Learning Organisation Analysis

Definition of a Learning Organisation

The ‘Learning Organisation’ has a number of definitions by various theorists. A learning organisation is one which is open to change and development. Continuous learning by organisation members is vital in order to make a learning organisation work.

Wick and Leon (1995) defined a learning organisation as one that ‘continually improves by rapidly creating and refining the capabilities required for future success.’

‘Learning organizations [are] organizations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire, where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning to see the whole together.’

Decision Support Systems and System Thinking were rebranded as Organisational Learning. Chris Arygris from Harvard University conducted much research into the concept of Organisational Learning and published his first book on the subject along with Donald Schön, in 1978. Regardless to this heavily researched information, companies were reluctant to practice this behaviour, and there was a surprisingly inactive period for the evolution of learning as organisations. The idle period during the 70’s can be noted as a correspondence with the growth of consultancies and academies promoting ‘Scientific Management’ which became quite dominant in businesses throughout the US and UK. Scientific Management was based on the idea of a fixed world and economy and abiding laws. These schools and academies saw only one solution to any problems: by being logical and rational. An increase in managers with rational behaviour was thought, by Garratt B (2000) to ‘unbalance (in a dangerously negative way) our notions of what constitutes a healthy human organisation.’ This strong rational ideology was weakened when holistic thinkers led the revolution of new learning methods, and non-traditional styles of research. Reg Revans, Charles Handy and John Morris were among the holistic and humane thinkers whom followed their belief, and advocating, ‘the importance of learning as a central organizational process, and of the need for a series of

This was due to the emergence of new action learning ideas discovered by groups of enthuasiasts. Bob Garratt developed the ‘triple-loop learning’ model in this period while various theorists in the US were developing similar approaches of interacting levels of organizational learning. The Learning Company Model pushed the prospects for Organisational Learning in practice and