HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT PRACTICE - Fichier PDF

36Organizational learning and thelearning organizationOrganizational learning theory is concerned with how learning takes place in organizations.It focuses on collective learning but takes into account the proposition madeby Argyris (1992) that organizations do not perform the actions that produce thelearning; it is individual members of the organization who behave in ways that leadto it, although organizations can create conditions which facilitate such learning. Theconcept of organizational learning as discussed in the first section of this chapterrecognizes that the way in which this takes place is affected by the context of the organizationand its culture.The concept of a learning organization, which is often associated with that oforganizational learning, has been defined by Scarborough and Carter (2000) as one‘that is able to discover what is effective by reframing its own experiences andlearning from that process’. The notion of the learning organization is sometimesconfused with the concept of organizational learning. However, Harrison (2002)points out that it is often assumed that ‘the learning organization’ and ‘organizationallearning’ are synonymous processes, yet they are not.