? And does anyone who matters really want to achieve it?” Or more pointedly: “Is the big rise in house prices since 2000 good or bad?”

I call this problem the symmetry of property markets. To me, it’s the core unresolved issue that much of the public debate about housing ignores. So much so that it’s the central theme of my upcoming book, The Great Housing Hijack .

For Kohler, the aim of any housing policy change should be to “get the ratio of house prices to income down to what it used to be”. Today, prices are often around seven or eight times household incomes. From the 1950s to the 1980s, they were closer to three or four times. A return to the previous normal seems both reasonable and uncontroversial. We’ve done it before. Why can’t we do it again?

But this is where my views differ. I don’t think this can happen, the reason being larger economic forces in the economy that Kohler does not fully account for in his analysis.

High housing asset prices aren’t necessarily bad. Nor are cheap housing asset prices necessarily good. It’s been nearly four decades since the late 1980s, but we still hear complaints about the high-interest rates on home loans of that era. Yet house prices were much lower then, exactly in Kohler’s target range of three to four times household incomes.

What’s the deal?

Housing asset prices just aren’t that important when it comes to how cheap it is to be housed. What matters is the cost of occupying housing, which can be done in two main ways: you can rent a house from a landlord, or you can rent money from a bank to be your own landlord.

A $1 million home looks expensive at a 10% interest rate, costing $100,000 per year in interest. But it looks cheap at a 2% interest rate, costing only $20,000 a year in interest “rent”. The cost differs by a factor of five in each scenario. But for a household with a $125,000 income, the price-to-income ratio is eight times in both cases. Houses get cheap when the price of money (the interest rate) gets expensive.

This inverse relationship between the price of money and the price of homes is an economic force we manipulate to manage the macroeconomy. The higher interest rates of the past year have sought to achieve lower house prices, and they will eventually. Before that, the lower interest rates during COVID were meant to achieve higher housing prices. Which they did. And those low interest rates also encouraged a record number of first-home buyers into the market who realised that renting money was cheaper than renting homes.

We have the tools to make housing asset prices lower. I just don’t think anyone will be happy to have 10% mortgage interest rates, even new potential first-home buyers.

Another place I part ways with Kohler is on some substantive points about the supply side, which he explains in three sections of The Great Divide that respectively deal with public housing, cities versus regions, and council planning regulations.

Yes, there is a decline in public housing provision as an “outside option” to escape the private rental and home-buying market. I completely agree here and think that a better range of public housing options, drawing on workable systems from abroad, or even at home, like defence housing in Australia, should be greatly expanded.

On the idea that getting people out of cities and into the regions will make homes cheaper, I am wary. It might make some infrastructure provisions more efficient. But we saw what a flight to the regions was like during COVID, which made housing there more expensive in terms of rent and prices. Are higher rents and prices in the regions and lower rents and prices in the cities a good outcome? I’m not sure.

On council regulations, many are indeed outdated and wasteful. But I don’t agree that they are changing rents and prices on average. The rising price of housing assets during COVID and the recent trends of sharply rising rents are global phenomena caused by global changes in household incomes and financial markets.

To show why we should be hesitant to buy into the idea that councils are to blame, consider that Kohler suggests “housing is a cartel of the majority, with banks and developers helping them maintain high house prices with the political class actively supporting them”. Yet this cartel is broadly in support of removing council regulations, which apparently make homes cheaper.

Which is it? Does the cartel want prices to be higher? If so, they would support more council planning regulations, not fewer.

I think this puzzle is resolved when economic forces that are missing in Kohler’s big-picture view on the housing elephant are included. In this case, it is the market equilibrium forces that regulate how quickly homes are built by property owners who don’t want to undercut their future sales.

Overall, most readers will learn plenty about housing markets and policy from The Great Divide . Its attempt to provide a coherent zoomed-out picture of the housing elephant is useful. But I think we can further sharpen the picture by accompanying it with a zoomed-out and more comprehensive picture of the economic forces at work in the housing market.

Worried about the housing market? We want to hear from you — especially while our comments are closed due to our website upgrade. Send us your thoughts on this article to [email protected]. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.

About the Author

Contributor @DrCameronMurray

Cameron Murray is an economist who specialises in property markets, resource and environmental economics, and corruption. His research on grey corruption in Australia has been transformed into a book called Rigged: How networks of powerful mates rip off everyday Australians .

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Book Review Guidelines

American Quarterly  represents innovative interdisciplinary scholarship that engages with key issues in American studies. By publishing reviews of books, exhibitions, and diverse media, the journal seeks to make available the broad range of emergent approaches to American studies. Out of the many books published every year, we select a small number for review because of the importance of their topics, methods, and theories for scholars working within the American studies tradition.

American Quarterly publishes 2-4 book review essays in each issue, with the exception of Special Issues, in which the guest editors may choose to include reviews on books relevant to the theme. These review essays typically consider 4-5 book titles per review published within the past two years.

Book reviews should be addressed to a broad readership of scholars from diverse disciplinary perspectives. They should announce and evaluate important developments and trends in scholarly work about American culture as a means of helping American studies scholars learn effectively from each other. It is our hope that the  American Quarterly  book review essay section will serve as a dynamic forum in which a wide variety of concerns and changes in the field are discussed in depth through the consideration of new and thought provoking work in the field.

Reviewers have the responsibility to summarize authors’ arguments fairly and accurately, to locate books under review within a broad scholarly context, and to emphasize the theoretical and methodological implications of any given work for future research in American studies. While reviewers have the right to make normative judgments about books under review, personal attacks, ridicule, and distortion are not acceptable. The primary purpose of the book review section, in our view, is to foster a respectful and rigorous scholarly dialogue, rather than to deliver personal judgments or disagreements.

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A stake in the game: A Rightful Place by Noel Pearson

• Quarterly Essay 55: A Rightful Place: Race, Recognition and a More Complete Commonwealth by Noel Pearson Black Inc 72pp $19.95 AU Published September, 2014 ISBN 9781863956819

There has been a lot of concern about Noel Pearson’s words in the past two years. I don’t mean his written words: those have diminished since his last Quarterly Essay in 2009. Throughout 2012, as he sought treatment for lymphatic cancer, Pearson’s weekly columns in the Australian virtually disappeared, to return only intermittently. Instead, the focus recently has been on what he has said in personal conversations, in which he is alleged to have verbally abused journalists, public servants, ministers and colleagues alike. These allegations have gained traction due to their number and their sources, which have included former boosters such as the Australian ’s Tony Koch. They have, in turn, elicited written defences from Pearson’s allies. Apologetics have included everything from outright denial to arguments that ill-temper is an excusable flaw in a great leader, who has been frustrated by a life spent in a slow-moving policy environment with recalcitrant white bureaucrats.

I raise this set of concerns not to resolve them, but to ask the naive question: why is Pearson’s behaviour important? Certainly, these alleged actions contrast with his public persona, which since 1993 has frequently been that of the conciliator and consultant, first in negotiating with the Keating government, then in the role of adviser to subsequent Prime Ministers, including John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Tony Abbott. In his speeches and essays, Pearson routinely frames himself as someone dedicated to the principles of deliberative democracy, a synthetic thinker on the hunt for ‘the radical centre’, a land rights activist ‘up from the Mission’ soliciting accords in the halls of government. Now some former supporters feel betrayed, as though his personal failings mean he will not, in Koch’s words, ‘mature into a leader for both black and white Australia’. As many Indigenous scholars and activists have noted, white Australians often assume they have a mandate to pass judgement on the culture, behaviour and legitimacy of Indigenous people. At the same time, it would be ‘soft bigotry’ in Pearson’s terms to hold him to a different standard than others.

An alternative answer to my naive question is that Pearson’s alleged behaviour, and our interest in it, matters primarily because it reveals how we engage with him and his work. Despite the fact that he holds no elected office, we address him at an ad hominem level, as we might a politician, as an amalgam of person, politics and practice: someone who, despite his bipartisan approval, is nonetheless a partisan figure. His essays, his initiatives and his tactics are all dealt with at the level of belief. You are a true believer or not, with the result that any position in between is liable to be allotted by either ‘side’ to the other ‘side’. This fallacy is perpetuated by his trenchant critics and his supporters alike. It is an exercise in branding whereby a flaw in his person is a flaw in his politics is a flaw in his programs. I am not suggesting verbal abuse is a trivial matter, but rather that it might be better to approach the work of any influential figure in Indigenous Australian policy through a consideration their career and work, rather than their phone manners.

One symptom of this situation is that there is a relative lack of work dealing with the ideas and the evidence in Pearson’s thought. There are many exceptions in academia – the work of Jon Altman, Gary Foley, David F. Martin, Tim Rowse and Irene Watson, for example – but these are far less numerous or prominent than the speeches and editorials addressing Pearson as an ‘Indigenous leader’ or, in Prime Minister Abbott’s words, a ‘prophet’. Few seemed to notice, for instance, when the evaluation report of his keystone $100 million welfare reform trial in Cape York was released in 2013. The Australian carried quotes about ‘positive results’ and suggested that the trial was ‘changing lives’, ignoring the report’s admission that there are ‘no externally valid measures’ of the desired outcomes, that some improvements were not attributable to the trial, and that no cost-benefit analysis had been completed, despite its inclusion in the initial proposal. This is not to suggest that the fêted trial is a failure – to use that favoured policy refrain – but that its nature and effects are largely unknown. It seems that in our attempts to address the ‘wicked problem’ of Indigenous social policy, many are largely satisfied to believe in a mythic figure rather than wrestle with the realities. Many others, it should be said, understandably wish to work towards local change, while avoiding the polemics of the national policy space.

Pearson’s rise to prominence began in the early 1990s when, as spokesman for the newly formed Cape York Land Council, he played a major role in public debates over the Mabo case and the recognition of native title in Australia. But his transformation into a national ‘leader’ began in earnest with his self-published Our Right to Take Responsibility (2000), an essay in which he gave his diagnosis of the ills of the ‘passive welfare mentality’. Pearson argued that the pre-colonial ‘economy’ of Indigenous people ‘was a real economy and demanded responsibility’, just as the ‘real economy’ of the Missions had maintained that ‘work was imperative to survive’. The introduction of equalitarian civil rights and access to social welfare in the late 1960s had created a ‘gammon economy’ that uncoupled survival from labour. The consequences for remote Indigenous communities, as he laid them out, were disastrous. Social welfare payments, he has often repeated, are literally an ‘addiction’ and need to be treated as such if communities and governments hope to establish individual responsibility.

Reading across his work, from his 1986 honours thesis on the ‘Mission culture’ of his hometown of Hope Vale to this newest essay, A Rightful Place , there are notable consistencies. He is ultimately a romantic thinker, in the sense that he always aims to trace a course from disaster towards redemption, rather than mere remediation. There are certain ‘human’ truths derivable from Enlightenment thinkers – particularly Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Johann Gottfried Herder – whose realisation would be our perfection: self-interest is the driver of all progress; the market and the family are our ultimate context; rationalism is the measure of all thought. These truths are supplemented by the work of economist Amartya Sen. They have led to Pearson’s affirmations of both the singular ability of market economics to alleviate and elevate populations and his cosmopolitan view of individuals as, following Sen, ‘layered identities’. Indigenous people, like everyone else, are attached to and defined by many other identities besides their Indigeneity. The other side of this, as he affirms in his newest essay, is that a ‘serious’ people must embrace their inevitable inclusion within the Australian state, with their specific culture and rights incorporated within a ‘united, undifferentiated public citizenship’.

Another consistent attitude is Pearson’s suspicion of those he alternately labels progressives or liberals. In Land Rights and Progressive Wrongs (2003), he mirrors and develops ideas also voiced by anthropologist Peter Sutton in 2001, suggesting there had long been ‘dysfunction’ in remote communities that ‘the left was unwilling to discuss’. Avowedly ‘progressive’ ideals, such as community self-management and a focus on land rights, had actually ‘kept my people down in the underclass’. Progressives, in Pearson’s account, are ideologues. They reframe disadvantage and destitution as legitimate cultural difference. In a 1987 essay, Pearson voiced his misgivings about anthropologists and other ‘experts’ creating ideas about Indigenous culture ‘that now shackle Aboriginal society’; in A Rightful Place , he restates his misgivings about environmentalists and the ‘green left’, accusing them of perpetuating ‘racist’ conceptions of what should be allowable on Indigenous land. The ‘left’ have, however, steadily receded as the object of his address, while remaining the caricatured object of his rhetoric. They are tacitly assumed, perhaps correctly, to support Indigenous empowerment and constitutional recognition.

At the same time, one of the clearest inconsistencies in Pearson’s work is his own reading of Indigeneity. Caught between his own cautions about essentialising and the need to define Indigenous people as a group with legitimate differences and a special claim on the state, he shifts his definition between texts. The result has been an insistence on different accounts of continuity at different points. He has stated that the ‘dysfunction’ of some remote communities is the product of their ‘classical’ society and that it is not organic to them; that tradition drives human existence and that it is ‘a choice rather than a necessity’; that communal lands constitute the ‘cultural hearth’ of Indigenous people and that there should be reform to allow private ownership. In A Rightful Place , ‘Indigenous culture’ is less the practices and beliefs of three per cent of the national population than it is the languages and stories of antiquity, which, he states, are Australia’s national heritage. As Tim Rowse has argued, the ‘people’ conceptualised in Pearson’s work shift between a kind of class defined by their economic status, a specific population defined by their remoteness and isolation, a dispersed racialised minority defined by their relation to the Australian state, and (at minimum) the residents of Cape York. Overall, Rowse writes, Pearson’s shifting account of Indigenous people-hood ‘thus dwells on what makes them like their fellow Australians as much as on what distinguishes them’.

The many other contradictions found within and between Pearson’s texts are more like musical variations, riffs around themes shaped to suit the political mood of the moment. To give one example, Pearson often argues forcefully about the disadvantage and racism experienced by Indigenous people and how this leads to economic and social marginalisation. In 2000, attentive to the interests of Howard-era neoliberalism, Pearson wrote of Indigenous peoples’ ‘right to an economy’ and their ‘right to take responsibility’, granting them prospective accountability. A Rightful Place , however, argues that they want and need to be ‘allowed’ their ‘freedom to take responsibility’. Similarly, Pearson has written on many occasions about the need for government and its agencies to be ‘junior partners’ in Indigenous governance, detailing the disastrous and paternalistic experiments that have diminished people’s capabilities rather than enhanced them. But he has often made exceptions in moments of apparent crisis, providing fiats for top-down state interventions such as the Northern Territory Emergency Response (the Intervention), conditional income management, and alcohol bans in remote communities. Perhaps, just as David Marr has suggested about Abbott, Pearson is an amalgam of savvy pragmatist and idealist.

A Rightful Place is a curious mix of these two tendencies, one attuned to the present administration. It outlines a platform for the constitutional recognition of Indigenous people, without making major prescriptions. It returns to some favoured points cribbed or paraphrased from previous work. It is primarily an appeal to conservatives and realpolitik liberals who agree, as Pearson often says, that ‘only Nixon can go to China’ – that is, only a conservative can win the prize of constitutional change, where success relies on a majority of people in a majority of states acceding.

The task of convincing this audience takes on many forms. It includes a comic binary between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’ paired with a flattering image of ‘the right’ ready for their delectation. Real conservatives are, in Pearson’s account, the guardians of memory and tradition, a group for whom difference is intrinsically valuable and ‘an end in itself’. They are apparently defined by their ‘respect for and connection with the dead’, expressing an oikophilia (‘love of home’) that parallels many Indigenous peoples’ love of country. Pearson neglects to consider how this praise matches poorly with the actual record of actual conservatives, whose policies and practices have often expressed no regard for the differences and traditions of Indigenous and migrant groups alike, and whose love of home has, in practice, driven them to deny and undermine the legal recognition of Indigenous relations to country. These ‘real conservatives’ are fictions designed to seduce. In seeking this end, Andrew Bolt rates a sympathetic mention, the Australian and Rupert Murdoch are addressed with great admiration, and even Galarrwuy Yunupingu and Rachel Perkins are addressed as ‘Australian conservatives’.

The argument begins by outlining the grounds of Indigenous peoples’ grievance with the state, reminding us of the ubiquity and vulgarity of nineteenth century racism, and of the decimation of Tasmanian Aborigines. While Pearson agrees with settler colonial historians, such as Patrick Wolfe, that ‘protectionism’ and extermination both ostensibly seek the end of distinct peoples, he stops short of Wolfe’s larger argument that today’s politics of recognition are part of the same structure. In Pearson’s account, dispossession is presented as being largely in the past – rather than ongoing – though this is done to make the case that Australia has failed to come to terms with ‘the fact that there were peoples here before the British arrived’, and has never seriously made ‘provision for those peoples and their interests to be recognised within the nation’. Pearson proposes that this settlement might come about via constitutional change, first, through refiguring the category of race and, second, through reshaping the mode of inclusion.

As he lucidly argues, the inclusion of the category of race in the 1901 Constitution allowed Indigenous people to be excluded from the foundation of the Commonwealth. Section 51 xxvi disbarred the Commonwealth from making laws with respect to ‘the aboriginal race in any State’. The error was exacerbated by the 1967 referendum, which brought Indigenous people within the ambit of federal power, protecting them from the predations of autocratic states, but on the ‘fatefully wrong’ basis of race.

Pearson suggests we now excise the antiquated and false category of race. It is hard to imagine who would oppose such a proposition. The 22-person Expert Panel on Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution, of which he was a member, recommended the deletion of Section 51 xxvi – though, unlike the panel, Pearson does not now recommend adding supplements, such as provisions prohibiting racial discrimination and entitling the Commonwealth to make laws to assist any group in overcoming disadvantage, ameliorating past discrimination and protecting their cultures, languages and heritage. Many will criticise this retreat from recommendations he helped write as a lack of courage, or a surfeit of pragmatism. Pearson admits that it stems from his honest appraisal of what will succeed. New prohibitions will not, he states, gain the necessary support from ‘con cons’ (constitutional conservatives) and others. It would be rude, of course, to remind us that these are the same people who have been recently toiling to undermine existing racial discrimination laws.

The second aspect of Pearson’s argument does not necessarily have anything to do with the Constitution. While Pearson presses for a renewed inclusion through both the preservation of Indigenous cultural heritage and a new Indigenous governance agency, he does not explicitly state that these should be part of a referendum. It is a strange destination to find oneself in as a reader, given the essay spends significant time outlining Indigenous identity. Pearson writes of people with homelands, languages and cultures; people who have been, and continue to be, subject to the singular brew of paternalism, ignorance and racism that typifies Australian statecraft.

What would the necessary ‘indigenous voice in indigenous affairs’ and ‘substantive change in the national approach’ look like? Few engaged in Indigenous politics would disagree with the basic contention that Indigenous people want and deserve a robust presence in government. Might Pearson prefer it to take the form of a special committee, or a revived Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC), or some franchise version of the unfinished ‘Empowered Communities’ initiative? Does he hope for it to be designed by Koori, Murri, Nunga, Palawa, Yolngu, Noongar and Anangu people, for example, or should it be designed by existing Indigenous bodies, or should it be bestowed by Canberra? He doesn’t say. In only explicitly committing to the elimination of race from the Constitution, A Rightful Place is curiously limited. It leaves its author free to test ideas in the Murdoch and Schwartz media without declaring his hand.

As Pearson notes, Australia’s lack of any enduring Indigenous institutions to represent Indigenous people’s interests to state and federal governments makes it peculiar among settler colonial countries. Māori-specific seats have existed in Aotearoa New Zealand’s parliament since 1869, and a multitude of national bodies also exist, including, among others, the Māori Women’s Welfare League (founded in 1951), the New Zealand Māori Council (founded in 1962) and the Federation of Māori Authorities (founded in 1985). In the United States, large organisations such as the National Congress of American Indians (founded in 1944) and the National Indian Youth Council (founded in 1961) also continue to function today as forms of national representation.

Institutions have momentarily fulfilled this function in Australia – the National Aboriginal Consultative Committee (1973-1976), the National Aboriginal Conference (1977-1985), ATSIC (1990-2005), the National Indigenous Council (2004-2008) – but they have all faced the same relative disadvantage, existing chiefly at the discretion of administrations that inevitably feel entitled to end them. With little public backlash, these bodies were each dissolved, typically once their membership’s inability to influence negative policy decisions made their position untenable. ATSIC, the sole body with an elected membership, a statutory basis and any financial power, was disbanded amidst allegations of corruption and chauvinism in 2005. Following the critical ‘In the Hands of the Regions’ review in November 2003, and with the support of the Labor Party, Prime Minister Howard happily declared that ‘the experiment in elected representation for Indigenous people has been a failure’. Since this time, Indigenous people continue to lack guaranteed political representation. Neither the elected National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples (2010-present), nor handpicked advisory boards, such as the Indigenous Advisory Council, have any formal power.

Those familiar with Pearson’s career may find his hope for a new Indigenous agency hypocritical or disingenuous. He has not held or run for any elected office, despite apparent opportunities, and he has sometimes been criticised by elected bodies, such as Indigenous community councils, for excluding them or speaking for them. More broadly, while he reminds us throughout A Rightful Place that he is ‘a reader of history’, he curiously neglects to address his own experience and knowledge of this particular past. His career reveals his acute awareness, for instance, of the vulnerabilities of Indigenous representatives and institutions, and how time and again they have been discarded when they became inconvenient. It is not difficult to imagine why, for instance, he has not sought a parliamentary career like Senator Neville Bonner (1971-1983), the first Indigenous person to be elected to federal office. Bonner faced down the difficulties of being, in Rowse’s words, ‘simultaneously a liberal, a Queenslander and a champion of Indigenous rights’ during the Bjelke-Petersen era. When, after several terms in office, he sought to prioritise Indigenous interests over others, he was seen by the Liberal Party to have gotten ‘out of hand’ and was demoted to an unwinnable position on their Senate ticket. Other parliamentarians, such as Ken Wyatt and Linda Burney, have been disparaged as insufficiently ‘authentic’ and therefore not representative of their people.

Pearson’s rise to the position of national ‘Indigenous leader’ over the past two decades has involved significant contact with politicians, but almost no engagement with representative institutions. He has developed ‘policy solutions’ that have enabled him to avoid state capture while attaining formal and informal influence. There is a line from Pearson’s 1993 Boyer Lecture that sticks out in this regard:

For a long time, the only political currency Aboriginal people could use was their refusal to be involved … [now] to refuse to engage in the game and to fail to appreciate the rules and limitations – even if we still wish to disrupt the game – no longer seems smart.

Since this time, he has developed a network of allied private organisations over which he has significant control but mixed formal power. After Our Right to Take Responsibility , he founded a new coordination agency, Cape York Partnerships, the centre of a significant COAG trial targeting development and social reform. The policy body Cape York Institute followed in 2005, made possible by on-going financial support from state and federal governments, with the aim of devising and implementing the Cape York welfare reform trial. Calling upon the support of the Murdoch press, Pearson secured an extension for this trial in 2012. It now includes over fifteen initiatives, ranging from bicultural schooling to small home renovation grants. Today, his liaisons with power involve publicly playing host and friend to Andrew Forrest and the ‘once-in-a-generation conservative’ Tony Abbott. In September 2013, Abbott pledged to support Pearson’s new initiative, ‘Empowering Communities’, which hopes to combine aspects of the trial with new funding arrangements between government and regions.

Whether or not one finds this complex situation dubious – and there are critics – I raise it to make a larger point. A significant reason that Pearson is an influential person today is because he has thrived during a period in which other Indigenous representatives and agencies retreated or were removed from ‘the game’ of trying to wrestle equity and recognition from political elites. While white agencies and authorities have slowly repossessed any power they ever ceded over Indigenous affairs, Pearson has been singularly successful in building his agenda and maintaining his autonomy. It is too simple to suggest, as some have, that this is because he acts as a government functionary. He is both idealist and pragmatist, both a supporter and a trenchant critic of state-led interventions into Indigenous lives. It is more accurate to say that Pearson has tactically navigated the fraught space between governments, mainstream news media, Indigenous communities and Indigenous citizens, diversifying his interests in order to distribute his vulnerabilities. The network he has built operates at a distance from both government and Pearson himself. It is able to cooperate with initiatives, given the opportunity, but it is also able to survive the collapse of a funding source, the criticism of a single organ, or the ‘reform’ of a single sector. In the national context, the network Pearson has built in Cape York has been uniquely successful in surviving and garnering more and more support from governments, journalists and the non-Indigenous public alike. For Pearson to argue for a new democratic organisation integrated into government will remind some of the old Groucho Marx line: he doesn’t care to belong to any club that will have him as a member. And with good reason.

At the same time, we need to remain clear that Pearson’s status as a leader and public intellectual in this space is made possible by other features of ‘the game’ in Australia. Due to the reluctance of Australians to incorporate Indigenous people into government since 1788 and the consequent need for administrations to legitimise the ways in which they govern a historically subjected people without any guaranteed representation, Australia is always in want of a social license. As a result, individual administrations are always in want of answers, always in want of advocates and panels that can be recognised – whether by the white majority, Indigenous communities, or both – as giving the appearance of being a consultative, participatory, receptive government.

This is the less obvious structure of ‘the game,’ the structure that will now produce predictable and reactive suggestions from the many (white) commentators and pundits who, for various reasons, are fearful of any substantive change. For those (few?) who admit that this may not be a matter of market integration and remediating equity here and there, the answers will be royal commissions, and standing committees on Indigenous affairs (there is one, it is all white), and advisory bodies, and consultation in ‘the bush,’ and sector reform and expert panels, as though these things are entirely novel. The whole spectacular carnival of government managerialism will be put to the task of preserving power in the colonial state.

What role will Pearson and other Indigenous groups and individuals take in the constitutional debate over the forthcoming two to three years? The purpose of A Rightful Place would seem to be for Pearson to announce his presence but not his actual position, and to pressure the ‘Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs’ to develop his own platform. Pearson does commit to the deletion of race, but his proposed agenda to support the preservation of Indigenous ‘classical culture’ is more clearly a budgetary item. It is a matter of funding and museums, not constitutional clauses. As for the possibility of a major alteration of the governance of Indigenous affairs, this is where the concern will now lie, though the only truly ‘substantive’ response will be a statutory one. The deep irony is that while the creation of a robust statutory body would have little effect on Pearson’s own career, it might spell the end of careers such as his. It might be the end of gestures like this new Quarterly Essay ; the end of private citizens being greeted as the sole voice of a people; the end of messiahs and ‘solutions’; the beginning of a serious settlement for Indigenous people.

Acknowledgement: My thanks to the two anonymous referees for their helpful comments on a draft of this article. Any errors of course remain my own.

Expert Panel on Recognising Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples in the Constitution, Report of the Expert Panel (Commonwealth of Australia, 2012). Christine Fletcher, Aboriginal Self-Determination in Australia, (Aboriginal Studies Press, 1994). Gary Foley, ‘The Australian Labor Party and the Native Title Act,’ Sovereign Subjects, edited by Aileen Moreton-Robertson (Allen and Unwin, 2007). Patricia Karvelas, ‘Noel Pearson’s Cape York trial “changing lives”,’ The Australian (28 March 2013). D. F. Martin, Is Welfare Dependency ‘Welfare Poison’?: An assessment of Noel Pearson’s proposals for Aboriginal welfare reform (Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, 2001). Timothy Neale, ‘Staircases, Pyramids and Poisons: The immunitary paradigm in the works of Noel Pearson and Peter Sutton,’ Continuum, 27: 2 (2013). Noel Pearson, ‘Mabo: Towards respecting equality and difference,’ Voices from the Land, edited by Mandawuy Yunupingu (ABC Books, 1994). Noel Pearson, ‘Guugu Yimidhirr History: Hope Vale Lutheran Mission 1900-1950,’ Maps, Dreams, History: Race and Representation in Australia, edited by Jan Kociumbas (University of Sydney, 1998). Noel Pearson, Our Right to Take Responsibility (Noel Pearson and Associates, 2000). Noel Pearson, ‘Land Rights and Progressive Wrongs,’ Griffith Review, 2 (2003). Noel Pearson, Quarterly Essay 35: Radical Hope: Education and Equality in Australia (Black Inc., 2009). Tim Rowse, ‘Out of Hand: The battles of Neville Bonner,’ Journal of Australian Studies, 21 (1997). Tim Rowse, Rethinking Social Justice: From ‘Peoples’ to ‘Populations’ (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2012). William Sanders, ‘Outsiders or Insiders? Strategic choices for Australian Indigenous leadership,’ Public Leadership, edited by Paul t’Hart and John Uhr (E Press, 2008).

Timothy Neale is a Research Fellow in the Institute for Culture and Society, University...

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The Contrary Journalist: Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake

One of the sharpest female journalists of Britain’s Victorian era, Eastlake considered Jane Eyre an exercise in rudeness and vulgarity.

“It is a very remarkable book: we have no remembrance of another combining such genuine power with such horrid taste. Both together have equally assisted to gain the great popularity it has enjoyed; for in these days of extravagant adoration of all that bears the stamp of novelty and originality, sheer rudeness and vulgarity have come in for a most mistaken worship.”

One would think that the reviewer responsible for these lines was attacking one of the most aberrant, grotesque, and poorly written novels of all time. However, the book of “sheer rudeness and vulgarity” was actually Charlotte Bronte’s Jane Eyre . This searing criticism, published in the Quarterly Review in 1849, spilled from the iron pen of one of the sharpest female journalists of the Victorian era in Britain, the future Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake.

Born on November 17, 1809, Elizabeth Rigby was trained from a young age to participate in the humanities: not as a bystander, but as a contributor. Born into an intellectually inquisitive, upper-middle-class family in Norwich , Rigby was well educated and resolved to live by her pen. In the early nineteenth century, there were only a handful of respectable “careers” to which a woman of her social status could aspire, and writing was one of them. According to literature scholar Barbara Korte , Rigby—not yet a married woman with a husband to rely upon for steady income—was clever enough to first break into the market with a popular medium, women’s travel guides:

Awareness of the variety of women’s travel, even in the early phase of Queen Victoria’s reign, emerges, for instance, from a review of recent books by “Lady Travellers” in the Quarterly Review (1845). Its author, Elizabeth Rigby, herself a published travel writer ( Letters from the Shores of the Baltic, 1842), distinguishes several classes of travel-writing sisters, from ladies residing abroad for a longer period, to those with enough money for “wanderings of great length, undertaken solely for pleasure and curiosity.”

Rigby’s early writings were such a success that the Quarterly Review’s editor, John Gibson Lockhart, hired her as a regular staff writer. She was perfectly suited as a reviewer who wouldn’t cave to public opinion and pressure.

And she certainly didn’t. When Jane Eyre was published in 1847 by Smith, Elder & Co. of London, under the mysterious male pseudonym of Currer Bell, it was a runaway success, provoking conversations all over Britain about its daring plotline, interrogation of class boundaries , and original first-person narration. But cynicism caught up with it in the form of Rigby’s disapproval. Though she suspected the author—writing under the pseudonym “Currer Bell”—was male, she entertained the possibility the book was actually written by a woman. In her eyes, this would only make its offensive content worse. She was conservative by nature and believed a woman who could write about an extramarital love affair with such ease had to be especially depraved.

“For if we ascribe the book to the woman at all,” she suggests in her review, “we have no alternative but to ascribe it to one who has, for some sufficient reasons, long forfeited the society of her own sex.”

The Quarterly Review had no qualms about publishing reviews that were politically and religiously biased to an undiplomatic degree. And Rigby’s reputation as a critic was so solidly established that she had no reason to fear backlash or a plummet in her career. Engaged (and soon wed) to Sir Charles Lock Eastlake, who had unshakeable footing in the art world as a collector and writer himself, offered more social safety, which was fortunate, as her outspoken dislike of popular culture didn’t stop at Jane Eyre. For example, she didn’t consider photography a true art . Her controversial 1857 essay “ Photography ” judged the medium to be merely “a household word and a household want.” She held the firm point of view that technology had no place among the fine arts, arguing that some standard of tradition had to be upheld. The business of photography was “to give evidence of facts, as minutely and as impartially as, to our shame, only an unreasoning machine can give.” It contributed nought to “that mystery called Art.”

Utterly fearless and confident in her merits as a writer, Eastlake also waged literary war with one of the leading art critics of the time, John Ruskin (1819–1900). Ruskin’s critical career opened with a defense of the controversial painter J. M. W. Turner; the book would become the first volume of his soon-to-be-canonical Modern Painters   (1843–1860). In his prime, Ruskin was considered a nearly invincible authority in the art world. But Eastlake, even though writing at a time when women’s voices carried less weight in the fields of high art, had the courage to disagree with him.

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Scholar of Victorian literature Adele M. Ernstrom investigates Eastlake’s critique of Modern Painters , concluding that she was generally unimpressed with Ruskin’s arrogance on the matter of what constitutes authenticity in an artist’s career. “In her [1856] review,” Ernstrom writes, Eastlake

bypasses the problematic status of ideas presented in Modern Painters III : what, she might have asked, could be the conceptual content of “ideas of truth” evoked by Ruskin as somehow contained or inherent in already given “facts?” Eastlake’s text engages instead with Ruskin’s insistence on the nullity of the painter’s language except in its instrumental function as a vehicle of thought. […] Her thesis is that the only way to determine the ultimate value of art is by identifying “those qualities which no other art but itself can express, and which are therefore to be considered as proper [her emphasis] to it.”

But Eastlake also opposed Ruskin on a personal level. She was closely allied with Ruskin’s mistreated wife, Euphemia “Effie” Gray , and was a loyal supporter in Gray’s campaign to obtain an annulment. For all her biting criticism of other women, Eastlake was also capable of being another woman’s guardian angel.

In 2014, Emma Thompson wrote and acted in Effie Gray , a film based on the disastrous marriage of Ruskin and Gray. Thompson played Eastlake in the feature, the only depiction of the writer in film to date. In Thompson’s formulation, Eastlake’s role as a pioneering female columnist in the art world was eclipsed by her position as Effie Gray’s best friend and confidante. The focus was on Effie, and any feminist themes were regulated to the subject of divorce rights. Eastlake’s intellectual accomplishments were scarcely mentioned in the script. In an ironic twist, John Ruskin was played by Thompson’s real-life husband Greg Wise. One can only imagine the scathing review Eastlake would pen about Effie Gray, being fond neither of lens-based art nor Ruskin. But she died in 1893, and the Quarterly Review stopped publication in 1967. We’ll never know her—perhaps contradictory—thoughts on the matter.

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Gathering Intelligence: Chelsea Manning, the War on Terror, and the Trans Internet

Charlie markbreiter analyzes chelsea manning as era-defining symbol, internet darling, and enemy of the state, in an essay from the larb quarterly issue no. 42, “gossip.”, by charlie markbreiter september 6, 2024.

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IN 2009, A US security intelligence operative stationed in Iraq began to notice some gaps in the American government’s “surgical precision” drone strategy. “I was trained to be an all-source analyst,” writes Chelsea Manning in her memoir, README.TXT (2022). “I’m used to collecting the full context and getting—and sharing—as much detail as possible.”

Manning’s childhood and adolescence in many ways exemplified the white millennial trans experience. While transness is culturally synonymized with coastal cities, Manning, like many trans people, grew up elsewhere; she was born to a former Navy intelligence officer and his Welsh wife in Oklahoma City in 1987. Not only did Manning’s father, Brian, instill “rigid cis gender sensibilities”; he also evoked a thoroughly militarized model of masculinity. Little Mermaid dolls were replaced with small fighter jets.

As it was for many isolated, closeted trans people in the aughts—not even out to themselves, let alone to anyone around them—the internet was Manning’s escape. First, it was forums: trolling, lolz, meeting other gay people. Then she became skilled at coding. Back in meatspace, she was aggressively bullied for being gay; her family eventually kicked her out. In Chicago’s Boystown gayborhood, she experienced IRL queer romance and community for the very first time.

But she couldn’t make ends meet. She’d stay with hookups for as long as she could (to shower, get a meal) before going back to living in her car. In a 2016 testimonial used to appeal to then-president Barack Obama for clemency, she wrote, “There were many nights that I was afraid of getting robbed of what little I had, or raped, or even worse.” She moved in with an aunt in Maryland, working at Starbucks full-time to pay for community college tuition. “I tried very hard to get ahead,” she said in the same letter to Obama, “but I soon burned out.”

Manning hoped that enlisting would finally offer financial stability and cure what she would eventually identify as gender dysphoria. But instead of serving on the front lines, “her aptitude for computer-based intelligence work was detected early in training and she was sent to work in Iraq,” as The Guardian reports. Being very online had prepared Manning for war.

In 2007, as the subprime mortgage market teetered, Apple released its first iPhone to US audiences, popularizing mobile internet access for the very first time. While the iPhone was new, it relied on a preexisting military technology called Geographic Information Systems (GIS), which turned geographically specific datasets—such as the names and locations of enemy targets—into useful schematics like topological maps. As the iPhone became ubiquitous, so did GIS: ride-sharing apps like Uber rely on it, as do digital marketing firms—basically any system that uses geographic data.

The new level of connection usually associated with the advent of the iPhone and Web 2.0 was directly afforded by US military technology like GIS. It is unsurprising that the same decades that saw the rise of the “War on Terror”—characterized by its increasingly impersonal and digitized drone warfare—also saw the rise of social media. And as Caren Kaplan points out in her prescient 2006 essay “Precision Targets: GPS and the Militarization of U.S. Consumer Identity,” GIS is not just military technology; it actually enabled the US’s modern military-industrial complex, which required tools like geo-mapping, photography, and satellite positioning to expand its blossoming drone program. “You could not,” as Kaplan argues, “have targeted marketing without targeted assassinations.”

The rise of US trans populations in the aughts and early 2010s has been correlated with the rise of Web 2.0. “By the time I identified as trans, I located this habit as part of a larger pattern, enabled by the Internet,” writes scholar Avery Dame-Griff, author of The Two Revolutions: A History of the Transgender Internet (2023). “My first connections with trans folks came online.” This, as Dame-Griff argues, was just the norm for trans people worldwide. “The role of the Internet in my experience was by no means unique. Online, trans youth found and supported each other across a variety of fora, ranging from IRC chat rooms, message boards, home pages, LiveJournal, MySpace, and beyond.” Trans people made up such a geographically dispersed population that it was easier to meet a trans man in Germany online than to run into another trans man in your hometown.

If trans people were very online, they were also thus very reliant on the military-grade GIS technology refined in the War on Terror’s drone program. Web 2.0 not only facilitated content produced by and for trans people—it also increased the odds of them accessing it through “the algorithm.” Through the internet’s tautological logic, the more you clicked on trans content, the more of it you’d see. Cable had never been cunt like that.

The 1990 Gulf War was the first conflict to make extensive use of GIS. The narrative fed to US audiences was that Iraq, unable to pay its $14 billion debt to Kuwait, instead invaded the oil-rich nation in a grab for resources and territory. The United States swept in as global police officer to counteract this rogue state, all the while securing its geopolitical and economic interests in the region.

In order to justify this proxy war to the American public, the US government needed to limit its casualties and expenses. Precision-targeted warfare, especially drones run on GIS, offered the perfect solution. Despite not even being “fully operational when the war began in 1990,” GPS-based weaponry “quickly took pride of place in the pantheon of satellite-assisted technologies.” Instead of carpet-bombing, commanders could quickly locate, map out, and eliminate enemy combatants.

While “precision targeting” was instrumental to the Gulf War, it also informed how the war was narrativized to US audiences. Mirroring the language of “targeted assassinations” from what Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently described as “the most moral army in the world,” Americans used GIS to paint themselves as ethical technocratic actors. If this was a war, it would be served end-of-history style, knocking out “the bad guys” while leaving civilian infrastructure intact. Of course, as evidenced by the ongoing genocide in Gaza, carrying out individual strikes seldom precludes targeting civilian infrastructure.

Significantly, GIS technology also facilitated coverage of the Gulf conflict, allowing networks to run 24-hour coverage of what became known as “the video game war.” During World War II, “newsreels reached movie theater audiences no less than a month after the occurrence of events depicted,” Kaplan writes. During the Vietnam War, “that time lag had been reduced to approximately twenty-four to forty-eight hours.” But as Iraq invaded Kuwait, satellites allowed news outlets to provide real-time coverage, turning a conflict that most Americans barely understood into a constantly changing Marvel movie screened in their living rooms. While this footage was heavily censored by the Pentagon, the 24-hour feed and gritty visuals allowed anchors to present the news live. Civilians increasingly expected technology to seamlessly merge time and space.

The United States officially invaded Afghanistan in October 2001, yet drones were already a military staple long before George W. Bush took office. As Christopher J. Coyne and Abigail R. Hall point out in their 2016 paper “The Drone Paradox: Fighting Terrorism with Mechanized Terror,” drones were used for decades prior to 9/11. “Since 2001,” however, “the use of drones has shifted from an instrument of training and surveillance to a tool for conducting offensive strikes against enemy targets.” “Over this time,” they argue, “the U.S. government’s covert drone program has become institutionalized as a defining aspect of its military strategy and operations.” From 2004 to 2016, US drone strikes are confirmed to have killed 5,909 people in Pakistan alone.

As troop losses mounted and public support waned from its post-9/11 high, then-ascendant president Obama moved away from the Bush administration’s strategy. After killing Osama bin Laden in May 2011, Obama declared the War on Terror over in 2013 and began to withdraw troops from Afghanistan. He did not, however, stop deploying drones. “The use of drones,” wrote the Bureau of Investigative Journalism in a 2017 report, “aligned with Obama’s ambition to keep up the war against al Qaeda while extricating the US military from intractable, costly ground wars.”

Despite this messaging, drones were not the flying scalpels that Obama and his new CIA director John Brennan made them out to be. Even in the imperially ideal case—in which a single “enemy” is killed without any other casualties—the metrics determining who is a target and why were flimsy. In many cases, someone could be classified as a “terrorist” just by virtue of being a military-age man. As the past decade of Black Lives Matter uprisings against police brutality made apparent, violence is often justified based on appearance rather than action. And if there are mistakes, so-called “collateral damage”—well, so be it.

The top comment on “Chelsea Manning DJ set at sksksks,” a 2022 Reddit post on r/pcmusic, reads, “The military whistleblower to trans DJ pipeline.” Manning, wearing a pair of light-up cat ears, plays a mix of “Immaterial” by Scottish DJ SOPHIE, who had died the year before. Oil of Every Pearl’s Un-Insides , SOPHIE’s breakout album, was released in 2018, a year after Manning got out of prison.

“Chelsea Manning Changed the Course of History,” reads a 2017 Vogue headline. “Now She’s Focusing on Herself.” A 2022 profile in the online magazine Them , which includes coverage of her nascent DJ career, argues that “Chelsea Manning is done being a symbol.” Politics is cast as a bad dream from which she had just woken up. Both pieces also repeatedly call Manning a “whistleblower,” which has always been easier than discussing her actual role in the War on Terror.

In a 2017 profile, New York Times staff writer Matthew Shaer hints that Manning’s decision to become a whistleblower was motivated by her gender dysphoria. Manning remembers wondering, while on leave from Iraq, if she should come out to her family as trans, before realizing “she’d never be able to go through with it.” Immediately after, Shaer writes that Manning “downloaded […] almost every SigActs report from the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and burned a compressed version of the data onto CD-RW discs, one of which was labeled ‘Lady Gaga.’”

If this were a novel, we might issue the following close reading: unable to reveal her own true identity, Manning revealed the state’s true identity instead. Manning’s transness, military career, and eventual whistleblowing had never been unrelated, either personally or structurally. Fueled by GIS, both the trans internet and military-intelligence analysis were elaborate modes of gossip. Manning had mastered both. With the trans internet, GIS helps trans people observe, interact with, and talk shit about each other in ever more targeted ways. With War on Terror–era surveillance, GIS helps the state “gather intelligence” on “targets” and then ascertain which rumors are verifiable, and thus actionable, facts—just as any good gossip would do.

But while gender dysphoria and the “Don’t Ask Don’t Tell” policy increased Manning’s alienation from the military, they were not the main reasons she chose to expose state secrets. The primary reason was that she no longer thought the United States should be in Afghanistan and Iraq. In an anonymous text file accompanying the leak, Manning wrote that her goal was to expose “the true nature of twenty-first century asymmetric warfare.”

Her critiques of asymmetric warfare have not been limited to the War on Terror. On May 7, 2021, Israeli police stormed Gaza’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, deploying tear gas, rubber bullets, and stun grenades. “[T]his is not a complicated issue,” Manning tweeted six days later. “[T]he US gov, through decades of funding and several UN security council votes, is directly complicit in the ethnic cleansing occurring in Palestinian territory.”

Manning doesn’t tweet anymore. If you were a security consultant who used to work for the US military, you probably wouldn’t either. The last thing she tweeted, on December 22, 2022, was, “lol, lmao.”

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Charlie Markbreiter is the author of Gossip Girl Fanfic Novella (2022). He is a PhD candidate at the CUNY Graduate Center and organizes with Writers Against the War on Gaza (WAWOG).

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The relationship between organisational agility and informal learning

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• Sebo Boerma 1 , 2 ,
• Maarten de Laat 3 &
• Marjan Vermeulen 1 , 4 , 5  

In dealing with rapid and profound technological, occupational and societal changes organisations benefit from paying attention to their organisational agility. Learning as part of organisational agility however is an under researched area of attention. In this integrated literature review we answer the question if organisational agility and learning are related, focussing on informal learning as an important way to learn in the workplace. We analyse ways in which papers on organisational agility integrate concepts as learning in their definition/approach. We conclude that the business literature includes to some extend perspectives on learning within the approach to agility. But the way learning is conceptualised is mostly moderately and instrumental. This means that learning is mostly seen as a way to become agile as an organisation. The integrative review identifies three areas in which understanding of organisational agility and specifically the framework of Wendler can be enriched and deepened with results from research on informal learning. The integration of both concepts results in three overlapping areas: leadership, social networks and knowledge development. These three areas contain mechanisms that influence both informal learning and organisational agility and therefore describe the relationship between these two concepts. Examples of these mechanisms include working closely together, valuing contributions from different professionals in knowledge development, and stimulating entrepreneurship and risk-taking by employees. More research into the nature of these three areas contributes to a more precise integration of learning theory into the development of the concept of organisational agility. It also provides organisations with approaches for dealing with the changes in their environment in effective and developmental ways.

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1 Introduction

Working in an ever-changing environment means that professionals must adjust their practices daily to be able to provide high quality services and products (Billett 2021 ). This means that learning, knowledge work and organisational change should be inextricably linked to the daily work practice. Researchers refer to organisational agility (OA) when discussing the way organisations can deal effectively with their constantly changing environment. Agile organisations are open, transparent and fluid structures with features that resemble the contingencies of their environment (Dove 1999 ; Sherehiy et al. 2007 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ). Some researchers consider learning at the workplace as one of the main characteristics of an agile organisation (Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Teece et al. 2016 ; Tsou and Cheng 2018 ; Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). However, the exact relationship between OA, learning and knowledge development is still understudied (Tsou and Cheng 2018 ). A few case studies have been conducted on the relationship between organisational learning and agility (Gunsberg et al. 2018 ; Wang et al. 2018 ), but because of the small samples used in this existing research (Tsou and Cheng 2018 ), more in-depth and broader research is recommended.

This integrative review aims to investigate how research on learning, specifically informal learning (IL), can contribute to our understanding and improvement of the concept of OA. Based on Jeong et al.’s ( 2018 ) understanding of IL, this article explores the relationship between learning and organisational agility via the research question: What is the relationship between OA and IL and what mutual mechanisms influence both concepts?

2 Background

2.1 organisational agility.

In organisational theory, the term agility is used in the context of the supply chain, the workforce, software engineering or the organisation as a whole. Agility refers to the capability to respond to changes in the environment in a pro-active, reactive or embracive manner. Scholars argue that a rapidly changing and competitive environment necessitates organisational agility (Dove 1999 ; Gunsberg et al. 2018 ; Phuong et al. 2012 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ).

Although there is no common definition of OA (Walter 2020 ), a review by Förster and Wendler ( 2012 ) concluded that there are several similarities among the various definitions found in the literature. Common elements include speedy response and adaptation, keeping close relationships with both professionals and clients, and skilful handling of knowledge. Further, OA requires the ability to be sensitive to indicators for change in the environment and to create possibilities for acting efficiently and effectively.

Skilful handling of knowledge is one of the common elements identified by Förster and Wendler ( 2012 ), but little is said about this in relation to learning and development. Because Charbonnier-Voirin ( 2011 ) explicitly mentions learning and emphasises the continuous nature of agility; we therefore prefer to take her comprehensive definition of OA:

… a response capability which is intentionally sought out and developed by the organization in order to enable it to act efficiently in a changing environment characterized in particular by complexity, turbulence, and uncertainty. Agility corresponds to the organization’s capacity for permanent adaptability, which it attains not only by reacting rapidly to change but also through its potential of action in anticipating and seizing the opportunities offered by change, in particular through anticipation, innovation, and learning. (Charbonnier-Voirin 2011 , p. 123)

Charbonnier-Voirin argues that learning is one of the mechanisms that allows for agility. The way in which this mechanism manifests is object of this review study. To provide guidance in our review we use the work of Wendler and colleagues (Förster and Wendler 2012 ; Wendler 2014 ; Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). These scholars developed a framework that breaks the concept of OA down into three clear, observable components: structure , people and prerequisites . In 2018, Gunsberg et al. extended this framework to incorporate the need to treat agility as an ability of the entire eco-system, including its customers, suppliers, partners, stakeholders as well as internal processes and procedures. OA is not merely a phase, but a state of being which enables organisations to deal with the need to change, innovate and learn.

The structural component of OA refers to the organisation having structures in place that allow for fast and flexible action in response to changes, and which enable effective internal and external collaboration (Wendler 2014 ). An example of structural OA is having a flat hierarchical structure as opposed to a controlled hierarchical structure. It is necessary to strategically use these structural components, deliberately focus on engagement with the environment, and use this to plan pro-active change. For example, a management may focus on its relationship with other organisations and customers in order to gather information on innovations in the field or a changing request be the clients (Gunsberg et al. 2018 ).

The second component, people agility, refers to the capabilities needed for the workforce and management to translate OA into action and deal with change. Gunsberg et al. ( 2018 ) emphasised the role of learning in this component. People agility pays attention to risk taking and being involved in research and innovation, and using this as a way to reflect and obtain feedback on actions taken in order to learn and improve.

The third component, agility prerequisites , refers to the values and infrastructure that support and encourage organisations to be agile. Examples include: treating change as an opportunity to anticipate, learn and innovate; or the way the infrastructure supports efficient communication such as increased possibilities for collaborating online (Wendler 2014 ). Prerequisites for agility also encompass the way in which values and principles are part of people’s behaviour. For example, whether or not employees are accountable for their actions and results, and whether the organisation is built on a foundation of trust (Gunsberg et al. 2018 ).

Learning is essential for the development of adaptable, creative, and autonomous employees (Charbonnier-Voirin 2011 ), yet it remains largely undefined in OA research (Tsou and Cheng 2018 ). In the context of knowledge-intensive organisations, one can assume that learning is deeply connected to every aspect of the organisation, not only for the maintenance of that knowledge, but also to promote greater agility in work practices and to enhance the capability to deal with change. It is therefore important to gain a more in-depth insight in the relationship between agility and learning in organisations. In the next section we discuss IL in organisations as this form of learning deals specifically with spontaneous and emergent workplace learning in response to change (Marsick 2009 ; Skule 2004 ).

2.2 Informal learning

Literature on learning in organisations makes a distinction between formal, non-formal and informal learning (Colardyn and Bjornavold 2004 ). In general, formal learning refers to pre-planned and well controlled certified learning and training programs. Non-formal is seen as intended self-organised learning, and IL is the more or less hidden curriculum, driven by spontaneous and responsive learning activities undertaken by the workforce to deal with emerging issues and challenges of daily work (Colardyn and Bjornavold 2004 ; Marsick and Watkins 2001 ). IL is increasingly recognised as the primary form of workplace learning (Ellinger 2005 ; Kim and McLean 2014 ; Rogers 2014 ; Skule 2004 ), accounting for 60–80% of all learning (Jeong et al. 2018 ; Manuti et al. 2015 ). Form a theoretical viewpoint, the responsive nature of IL is well-aligned with the emergent continuous learning that is expected to occur in conditions of organisational agility.

The integrative review by Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) provides a conceptual framework for IL and a clear overview of empirical factors supporting IL in organisations. IL in the workplace is often triggered by change in the working context or emerging problems or challenges. Change can therefore be seen as an opportunity or trigger for learning, overlapping with Charbonnier-Voirin’s ( 2011 ) definition of agility and the role of learning therein. According to Jeong et al. ( 2018 ), IL is:

an individual learning process that is highly embedded and integrated with daily work activities, primarily delivers tacit, implicit knowledge, and can be deliberate, conscious, planned, and intended, or spontaneous, unconscious, unplanned, and unintended, resulting in the enhancement of knowledge and skills. (Jeong et al. 2018 , p. 132)

Jeong’s definition integrates aspects of studies on IL in the workplace, such as planned versus unplanned learning (Lohman 2006 ), tacit versus explicit knowledge (Marsick and Volpe 1999 ), and the specific learning conditions at work that support IL (Rogers 2014 ; Skule 2004 ). Although Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) emphasise the individual character of IL, they place it on a continuum from self-directed learning to learning from and with others. The importance of the social aspect of IL (Marsick and Volpe 1999 ) is supported by other researchers (Aring and Brand 1998 ; De Laat 2006 ; Lohman 2006 ). In the description of antecedents, Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) make a distinction between the individual, collective and organisational level of IL. Alongside personal characteristics they found that feedback, networking, interpersonal relationships and different organisational interventions are factors that impact IL activity. Learning in this context is interactive and happens between people and artefacts by making new connections and developing knowledge in a specific context (Greenhow and Lewin 2019 ). But this still is seen as learning from the individual point of view, in which the network or collective is seen as a condition for learning, not a characteristic of learning. Knowledge creation embedded in experience and its context can be personal (individual) but also collective (Garavan et al. 2015 ; Marsick and Watkins 2003 ). Collective learning goes beyond the sum of individual learning processes and encompasses the joint creation and sharing of knowledge within organisations. In order respond to changes in an effective way it is necessary to learn on a collective level, which is not the same as the sum of the individuals (Marsick and Watkins 2003 ). This collective perspective of learning is close to what has been defined as networked learning:

Networked learning involves processes of collaborative, co-operative and collective inquiry, knowledge-creation and knowledgeable action, underpinned by trusting relationships, motivated by a sense of shared challenge and enabled by convivial technologies. Networked learning promotes connections: between people, between sites of learning and action, between ideas, resources and solutions, across time, space and media. (NLEC 2021 , p. 319)

Lack of proximity of colleagues, overly rigid boundaries, and lack of responsibilities, autonomy and risk taking are seen as important impediments to IL activities (Ellinger 2005 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ; Lohman 2006 ; Marsick and Watkins 2003 ). In the social and collaborative environment, trust and interdependence are essential for stimulating a culture of reflection, feedback and problem-solving (Jeong et al. 2018 ; Kim and McLean 2014 ; Marsick 2009 ). From the collective perspective these are all characteristics of learning. As Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) conclude, it is necessary when performing research on the topic of IL to use a multilevel perspective of the interaction between individuals, groups, organisations and their contexts. For this research we therefore will use both definitions (i.e. Jeong et al. 2018 and NLEC 2021 ) to follow up this suggestion.

The review is focused on the relationship between OA and IL and what mechanisms influence this relationship. We want to understand to what extent insights into IL can enrich the understanding of OA.

3 Research method

One of the goals of an integrative literature study is to make critical remarks and create a conceptual framework by synthesising literature on chosen concepts (Torraco 2005 , 2016 ). This methodology is often applied when dealing with new concepts that are not yet well identified and where a conceptual framework is needed to get a grasp of the emerging topic. In this study we predominantly use the work of Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) to scrutinise the relationship between OA and IL.

Our methodology follows the guidelines of Torraco ( 2016 ) for carrying out an integrative review:

Establish a clear focus of the review: define the scope by using a guiding theory to start framing the research and focusing on a specific area. The focus of both concepts (OA and IL) is described in the Background.

Be clear about boundaries of the review , like types of organisations or professions to be included in the review topic or topics. The context is workplace learning, specifically IL as conceptualised by Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) is used to study OA.

Organise and structure the review according to a timeline , research method , or the concepts or themes reviewed. The model of Wendler ( 2014 ) provides the structure. We searched literature prior to 31 March 2021. In order to capture recent reviews on OA, we went back to 2011. For “OA and learning” no limit was used.

Use a transparent search and selection process , like choice of databases and excluding criteria. We chose to perform our search via EBSCO because of the widespread number of databases it covers. We included Google Scholar as an additional check for missing articles. We used the PRISMA approach to increase the transparency of our selection process.

Perform a critical analysis of the themes found during the review. For the critical analysis of the relationship of OA with learning we used the conceptualisation of IL provided by Jeong et al. ( 2018 ).

Create a new formulation of the topic by synthesising the themes , insights and own ideas. In this research the perspective of IL was used to study the concept of OA to gain deeper insights in the relationship between OA and learning.

The new model should be explained by transparent and logical reasoning. This article offers and clearly explains a new model for IL and OA.

3.1 Search and selection process

We first searched using the combination of the terms “Organisational Agility” AND “Informal Learning” in the databases covered by EBSCO. Focusing on peer reviewed articles in scholarly journals, this resulted in only one hit. Therefore, we expanded the search by using the term “Learn*” instead of “Informal Learning”.

Using the same search terms, Google Scholar suggested more possible articles. We selected published peer reviewed articles that referred to OA and learning in their title or description.

Alongside the search for research in which a relationship was made between OA and learning, we also wanted to gain an overview of the concept of OA to be able to integrate it with literature on IL. Jeong et al.’s ( 2018 ) integrative review on IL provided us with the basis for IL, but is supplemented with literature on collective learning. For OA we conducted a second search on “Organisational Agility” and “Review” to find review articles in EBSCO. With Google Scholar we only selected published review articles focusing on OA and including a clear definition of OA.

Initial selection of appropriate literature was based on the title and abstract.

3.2 Appraisal of the literature

The first literature search on “OA AND Learn*” returned 92 results, 49 peer reviewed via EBSCO, 43 via Google Scholar. Of these articles six where duplicates, four where non-English, four had no text, leaving 78 articles. No definitions of OA were found in 31 articles. While Google Scholar does not distinguish between peer reviewed and non-peer reviewed articles, each article was checked for peer reviewed status. After checking another six articles were excluded. For two non-peer reviewed articles we made an exception because they paid special attention to OA and IL, are often referred to in other research. Of the remaining 41 articles, 16 were excluded after reading the texts. Among these articles were those that mentioned learning only once or twice without paying attention to the definition; learning used as a word for which the definition was taken for granted, not as a concept that must be clarified. In some other articles, OA was only mentioned as part of the trends in the context of the organisation. Therefore, a total of 25 articles were included because of search 1.

The second literature search focused on “OA AND Review” resulted in 51 articles (31 via EBSCO, 20 via Google Scholar). We excluded 16 articles which also appeared in the first search. One article was excluded because it was not written in English or Dutch. 24 articles weren’t review articles and were excluded. Two articles were excluded after reading because they dealt with information technology agility. The remaining eight articles were included (See Fig.  1 ).

PRISMA overview of selection of literature: OA and Learning

Via snowballing. seven articles and one book were added to the final sample. Finally, 41 articles were studied for this integrated literature review. They are listed in Appendix 1.

What is the relationship between OA and IL and what mechanisms influence this relationship?

We present the results of the integrative review, focusing on the way aspects of IL are addressed within the description of OA in the articles featuring in this study. To structure our findings, we use the OA components identified by the framework of Wendler ( 2014 ); structures enhancing agility , people agility and agility prerequisites.

4.1 Structures enhancing agility

Structures enhancing agility refers to the ability of the organisation to cooperate and collaborate and make changes in their structure in order to respond to changing needs in their context, like changing questions from customers (Wendler 2014 ). This ability is described by the strategy of the organisation towards agility (engagement/awareness) and the way the operational outlook is structured to be collaborative.

Based on the 41 studies included in this review, we found that 35% reported outcomes on the strategy that could be related with IL and similarly 49% reported on the structure and IL.

4.1.1 Strategy and IL

According to Holbeche ( 2018 ) in her book titled The Agile Organization: How to build an Engaged , Innovative and Resilient Business , organisations should be self-ware, and able to decide in what way to deal with changes. They should develop the knowledge and capability to deal with these changes, and navigate between between resilience and response. In short, Holbeche outlines in her book the strategy that organisations need in order to be agile. Researchers agree that developing the capability to become and stay agile is a conscious organisational strategic choice (Appelbaum et al. 2017a ; Crocitto and Youssef 2003 ; Margherita et al. 2020 ; Tallon et al. 2019 ; Walter 2020 ). Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) found that IL depends explicitly on factors in the context in which it takes place. IL cannot be seen separately from the extent to which the organisation is perceived to have an eye for the long term, the degree of organisational? change, and appreciation of and room for learning. Based on the strategic decision to become agile Margherita et al. ( 2020 ) found, in their literature review of a framework for the development of OA, that organisations should investigate and learn about the important drivers for change and construct a proper strategic reaction. This should include an assessment of the needed capabilities, either present or missing, and, if required, an approach to develop these capabilities. Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) found that the capabilities for dealing with change, such as networking and reflecting on the work, are similar to the capabilities needed for IL Based on her literature review of the functions and roles of agility drivers, enablers and capabilities, Walter ( 2020 ) argues that OA is not a stable state, but instead fluctuates. OA therefore includes the ability of an organisation to regain skills and knowledge needed to restore agility. In regaining these capabilities, IL can be supportive. On the one hand, IL supports the learning process of the individual and the organisation itself. On the other hand, improving IL requires competencies that correspond to the competencies needed to be agile, like managerial responsibility and motivation (Jeong et al. 2018 ). When developing these capabilities in the workplace it is important to realise that innovations and changes in the social networks or social contracts are important drivers or catalysts for change, which will influence the way the profession is developing. IL particularly benefits from social connections such as professional networks and communities of practice. Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) mention that mixed internal and external social networks are important antecedents to learning in the workplace. Collective learning is already characterised by the diverse network (Garavan et al. 2015 ). This collective perspective of learning aligns with the strategic perspective of OA, and emphasises the organisational value of learning.

According to Appelbaum et al. ( 2017a ), in their literature review on how to achieve a greater level of OA, the strategic focus of an organisation should not be on what the organisation delivers, but on how the organisation is achieving its results. Organisations should focus their strategy on becoming a learning organisation. A deeper understanding of human motivation and behaviour is of utmost importance to help develop the organisation (Appelbaum et al. 2017a ). The capability of OA can only be developed when network partners are involved in a collaborative way (Wang et al. 2018 ). According to a review by Sherehiy et al. ( 2007 ), an intimate relationship with customers and suppliers makes organisations more aware of signs of change. Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) also emphasises the importance for IL of having open and trustful relationships in a diverse network. When combining these findings and the perspective of networked learning this means that focusing on the wider learning network instead of the learning organisation itself will be beneficial for OA.

Gunsberg et al. ( 2018 ) performed a case study of an Australian university to identify factors for establishing the maturity of OA in an organisation. For employees, industrial awareness is found to be a strategic factor, enabling them to value the information they receive and make decisions on what to explore and what to disregard. This awareness supports the absorptive capacity of the organisation, that is, the acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation of knowledge in an organisation (Demuner Flores 2023 ; Walter 2020 ). Organisations should work strategically on this absorptive capacity. In their study of innovative industries, Felipe et al. ( 2016 ) identified,, how absorptive capacity and information systems capabilities influence OA. They conclude that: “managers should foster and deploy the firm’s knowledge absorption mechanisms to effectively maximise the impact of IS [information systems] efforts and investments on achieving agility” (Felipe et al. 2016 , p. 4630). Results of a study of innovative activities among 102 manufacturing companies support the finding that absorptive capacity is needed for an effective response to changes in the environment (Demuner Flores 2023 ). One of the dimensions of IL that comes close to absorptive capacity is learning competence. This refers to the cycle of experiencing and reflecting (Jeong et al. 2018 ). The cycle that is defined by absorptive capacity is more elaborated. IL enhances knowledge and skills of individual employees, who are “more likely to gain new, practical knowledge” (Jeong et al. 2018 , p. 129).

In order to enhance OA, it is necessary to involve knowledge workers in strategy development. This contributes not only to a collaborative culture, but also brings in expertise where it is needed (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ). For IL, valuing the application of knowledge means improving its development (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Bringing knowledge workers together to share knowledge and negotiate meaning can promote collective learning (Garavan et al. 2015 ).

4.1.2 Structure and IL

Margherita et al. ( 2020 ) mention collaborative action as a necessity for achieving agility. This means having a collaborative mindset, and a clear and shared (aligned) approach to daily operations. Govuzela and Mafini ( 2019 ), in their quantitative study of business owners, found that collaborative innovation and OA had a positive relationship. In this light, cross-functional teams with a high level of autonomy promote OA (Akter et al. 2023 ; Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). To promote collaboration, the structure of an organisation should be fluid in terms of roles, boundaries and functions. The organisation should develop in a more organic structure (Sherehiy et al. 2007 ). Coordination in agile organisations is informal and there is a minimum of formal hierarchy (Nijssen and Pauwe 2012 ). Internal collaboration and open communication between different departments and functions is essential when relying on informal structure (Sharma et al. 2014 ; Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). For IL from the individual perspective, a collaborative mindset is needed to meet and learn from each other. Interpersonal communication in which open sharing is possible will make IL more effective (Jeong et al. 2018 ). From the collective perspective, collaboration and open sharing are part of the definition of learning (NLEC 2021 ). Focusing on networked learning means promoting connections not only between people, but also between people and artefacts. Networked learning sees learning as a process happening in an ecosystem and of value for that ecosystem. It fosters generous thinking and helps strengthen connections between organisations (NLEC 2021 ). In the section below on People agility we further elaborate on this.

In their integrative literature review on OA, Tolf et al. ( 2015 ) found that organisations need to know how to maintain network relationships in such a way that the network can respond to change by reforming itself. The crucial actors in this network are working and developing interdependently, based on information they exchange. No one has the complete picture. Everyone needs each other in their job (Tolf et al. 2015 ). The fluidness of the organisational structure is not limited to the internal organisation (Crocitto and Youssef 2003 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ; Wang et al. 2018 ). According to Tolf et al. ( 2015 ), a transparent and transient network of relationships at all levels of an organisation and its environment is one of the most frequently mentioned characteristics of an agile organisation. This way, employees get access to new knowledge as well as creativity and innovation (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ; Wang et al. 2018 ). Wang et al. ( 2018 ) found that working in a diverse network which reflects the complexity of the business process itself is supportive to OA. But also, these networks themselves should be flexible (Wang et al. 2018 . Sambamurthy et al. ( 2003 ) call this ‘partnering agility’:, the ability to leverage the qualities represented in the network itself. Garavan et al. ( 2015 ) see this leveraging as part of collective learning. Learning is interdependent and socially determined. Learner and context are inseparable.

4.2 People agility

People agility refers to the capability of the employees and management to deal with changes and be able to act in a way that suits the values of agility (Wendler 2014 ). Gunsberg et al. ( 2018 ) mentions two sub-themes, the first one leadership and management , the second one learning and changing . Of the 41 articles we reviewed, 17% reported outcomes on leadership and management that could be related with IL and 38% on learning and changing.

4.2.1 Leadership and management and IL

Sharma et al. ( 2014 ) studied the way customers are involved in innovation in the health care sector in Australia. They found that innovation driven by customer participation is needed for health care organisations to act on change. Because of this customer participation, innovations and therefore changes in knowledge and behaviour occur at all levels of the organisation. This implies that employees at all levels should be accountable and responsible for implementing these changes and therefore be able to make decisions. Decentralised leadership responsibility and accountability at all levels of the organisation support customer participation and are essential in order to act on the results of this participation (Sharma et al. 2014 ; Sherehiy et al. 2007 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ). Researchers disagree on the decision-making process, with some finding that hierarchical decision making improves OA because it speeds up the process (Felipe et al. 2016 ), and others finding that decentralised decision making is much more effective for OA (Appelbaum et al. 2017a ; Safari et al. 2018 ; Sherehiy et al. 2007 ; Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ; Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). According to proponents of decentralised decision making, the responsibility for making decisions should relate to task and expertise, rather than a function or person. According to Felipe et al. ( 2016 ) this difference in findings could relate to customers’ changing demands for greater efficiency at lower cost. Alignment of strategy, processes, behaviours and systems have a significant positive influence on agility (Govuzela and Mafini 2019 ; Walter 2020 ). So, it is possible that such alignment is the bridge between hierarchical and decentralised decision making. A strong hierarchy combined with high competition between teams is unsupportive of IL. On the other hand, task autonomy, and within that controllable complexity, are supportive of IL (Jeong et al. 2018 ). For IL it is also important that employees notice that their expertise and knowledge is useful for their job. When this is the case, they are more willing to use their knowledge and expand it (Jeong et al. 2018 ). In the case of the collective perspective of IL, leadership needs to create opportunities for dialogue and to demonstrate exemplary behaviour by, for instance, listening and respecting (Garavan et al. 2015 ).

Management should provide an atmosphere where risk-taking is supported (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ). The learning perspective on work can be useful in this because it values risk-taking for its possibilities for development. Teece et al. ( 2016 ) developed a framework of the ‘dynamic capabilities’ needed by agile organisations to deal with uncertainties. These capabilities are clustered into three elements: sensing, seizing and transforming. In these capabilities they see a central role for managers. The manager can determine the level of agility needed for the observed or desired changes. They can support employees to be entrepreneurial and override routines when necessary. This supportive role is also needed for the continuous learning processes, which is key for effective knowledge sharing and management in achieving OA, according to Paterek ( 2017 ) in his multiple case study. Paterek ( 2017 ) mentions the importance of communities of practice in facilitating effective knowledge management. Encouraging risk taking and encouraging employees to develop and share knowledge are antecedents for IL (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Garavan et al. ( 2015 ) also see risk-taking in cross-functional networks as an important cultural antecedent for collective learning, especially focusing on networked development.

Walter ( 2020 ) found that it is the role of the management team to explore what drivers for agility are at stake and, based on that, choose the required strategy, and the required agility capabilities such as responsiveness, speed and flexibility, to react in an agile way. The management team must establish whether the capability is at the required level or if it needs to be developed. The role of management in literature on OA is often described as determining. This seems to contrast with the call for autonomy and personal responsibility for professionals, both for OA as for IL. Although not always clear, the researchers are probably referring to strategic-level decision-making. But here, too, other researchers point to the involvement of professionals in strategic choices in order to be challenged for adjustments in their work either for their own benefit or for the benefit of the organisation (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ; Jeong et al. 2018 ).

4.2.2 Learning and changing and IL

Learning is scarcely defined in research on OA. The few exceptions interpreted learning in a variety of ways. Menon and Suresh ( 2021 ), in their study to identify factors that influence agility in higher education, define learning as one of the crucial factors for agility, by acquiring knowledge and distributing information in the organisation in order to put this information into practice. Teece et al. ( 2016 ) define learning as sensing changes, building hypotheses about these changes, and testing these hypotheses in one’s own practice. They suggest doing this in an abductive way. This means looking at complex phenomena and intuitively coming up with solutions, after which data is to be found to make these solutions plausible. Tsou and Cheng ( 2018 ) surveyed 170 business to IT companies about the mediating role of OA between learning and service innovation performance. They define learning as translating the results of experience into accessible knowledge. Experience is core to IL. One of the challenges for organisations is to make the knowledge tangible (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Promoting learning can cultivate OA (Tsou and Cheng 2018 ). Bahrami et al. ( 2016 ), in their study of the mediating role of learning in the relationship between organisational intelligence and OA, describe learning abilities according to Senge’s definition of a learning organisation (shared vision, mental models, system thinking, teamwork and interpersonal skills). This alignment of mental models is mentioned as a condition for the strategic success of the organisation and partly describes the ability for collective learning (Marsick and Watkins 2003 ). In a large survey among public sector organisations during COVID, Ludviga and Kalvina ( 2023 ) found learning to be an important driver for OA. They follow the definition of Marsick and Watkins ( 2003 ) and define learning as the capability of an organisation to develop and innovate, and the capacity to share knowledge among coworkers. Theirs is the only research for we know that explicitly emphasises the collective perspective of learning. Govuzela and Mafini ( 2019 ) see learning as an investigation that leads to shared values and knowledge. Like Tsou and Cheng ( 2018 ) several researchers find learning supportive to OA in developing knowledge and capabilities (Bahrami et al. 2016 ; Ludviga and Kalvina 2023 ; Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Teece et al. 2016 ). In most cases, learning relates to developing capabilities to become agile, not as a state of being that supports agility. The only exception to that, as far as we could establish, is the study of Ludviga and Kalvina ( 2023 ). They see collective learning as an important mechanism for being agile as an organisation, but not for becoming agile. Because IL is integrated with daily work (Jeong et al. 2018 ) it has the potential of being more than a way to learn the knowledge and skills that are required to become agile.

Developing knowledge, sharing it, and putting this knowledge into practice is seen as key to being agile and can be organised through communities of practice, networks as well as promotors of change. Facilitating management of knowledge is seen as one of the major obstacles for OA (Paterek 2017 ). In dealing with change the importance of a solid knowledge infrastructure is supported (Appelbaum et al. 2017a ; Crocitto and Youssef 2003 ; Phuong et al. 2012 ). Cegarra-Navarro et al. ( 2016 ), in their survey of 360 users of a knowledge platform, found that the relationship between applying knowledge and organisational performance was moderated by OA. Emphasis on knowledge creation and application therefore is not enough. Becoming agile to use the knowledge in an effective way is also necessary, so it will be a self-reinforcing process (Cegarra-Navarro et al. 2016 ). In their meta-analysis of 176 primary studies, Cerasoli et al. ( 2018 ) found that IL behaviour, like self-experimentation or learning by doing, supports the creation of new knowledge and skills, both individually and collectively. Furthermore, Kavosi et al.’s ( 2021 ) study of organisational intelligence, forgetting, learning and agility, which involved a questionnaire distributed among 316 co-workers in Shiraz public teaching hospitals, found that forgetting knowledge, both on purpose or by accident, supports OA. They conclude that getting rid of old knowledge makes room for new knowledge (Kavosi et al. 2021 ).

Developing specific workforce capabilities for customer activation, organisational activation, interaction capabilities, and learning agility enhances OA (Sharma et al. 2014 ). These four concepts describe the four types of capabilities an organisation must have to innovate through co-creation. Customer activation deals with the capacity to identify and act on customer needs. Organisational activation refers to the willingness to collaborate among disciplines and teams and is found to be crucial (Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Sharma et al. 2014 ). Interaction capabilities are capabilities for understanding, developing and empowering customers, and involving them in the process by relating to them and intervening appropriately in the process of innovation (Sharma et al. 2014 ). Learning agility is defined as the capability to improve the processes of an organisation. This means responding to customer needs with improvements, flexibility and systematic reflection on the way the organisation can meet the needs of the customer, while also abandoning processes that hinder the adoption of customer-needed innovations (Sharma et al. 2014 ). Cerasoli et al. ( 2018 ) found that, by facilitating IL behaviour, organisations can enhance employee knowledge, skills, performance and expertise - enabling their workforce to continuously identify opportunities and implement improvements to organisational processes. The latter is part of OA establishes the relation with IL.

4.3 Agility prerequisites

Wendler ( 2014 ) refers to the prerequisites supporting the agility of an organisation in both culture and innovation, the first focusing on agile values, and the latter being defined as the systematic approach of the organisation towards innovation, incorporating flexibility and proactivity. Based on the 41 studies included in this review, we found that 20% reported outcomes on culture that could be related with IL and 41% on innovation.

4.3.1 Culture and IL

According to Vaszkun and Sziráki ( 2023 ), agile organisations value customer satisfaction and response to change over following a fixed plan. Paterek ( 2017 ) found that, in supporting these values, a learning organisational culture plays a significant role. Such a culture supports the transformation towards OA. A learning organisational culture recognises that learning is a social process and a shared responsibility, which align with the characteristics of IL (Marsick and Volpe 1999 ).

Organisations may endorse the values associated with customer satisfaction and response to change, but struggle to put them into practice (Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). This might be caused by the ambidexterity of sustainable innovation, exploring on one hand while exploiting on the other. Co-workers being open about this duality and having a clear idea of their own role in innovation contributes to OA (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ). Crocitto and Youssef ( 2003 ), by proposing an integrative model for OA based on the literature they reviewed, plead for employees to be called organisational associates. This changes the relationship of the employee with the organisation towards more responsibility. The importance of accountability is also indicated by the needed willingness to continuously monitor for improvement and to experiment and improvise (Sherehiy et al. 2007 ). This asks for the development of an agile mindset, not only agile capabilities. And for an agile mindset a collaborative mindset is essential (Margherita et al. 2020 ). In collective IL, this collaborative mindset is inevitable. In this sense, participation as an antecedent of collective learning is beneficial. A collaborative mindset asks for active engagement, expressing insights and interaction (Garavan et al. 2015 ).

OA is based on trust (Tolf et al. 2015 ). This includes employee trust when discussing findings on working together in networks and establishing customer intimacy, and management trusting employees with a great deal of responsibility and accountability. Trust requires an open atmosphere among team members (Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). A safe, open and trustful working environment helps co-workers to be frank about their questions and mistakes, which supports learning (Jeong et al. 2018 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ). Such an environment also supports proactive behaviour, shifting responsibilities when helpful in the process and spontaneous collaboration (Sherehiy et al. 2007 ). It fosters IL (individual and collective) by creating an environment where people feel safe to experiment and share knowledge (Garavan et al. 2015 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ). In larger organisations trust is more wanted by employees then in smaller organisations (citation for this? ). On the other hand, the presence of trust is always a vulnerability for organisations due to the complexity of collaboration and communication (Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). Trust takes a short time to break, but a long time to build.

4.3.2 Innovation and IL

Tsou et al. (2018) found that the impact of learning on innovation is mediated by OA. Learning is supportive of becoming more agile. Hamad and Yozgat ( 2017 ) performed quantitative research on 158 top and middle managers at commercial banks in Jordan. They found that OA positively impacted learning. Agility improves aspects of learning such as experimentation, risk taking, interaction and cooperation. This relationship fosters innovation by the way knowledge is effectively applied (Crocitto and Youssef 2003 ; Hamad and Yozgat 2017 ; Menon and Suresh 2021 ). The assimilation of external knowledge, which involves analysing, interpreting and internalising new knowledge, is particularly important for innovation (Demuner Flores 2023 ; Teece et al. 2016 ). Ravichandran ( 2018 ), in a survey among 710 large firms in the United States, found that innovative capacity is only supportive to OA when it not only contains access to new ideas, but that these new ideas can also be connected to existing processes and knowledge. This coupling is in fact learning, because it involves changing perspectives and ways of doing things. Innovative capacity is supported by an adjustable infrastructure and scalable workforce (Nijssen and Paauwe 2012 ), both connected with structure enhancing agility and people agility . Responding to changes with speed, making decisions quickly and applying the solutions quickly is required, according to Phuong et al. ( 2012 ) in their literature review on the way information systems in general and enterprise systems in particular contribute to OA. Govuzela and Mafini ( 2019 ) emphasise the significance of collaborative innovation for OA, with various stakeholders involved in improving existing or creating new processes and knowledge. Sharma et al. ( 2014 ) emphasise the importance of customer involvement in innovation, for it brings in the feedback and needs of customers. Making the customer part of the creation of knowledge ensures the speed in which needs are translated into innovation. Innovative behaviour is found to be an IL activity that enhances knowledge and expertise in the workplace (Bednall and Sanders 2014 ).

Organisations with proactive behaviours acknowledge change as part of the routine and see change as beneficial to their performance (Tolf et al. 2015 ). Proactivity means that organisations like to experiment, take informed risks, and are supportive to testing new innovative ideas (Appelbaum et al. 2017b ; Gunsberg et al. 2018 ). Monitoring these experiments by continuous data gathering and analytics can be seen as one perspective on knowledge creation (Margherita et al. 2020 ; Walter 2020 ). Doornbos et al.’s ( 2008 ) study of Dutch police officers found a positive correlation between the possibilities for collegial feedback and the frequency of informal work-related learning activities. Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) also found other research supportive of the fact that feedback and reflective dialogue improve the learning activities and therefore IL. Innovation benefits from IL because it in turn is fostered by experimentation and creative problem solving (Jeong et al. 2018 ).

An organisation’s IT (Information Technology) capability is an enhancer of OA in facilitating innovation. It helps avoid redundant processes and miscommunication if information about customers is up to date, applicable, and keeps all necessary staff in the knowledge loop (Phuong et al. 2012 ; Tsou and Cheng 2018 ). For IL (individual and collective) IT provides a platform for collaboration and knowledge exchange (NLEC 2021 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ).

5 Integrating the findings

The main purpose of this study is to gain insight in the relationship between OA and IL and to investigate what mechanisms influence this relationship. In this section we integrate the main findings.

A general observation is that most of the literature reviewed sees (informal) learning as a mechanism to become agile as an organisation. Learning relates to the development of the dynamic capabilities or absorptive capacity needed to be able to act on changes in an effective way. Learning is only once reported as an approach in itself that enables agile organisations to act on change (Ludviga and Kalvina 2023 ).

In the results presented here, we show that there is enough potential to integrate the OA and IL as qualities of an organisation to be utilised for dealing with an ever-changing environment. The relationship between the two concepts not only has similarities with the Learning and Changing component of the framework presented by Wendler ( 2014 ) and Gunsberg et al. ( 2018 ). IL also exhibits many similarities with the other components of their framework. Integrating the two concepts offers suggestions for a framework of mechanisms that support both OA and IL. For a visualisation of the integration see Fig.  2 .

Venn diagram showing relationship between OA and IL

OA is an action or reaction towards a changing environment. Research on OA states that agility is a state of mind of an organisation: an awareness of changes in the environment that are approaching or about to happen and that, when noticed early, can be acted upon effectively and efficiently. Changes in the environment or organisation themselves are not continuous, but come and go (Walter 2020 ). Changes differ in time, tempo, intensity and meaning. And changes are contextual. Changes can be initiated or acted upon. Characteristic of change is that it is never the same. Therefore, every change brings a new situation, and the organisation needs a new way to cope with this situation. This is the core of learning processes, therefore research on IL provides us with insights on ways to improve these learning processes offered in the daily working practice. This is an important benefit of integrating IL and OA.

Both concepts emphasise change as being part of the daily routine of an organisation. For IL, the emphasis is on valuing the individual and collective learning that happens in daily work triggered by change (Cerasoli et al. 2018 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ; Marsick and Volpe 1999 ). For OA, the emphasis is on the capability of the organisation to deal with change as part of daily work (Charbonnier-Voirin 2011 ; Demuner Flores 2023 ; Förster and Wendler 2012 ; Gunsberg et al. 2018 ; Walter 2020 ). OA leads to a supportive atmosphere where (informal) learning and working are valued more equally. OA also provides the organisation with reasons to connect the strategic development goals of the organisation with individual and collective learning. IL, on the other hand, provides the organisation with a way to collectively create knowledge and practices that lead to the innovations needed in response to change. The main similarities between OA and IL as presented in the results are summarised in Table  1 .

Taking into account the aspects of structure enhancing agility, people agility and agility prerequisites and integrating it with the aspects that let IL flourish, three key attributes of an organisation clearly overlap: (1) seeing the boundaries of an organisation as fluid and having close and meaningful relationships, (2) being accountable for work and working, and (3) having processes for creating or acquiring, processing and applying knowledge. These attributes will be referred to as social networks, leadership, and knowledge development. In the second part of Section 5 the relationship between IL and OA is described in terms of these three key attributes.

5.1 Social networks

Learning happens in a social context, in which it is important to have peers both inside and outside the organisation. These close relationships and multiple connections play a key role for both IL and OA. For IL, the social element is a main ingredient for a rich learning environment (Jeong et al. 2018 ). For OA, involving the appropriate parties, maintaining this network and involving different departments facilitates an effective and speedy response to change. In both concepts, involvement means working closely together, knowing each other’s language, context and profession, and including each other’s values and interests. This is why autonomous cross-functional teams with a large amount of autonomy are mentioned by some researchers as beneficial for OA (Akter et al. 2023 ; Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). But these teams need to be fluid in composition and roles (Ludviga and Kalvina 2023 ; Sherehiy et al. 2007 ; Tolf et al. 2015 ). By having a more developmental organisational approach towards networks and processes, participants would be more aware of the learning process itself and how to improve that process. By paying attention to the composition of the network, people become aware of their interpersonal relationships and the influence of these relationships on innovation and improvement and therefore learning. This awareness makes the learning processes more conscious and therefore the results of IL can be made more visible. The ability to leverage qualities evident in the network (Sambamurthy et al. 2003 ) also sets a focus for IL. Another aspect worth mentioning here is the supportive role of IT for staying connected with others. Jeong et al. ( 2018 ) also found a supportive role of IT for IL.

While it is often considered from the individual perspective, IL provides insight into the way relationships can be maintained, by developing interpersonal communication, being able to openly share ideas, and by influencing in what way these capabilities support the learning process (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Research on how close relationships and diversity in social networks support learning and innovation is beneficial here (Baer et al. 2015 ; De Laat 2006 ; Haythornthwaite and De Laat 2010 ).

The diverse network also enables employees to identify developments as soon as possible, to weigh up options, make informed decisions, and act swiftly, all in a collaborative way. This organisational focus for improvement in cooperation provides a breeding ground for IL in that it combines the learning of individuals and connects it to learning collectively, and ultimately to the interest of the organisation (Jeong et al. 2018 ).

5.2 Leadership

The way leadership operates influences employees’ accountability for work and learning. From an OA perspective, commitment of employees to the organisational goals are important and, with it, entrepreneurial behaviour (Teece et al. 2016 ). Involving employees actively in decision making and problem solving, challenging them by giving them a high level of responsibilities and autonomy affects the way employees are involved in IL (Cerasoli et al. 2018 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ; Manuti et al. 2015 ). This autonomy makes work challenging and valued, according to Kim and McLean ( 2014 ). Task autonomy gives freedom and a variety of opportunities which stimulates the employees to learn (Jeong et al. 2018 ).

From the OA perspective, leadership is about providing the conditions for collaboration between different departments (Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). Bringing people together and identifying possible experts to involve can bring diversity and commitment into the network. Facilitating meetings and encouraging open communication with other organisations stimulates information exchange (Sharma et al. 2014 ). These are all aspects of leadership that support IL (Ellinger 2005 ). Paying attention to shared meaning-making and better communication is part of collective IL (Garavan et al. 2015 ). Leadership that facilitates these processes is not a condition, but a characteristic of collective IL.

OA benefits from an alignment of systems, processes, departments, roles,. and so forth, which makes the process of informing and understanding one another easier. The process of alignment is itself of great support to IL, as are knowledge exchange, being clear about mental models and paying explicit attention to the goals of the organisation is organised. Leaders in organisations should create possibilities for working on this alignment and collaboration (Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). Results of research on delegated responsibilities do not lead to clear insights for OA. Some researcher claim that swift decision making requires a clear and strong hierarchy (Felipe et al. 2016 ), while other researchers claim that OA is supported by collaborative decision making, which fosters adaptability (Nijssen and Paauwe 2012 ; Wendler and Stahlke 2014 ). The main tendency, though, is to support the distribution of responsibilities with those who have the professional expertise in order to become faster and more flexible (Menon and Suresh 2021 ; Safari et al. 2018 ; Vaszkun and Sziráki 2023 ). OA appears to be a matter of dealing with complex situations, involving the balancing of competing values, such as speed, engagement, support, thorough analysis, short-term versus long-term considerations, and so forth. OA involves the ability to adapt and learn iteratively throughout a process of improvement and innovation (Teece et al. 2016 ).

5.3 Knowledge development

Being able to respond in a rapid way means there is a need for accurate and up-to-date knowledge involving the ‘right’ people at the ‘right’ time (Charbonnier-Voirin 2011 ; Demuner Flores 2023 ). IT-systems (Phuong et al. 2012 ), communities of practice (Paterek 2017 ), interpersonal skills (Bahrami et al. 2016 ) and absorptive capabilities (Demuner Flores 2023 ) support the processes needed for collaborative and collective knowledge development and exchange. Placing greater value on and consciously utilising IL within the organisation can strengthen this process of collective knowledge development. It provides the organisation not only with forms of learning, but also makes the organisation aware of the learning processes that are happening in daily work. Seeing knowledge as an important value for the organisation and linking it to the strategy of the organisation (Dove 1999 ) also helps valuing IL as a strategic instrument (Jeong et al. 2018 ).

In order to give meaning and direction to innovation, knowledge development should be supported by hypothesising and analysing the available information. By making clear in a collaborative way the possible consequences of changes via ‘for instance’ scenarios, people not only become aware of the possibilities and hypotheses entailed, but also the data that underpins these possible solutions (Teece et al. 2016 ). This can support critical reflection (Jeong et al. 2018 ), especially when management sees it as its task to make tacit knowledge available for the organisation. It also provides ways to make IL more conscious so that employees are motivated to use a research-related approach that can also give direction for experimentation (Teece et al. 2016 ). After improvements are implemented, one should monitor the results and the process, through iterative cycles of action and reflection (Marsick and Watkins 2001 ). Monitoring results and processes provides the organisation with data that can be learned from, because it gives the organisation the opportunity to check whether hypotheses and analyses were accurate (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Performing this in a dialogic way between co-workers in a network of different organisations working together puts IL in a collective context (Garavan et al. 2015 ).

Developing skills to support OA, such as interaction capabilities, improving processes and reflecting systematically, sets a focus for learning, but these capabilities also support a learning climate. Becoming more sensitive to their environment makes people more aware of the signals for change in this environment, which trigger learning and initiate a research-related approach (Jeong et al. 2018 ). Seizing the information means organising information and therefore the action needed for IL, as mentioned by Marsick ( 2009 ). Transforming capabilities deal with keeping the structure, strategy and culture aligned when changes are implemented. Transforming capabilities foster a culture in which experimentation and innovation are valued, which creates a rich climate for IL (Gunsberg et al. 2018 ; Jeong et al. 2018 ). Seen form the collective perspective, this in fact is how networked learning is defined (NLEC 2021 ). These elements form the basis for the trustful climate necessary for open communication and accessibility of knowledge (Jeong et al. 2018 ). An important condition for individual IL is also the supportive role of leaders in which risk taking for experimentation and knowledge exchange is seen as just as important as being productive (Jeong et al. 2018 ; Skule 2004 ). Continuous training and workshops support improvements in OA. Furthermore, combining IL with formal learning makes IL more effective (Jeong et al. 2018 ). IL is closely related to daily work and therefore the results are expected to be directly applicable to the daily workplace context (Marsick and Volpe 1999 ). In fact, being less conscious about this as a learner is showing both the strength and the weakness of IL in supporting OA. Making tacit knowledge tangible is a key aspect of IL in order for it to become valuable for others in the organisation or the network (Kim and McLean 2014 ; Nonaka and Takeuchi 1996 ). The way knowledge is strategically valued contributes also to the learning.

Mechanisms that influence both IL and OA

culture of an organisation (Dove 1999 ; Ellinger 2005 ; Kim and McLean 2014 ).

We summarise the integration of the findings in detail in Fig.  3 .

6 Discussion and conclusion

The main purpose of this study was to examine the relationship between OA and IL and to investigate what mechanisms would be beneficial for both concepts. IL finds it origin in the theory of Dewey (Kim and McLean 2014 ), for whom learning was the effect of acquiring experience. Learning, in this scientific tradition, is contextual and social. This fits the way OA must be conceived according to the literature studied. However, the primary approach to learning in research on OA is, at best, instrumental; learning is considered a way to become agile as an organisation by improving the adaptive capacity and dynamic capabilities. But learning, as we have shown, is much more than an instrument. It can be seen as a quality of an organisation and another way to deal with change in the environment. And as IL is part of every organisation, whether beneficially used or working unconsciously, it provides organisations with an opportunity to be more agile. Learning is poorly defined in most literature on OA, and the benefit of informal learning seems under-valued. Based on an in-depth insight into the relationship between IL and OA in this article, the mechanisms that either support or characterise IL can be an answer to the rapid changes in the environment, just as OA is. The knowledge that is gained by studying the way IL is beneficial for organisations can enrich the field of study of OA, and this warrants further research. For example, OA is supported by a variety of professionals working together and bringing in their perspectives in order to be innovative. One could use the knowledge from the studies on IL about strengthening these networks on the one hand and keeping it fluid on the other hand. Both strong and weak social connections are important for learning and innovating. These insights might be helpful in reflecting on the way that organisations’ networks are developing. Paying attention to the development of networks not only improves OA, but also IL. The way learning networks can be beneficial for OA should be studied in more detail, especially in the context of hierarchy and task autonomy.

The collective perspective of IL is hardly considered in research on OA; most learning is seen as individual. Collective learning is interesting, and OA itself also deals with dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacities of groups and networks of organisations. To date, most of the research on OA taken from our database is based on queries that gather individual perspectives. It would be interesting to focus more on research methods that look at the system as a whole, not only as a sum of its parts. The model of Garavan et al. ( 2015 ) for looking at individual and collective learning, either organised or emerging, could be beneficial in looking at OA from a collective and learning perspective.

The model presented here as the result of integrating OA and IL is also an agenda for further research. We recommend further research into the effects of leadership mechanisms on the way (networks of) organisations (continue to) learn to deal with change. Similarly, it is important to further scrutinise the impact of informal learning mechanisms that influence social networks and knowledge development effects within agile organisations.

Both OA and IL are concepts that are strongly interwoven with their environment. This interconnectedness means that they themselves are also constantly subject to change and learning. As such, they form complex and multi-level processes which are challenging to investigate in an appropriate manner. In this context, it is fitting to be able to dwell in the space of not knowing, just as with OA and IL themselves, whilst the researcher searches for answers.

6.1 Practical implications

Organisations dealing with a rapidly changing environment can benefit from the findings of this study. By paying attention to the mechanisms mentioned in Fig.  3 , they can strengthen their learning capacity on the one hand. Focusing on the composition, quality, and development of relationships in social networks helps organisations to utilise these networks for innovation and improvement of their processes, products, and services. Attention to how leadership is shared within these networks and relocated where necessary, depending on knowledge and expertise, creates space for ownership of results and thus for reflection and improvement. Recognising the value of knowledge and expertise contributes to the sharing of this knowledge and thereby to collective learning.

The same mechanisms contribute to the organisation’s agility. The networks can provide rapid information dissemination and early detection of changes. Shared leadership can accelerate the implementation of changes. And the appreciation of knowledge and expertise can lead to increased attention to its development and the processes that facilitate it.

The identified mechanisms are not isolated from one another. They are interrelated and require an integrated approach at both individual and collective levels.

7 Limitations in the research

As both IL and OA derive from different disciplinary domains, bringing the two concepts together is a challenging exercise. This is especially so when similar concepts like learning and knowledge are used in both contexts but may not have a shared meaning across these domains. The use of barely defined concepts such as learning and knowledge in studies on OA did not help in this regard. The often instrumental view of learning also makes this study a cautious exploration of the relationship. Therefore, more research into bringing together both concepts is desirable.

Furthermore, the meaning and definition of OA is still very much developing, resulting in different weights or emphases applied to learning and knowledge in the articles included in this review. In this study, we attempted to be as clear as possible about the interpretations we made and the definitions we have used. Nevertheless, this is an integrative literature review and a first attempt to bridge a dialogue about how to foster dealing with change from the perspective of IL and OA. This review might inspire inter-disciplinary research and develop ways in which IL can help promote and facilitate OA and, similarly, where OA can include a richer understanding of learning and knowledge processes in its definition. Further empirical research, in which learning and change processes relate to orientations towards OA will help to further unpack this relationship and reveal how IL can play a key role in achieving a sustained approach to agility. The identified key conditions for improving IL and OA – based on social network, knowledge development and leadership – is a first take on this.

Data availability

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Boerma, S., de Laat, M. & Vermeulen, M. The relationship between organisational agility and informal learning. Manag Rev Q (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11301-024-00460-x

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Alan Kohler is the founder of Eureka Report , which has been integrated into  Intelligent Investor . Alan is also the finance presenter on ABC News and a columnist for The New Daily . A former editor of  The Age  and  The Australian Financial Review , he has written for  The Australian , AFR , The Age  and  The Sydney Morning Herald . His books include  It's Your Money .

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