The Learning Organization could not become a reality until the coming of the World Wide Web and the engines of strategic assessment.
—David H. Miles, 2003
A learning organization is any organization that fosters continuous learning on both the organizational and individual levels, in order to improve performance. The continuous learning is based on twin feedback loops, permitting the organization to learn while individual employees learn as well. (See Double Loop Learning.) Overall, the organization is viewed as a living organism, complete with feedback systems and the ability to adapt to change in its environment.
1969 | Peter Drucker: The Age of Discontinuity. Drucker points out that we are shifting from a corporate culture based on physical labor to one depending on a knowledge society, a transition from an industrial society to an information one. The first inklings that organizations must continuously learn to adapt to change. |
1970 | Alvin Toffler's Future Shock outlines the shift from industrialism to informationalism, stressing the ability to change and learn. |
1971 | Donald Schon: Beyond the Stable State. A brilliant, little known book on learning organizations, systems, and processes, twenty years before their popularity in instructional circles. Schon argues that rapidly accelerating change is undermining the stability of our society; institutions must become learning "systems," maintaining flexibility and adapting to situations as they arise. Corporations should organize themselves around functions and processes rather than products and tasks. |
1978 | Chris Argyris and Donald Schon: Organizational Learning I. Abstract, academic, and difficult to read, but important because it starts to move the discussion beyond training to learning in organizations. |
1982 | Reginald Revans: The Origins and Growth of Action Learning. The great master of action learning, as it relates to organizational learning. |
1983 | Rosabeth Kanter: The Change Masters: Innovation for Productivity in the American Corporation. Studies of entrepreneurship and the ability to adapt quickly inside large corporations. |
1987 | Marvin Weisbord: Productive Workplaces. Prologue is excellent on "learning how to learn" in the 1960s, and on the importance of "lessons learned"—always asking "what did we learn from that?" |
1990 | The Learning Organization is officially born simultaneously in three separate books:
|
2000 | David Garvin: Learning in Action: A Guide to Putting the Learning Organization to Work. |
See also Action Learning Lessons Learned Organizational Development