دانلود رایگان مقاله انگلیسی معنی و مفهوم یادگیری سازمانی - امرالد 2018

What does “learning organization” mean?

Many people still ask “what is a learning organization, what does the concept mean?” This is entirely understandable. The learning organization – or for that matter organizational learning – is a concept (or phenomenon) that is not easily defined. Questions such as “are there any true learning organizations?” and “are there any organizations that are not learning?” arise. These questions are fair and so it is also fair that I, as Editor-in-Chief of The Learning Organization, the journal that publishes research on the learning organization and organizational learning, try to give an idea of how these questions may be answered, or at least offer my perspective on these issues. First, though, I will give a historical background to the term “learning organization”.

Concluding remarks

There are many definitions of the learning organization, with varying degrees of similarity and differentiation. This article has offered an overview of definitions of the learning organization, in terms of four versions of the learning organization. More or less any existing definition of the learning organization could potentially be categorized within this set of four versions of the learning organization.

The article has proposed a suggestion regarding the demarcation of what is and what is not a learning organization. There is reason to adapt the demands that are put on organizations to be able to call themselves learning organizations, so that a contingency model of demands on organizations in various industries, sectors, national cultures, religions etc., to be qualified as learning organizations, is developed. It is essential that every contribution to such a contingency model has a mutual starting point, such as the overall definition of the learning organization that has been presented within this article. Without such a common starting point, it would be difficult to make comparisons between academic works and between contexts, which would make it difficult (if not impossible) to develop a contingency model that is cumulative. It is only when such a contingency model has been developed, where the demands are related to certain conditions within the context of the organization, that reasonable demands could be put on organizations to qualify themselves as learning organizations. There is, therefore, a need for contributions to such a contingency model of the learning organization.