Ravalier PhD Theis.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

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1b) Learning Organisations
As a contrast, or perhaps an addition to, Handy’s conceptualisation
of organisational structures and cultures the concept of ‘Learning
Organisations’ will be discussed and evaluated. In organisations, those
that are strongest and most successful are the ones that are best able to
change in response to their environments, with these learning abilities
critical for organisational growth (Wilson & O’Connor, 2000). The term
‘learning organisation’ was originally popularised by Peter Senge in the
1990s, with Garvin (1993) penning the following definition:
“A learning organization is an organization skilled at creating,
acquiring, and transferring knowledge, and at modifying its
behaviour to reflect new knowledge and insights” (pp. 80).
A learning organisation therefore embodies the degree to which an
organisation is committed to challenging and henceforth changing the
fundamental beliefs and practices which are encompassed in its culture
(Liao, 2006). An important feature of learning organisations is that they
value individual development, allowing continuous transformation based
on experiential learning. Organisational learning is a deliberate process
throughout the business, rather than being an accidental group of
interconnected activities, thus individual learning and organisational
development is planned and interconnected (Mullins, 2008).
According to Davis and Daley (2008), the concept of the learning
organisation is now very well established, although there is a lack of any
consistent method used to research the concept. However, Lampel (1998)
has identified 5 basic principles which should be followed in order for an
organisation to be described as a ‘learning organisation’:
1. Learning organisations learn from both successes and failures.
Indeed failures can be as important, if not more so, than successes
when learning from planned activities. Therefore failures are not