Towards increased relevance: context-adapted models of the learning organization

Application of learning organization 2.0: a case study of Ricoh Ena Forest Japan

Purpose

This paper aims to offer an empirical application of the concept of learning organization (LO) 2.0.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on fieldwork study, a case of Ricoh Ena Forest Project is presented to illustrate the contextualized and multi-stakeholder perspective of LO 2.0 in running an environmental sustainability project.

Findings

The case demonstrated the value of incorporating multiple stakeholders to develop a multi-party learning entity for sustainability pursuit. The findings also highlighted the importance of forfeiting managerial dominance and the creation of a shared commitment in implementing the concept of LO 2.0.

Originality/value

The study adds empirical evidence to the literature on how LO 2.0 can be implemented and provides guidance on tackling some of the potential challenges.

The learning organization and organizational learning in the public sector: a review and research agenda

Purpose

This study aims to propose a new research agenda for the theories of “organizational learning” and the “learning organization” in relation to the public sector. The research agenda can be used by researchers to make explicit accounts of how and where the results from their studies advance the current state-of-the-art in the intersection between public sector and organizational learning and/or the learning organization.

Design/methodology/approach

A combined systematic and bibliometric review methodology is applied based on the research that has been published in the past three decades.

Findings

Through an analysis of 238 journal publications obtained from the Scopus database, the authors determine the leading authors, countries, highly cited papers and take the stock of current literature. Similarly, by analyzing papers published between 2010 and 2020, the authors identify current tendencies and emerging themes of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector and offer avenues for future research.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is potentially the first, fully refereed study published reporting on a bibliometric and a systematic review of organizational learning and learning organization in the public sector.

The United States Army Medical Command, becoming a learning organization

Purpose

This study aims to describe how the Army and the Army Medical Department matured as a learning organization (LO) during the period after the 2014 Military Health System Review through the incorporation of changes aimed at improving patient safety, data transparency and becoming a high-reliability organization (HRO). This study explores the relationship between HRO and LO concepts by adding to the body of knowledge in both disciplines.

Design/methodology/approach

Four large-scale system changes are presented and evaluated against the principles of the LO. Metric data were collected longitudinally and presented as submitted to several nationally-recognized organizations in healthcare quality and safety. Post initiative observations are paired with a corresponding LO principle to assess US Army Medical Command’s (MEDCOM’s) maturation as a LO. System changes/improvements and the advancement of LO principles are discussed.

Findings

System improvements, analyzed critically alongside paired LO principles, show strong correlation between high-reliability and LO principles. Despite inherent institutional barriers, this study demonstrates that, when leveraged effectively, the leadership hierarchy and command culture can accelerate transformation into an LO.

Originality/value

This study explores changes implemented in MEDCOM, as it evolved as a stronger LO. It demonstrates how healthcare organizations and other high-risk industries that embrace high-reliability concepts will become better LOs and expands current knowledge on how LO concepts in healthcare can affect better system accountability and improved patient safety. Organizations can learn from MEDCOM’s journey changes that can hasten progress toward adoption of LO principles, especially in hierarchical organizations.

Conceptualization and challenges: examining district and school leadership and schools as learning organizations

Purpose

Conceptualizing schools as learning organizations provides a potential avenue to meet the pressing challenges of school improvement in the USA. District and school leaders play an important role in creating and sustaining the conditions for a learning organization, yet little is known about how leadership responds to learning-resistant contexts in their mission to improve schools. This study aims to examine the relationship between the district and school leadership and schools as learning organizations. The focus is on the conceptualization of schools as learning organizations and the challenges involved in creating and sustaining conditions and processes in which to improve schools.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper uses semi-structured interviews with district and school leaders in the state of Georgia and data from completed dimensions of a learning organization questionnaire (DLOQ) study to analyze how district and school leaders conceptualize or make sense of schools as learning organizations and overcome challenges associated with creating and sustaining a learning organization in learning-resistant contexts.

Findings

The analysis find that participants perceive their school or district as a learning organization when the structure allows others to work together to learn and grow for the benefit of students.

Originality/value

This study is unique in that it adds to a growing number of studies that examine schools as learning organizations using the DLOQ and sheds light on the nature of learning-resistant contexts.

Building military learning organizations: many birds, one stone

Purpose

This paper aims to illustrate the need for context-adapted models of military learning organizations (LOs), identify challenges to building LOs in the military and discuss how maturing as an LO provides military organizations a competitive advantage.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper highlights the primarily industrial focus of existing literature, discusses a sample of nuanced challenges to building military LOs and posits potential benefits of military LOs future operational environment.

Findings

Building military LOs is an area of research that remains underdeveloped. Advancing LO theory requires researchers to consider context and the challenges organizations may encounter during efforts to build LOs.

Originality/value

This paper highlights gaps and alignment in LO theory to advance the argument that context-adapted approaches to building military LOs are needed.

Providing strategic leadership for learning: optimizing managerial coaching to build learning organizations

Purpose

The purpose of this paper and the contribution to this special issue is to build on Kim and Watkins’ (2018) recent finding that ‘leaders mentor and coach those they lead’ is the item in the Dimensions of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) that is most highly-correlated with performance. Given the criticality of providing strategic leadership for learning and, more specifically, the consistent associations between leaders who mentor and coach and work-related performance outcomes, a better understanding of the associations between the learning organization concept and managerial coaching is warranted. Watkins and Kim (2018, p. 22) contend that ‘future directions for learning organization research include a search for the elusive interventions that would create a learning organization’. In response to this call for research, a research agenda for assessing managerial coaching as a learning organization (LO) intervention is proposed.

Design/methodology/approach

This conceptual paper briefly reviews literature on the learning organization and the DLOQ instrument, followed by a more in-depth review of the managerial coaching literature and suggestions for how future research could be conducted that more closely integrates these two concepts.

Findings

Existing literature suggests that to ‘provide strategic leadership for learning’, a dimension in the DLOQ, is one of the most pivotal dimensions for creating learning cultures that build learning organizations. Specifically, an item within this dimension, ‘leaders who mentor and coach’ has been recently identified as one of the most critical aspects associated with strategic leadership for learning.

Originality/value

The extant managerial coaching literature offers a solid foundation for more closely integrating and mainstreaming the developmental intervention of managerial coaching into learning organizations. Directions for future research that identifies fine-grained perspectives of the discrete facets of managerial coaching in learning organization contexts are suggested.

Organizational learning and bureaucracy: an alternative view

Purpose

This paper aims to reconceptualize the relationship between organizational learning and bureaucracy. Although the two are generally considered to be antithetical, this paper shows that, in some organizations, bureaucracy can be functional for organizational learning.

Design/methodology/approach

The central argument is theoretical and builds on two main ideas: firstly, the nature of knowledge creation and organizational learning is conditioned by the organization’s main technological characteristics; and secondly, bureaucracy has a dual nature as an instrument of managerial control and as a vehicle of large-scale collaboration. This study uses examples from process industries as empirical illustrations.

Findings

As products and production systems come to embody deeper and more diverse knowledge, their development takes on an increasingly collaborative character. The need to integrate differentiated knowledge and material artefacts calls for specialization, formalization, centralization and staff roles. Hence, technological complexity drives a bureaucratization of organizational learning.

Research limitations/implications

The core argument is developed with reference to industries where organizational learning involves the accumulation of knowledge, not its periodic replacement associated with technological shifts. Its relevance outside these industries remains to be assessed.

Practical implications

Organizations, whose knowledge creation fits the pattern of creative accumulation, should learn to harness formal structures for large-scale collaboration.

Originality/value

The main thesis runs counter to mainstream perspectives on organizational learning. This paper explores organizational learning in sectors that have received little attention in debates about organizational learning.

Creating learning organization 2.0: a contextualized and multi-stakeholder approach

Purpose

This paper aims to offer a contextualized and multi-stakeholder perspective for creating a learning organization (LO) 2.0.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on a systematic review of the critiques of LO in the past three decades, this paper suggests some possible directions for the development of next-generation of LO (e.g. LO 2.0).

Findings

It is suggested that LO 2.0 should adopt a contextualized perspective by considering the social, organizational, cultural and industrial contexts to enhance the success of LO implementation and help fine-tune the universal LO model. Accordingly, LO 2.0 should adopt a multi-stakeholder perspective by incorporating multiple stakeholders during the process of design and implementation under the rationales of counteracting managerial dominance of low-power marginalized employees and mitigating the impacts of increased competition and technology advancement.

Practical implications

This paper provides some practical advice to business practitioners regarding how the practices of LO 2.0 can be adopted.

Originality/value

The study adds to the existing LO literature by further supporting and developing a contextualized and multi-stakeholder perspective to create the next generation of LO.

A Revisit of the Learning Organisation: Is It Time?

The learning organisation (LO) phenomenon was created over 25 years ago. Several definitions of the LO have evolved as well as frameworks, features, and characteristics. One of the challenges of the LO’s credibility was the impetus of the creation of empirical methods. The LO theory has stabilised with the involvement of human resource (HR) researchers to bridge the gap between theory and practice. However, in a rapidly changing, complex, diverse, and competitive work environment, now may be the opportune time to further investigate the scope of the LO. The study examines the utility of the LO definitions and frameworks in relation to shifts in the environment to determine if the concept continues to withstand the landscape of the current workplace and beyond. The importance of creating an LO continues to be top priority in numerous organisational industries and communities and its reach is expanding to a variety of populations. However, the LO concept does not necessarily address constantly changing and complex workplace work demands. Therefore, a new definition of the LO is proposed. Recommendations for future studies and implications for HR research and practice are included.

Learning-structure fit part I

Purpose

The purpose of this study, which consists of two parts, is to bring together literature on organizational design and learning of individuals in organizational settings. The literature suggests that learning takes place in organic and less-structured organizational designs, whereas empirical research provides conflicting evidence. This first part theorizes about the influence of mechanistic vs organic designs on three different aspects of employees’ learning behavior: knowledge sourcing, learning styles and learning loops.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper is built on previous research on the impact of structure on learning and theorizes about the relationship between mechanistic/organic design and specific learning behavior at work.

Findings

Four propositions are developed in this paper, regarding how a different structure leads to a different learning behavior. Mechanistic structure is associated with internal learning, independent learning and single-loop learning, whereas organic design leads to external learning, collaborative learning and double-loop learning.

Research limitations/implications

Because the paper is conceptual in nature, the propositions are in need of empirical validation. Some directions for empirical testing are proposed.

Practical/implications

For an organization design practice, managers should be aware of the distinct impact different structures have on individual learning at work. Furthermore, the appropriate organizational structure for learning must be considered in the broader context of contingencies.

Originality/value

This paper contributes to the organizational design literature and to the organizational learning theory by conceptualizing the relationship between structure and learning of individuals at work.

A systemic approach to processes of power in learning organizations

Purpose

The purpose of the paper is to introduce a systemic approach to organizational learning “triple loop learning” (TLL) that addresses processes of power. Three equally important foci in our TLL are processes of design, processes of debate and processes of power. The focus on power aims to shift “power over” (power as domination) to “power to” enact empowering designs, “power to” co-develop responsible decision-making and “power to” transform our relations with each other and with life on Earth.

Design/methodology/approach

The organizational learning literature is reviewed in the context of power dynamics and its shortcomings are highlighted. The authors introduce their understanding of TLL, and how it engages with power dynamics in organizations.

Findings

Peter Senge’s conceptualization of systems thinking is unable to recognize processes of power in organizations and offers limited support to transformative learning. Conceptualizations of TLL aim to enhance learning in organizations but none satisfactorily address the processes of power. The learning organization literature as a whole does not satisfactorily address processes of power or reflect our way of envisaging “looping between loops of learning” in TLL to better design, better debate and better develop relationality in the social fabric of organizations.

Originality/value

The authors introduce an original approach to TLL that directly addresses the processes of power in organizations. It offers researchers, learning facilitators and practitioners of the learning organization a way to engage with the processes of power without neglecting other important organizational and environmental issues.

Organizational unlearning: time to expand our horizons?

Purpose

Interest in the topic of unlearning has grown in recent years, fueled by rapid changes in the business environment and resultant organizational change. This change challenges individuals and organizations to unlearn past knowledge and practice to embrace new organizational realities. However, much of the unlearning literature focuses on either individual or organizational factors that enable or hinder unlearning. This paper aims to look beyond the organizational boundary to question whether there are tensions between professionals and the organizations in which they work that influence organizational unlearning.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper analyzing how professions are established to identify the implications for organizational unlearning. The critical elements of a profession are explored to identify the potential impact that professionals within the organization may have on organizational learning and unlearning.

Findings

The paper argues that to facilitate unlearning, organizations must recognize not only internal factors but also external pressures on individuals and groups. In particular, professions with a strong identity may represent a significant force that can either engender or resist attempts to learn and unlearn by the organization.

Originality/value

Within the existing unlearning literature, individual and organizational factors that facilitate or hinder unlearning have been widely canvased. However, little attention has been given to the factors beyond organizational boundaries that may also impact unlearning, particularly for individuals and groups with strong professional identities. This paper offers some unique insights into this potential factor for consideration by those seeking to enhance organizational unlearning.

What does “learning organization” mean?

Purpose

The paper aims to offer an overview of the definition of the concept of learning organization to be used, related to and taken as a starting point for further conceptual developments by others writing about and using the learning organization concept. An additional purpose is to suggest how the concept of learning organization could be demarcated to define what would be demanded from any particular organization to be counted as a learning organization.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper. To define the learning organization, a label-focused approach and a content-focused approach are used. A contextual approach is suggested as the most appropriate tool for demarcating the concept of learning organization.

Findings

It is suggested that there are four versions of learning organization, which can all be related to three different forms of organizational aspects. Furthermore, a contextual approach is suggested to demarcate how to define learning organization to develop a much-needed contingency model, which places reasonable demands on organizations in various contexts to qualify them as learning organizations.

Originality/value

An overview definition, which anybody writing about the learning organization could relate to, is presented. It is also discussed what a learning organization is not, something which only few others have done, and a contextual approach to demarcating the learning organization concept is suggested.

Evolving digital divides in information literacy and learning outcomes

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to seek answers to questions on how equity of information literacy and learning outcomes have evolved with the ongoing advances in technologies in teaching and learning across schools. The authors’ report on a five-year long bring your own device (BYOD) journey of one school, which was one of the earliest adopters of one-to-one learning devices in New Zealand.

Design/methodology/approach

Using a socio-cultural ecological lens for analysis, a longitudinal study has investigated aspects of how digital/information literacy, computer self-efficacy, and nature of technology usage are transforming school and classroom curriculum practices.

Findings

Findings of this study reveal a significant shift in social and academic boundaries between formal and informal learning spaces. One-to-one learning devices provide the link between school and home, as students take more ownership of their learning, and teachers become facilitators. Curricula changes and proper technological support systems introduced in the school structures have given agency to students resulting in greater acceptance of the BYOD policy and extensions to learning beyond formal classroom spaces. Digital divide amongst learners has evolved beyond equity in access and equity in capabilities to become more inclusive, thereby paving the way for equity in learning outcomes.

Research limitations/implications

This study has been conducted in a school which is located in a relatively high socio-economic region. To achieve a more holistic view, there is a need for further studies to be conducted in schools from low socio-economic communities.

Originality/value

This paper adds to the existing literature by sharing teacher reflections on their use of innovative pedagogies to bring changes to classroom curricular practice.

The learning organization and the level of consciousness

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze learning organization by comparing with other types of organizations. This typology is based on the levels of consciousness and relates each type of organization with a level of learning and an organizational structure.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper based on the concept of levels of consciousness.

Findings

The paper proposes that learning organization requires the highest level of consciousness.

Originality/value

The paper uses the levels of consciousness to compare learning organization with other types of organizations.

Learning in organization

Purpose

– This study aims at identifying the presence of the dimensions of learning capabilities and the characteristics of a learning organization within two companies in the field of services, as well as identifying the relationships between their learning capability and the organizational culture.

Design/methodology/approach

– This has been a transversal study on a convenience sample of 64 employees from two companies. The questionnaires’ purpose was to identify and assess organizational learning capability, dimensions of the learning organization and the role of organizational culture.

Findings

– The results showed a better represented capability of organizational learning and a more evident presence of the dimensions that characterize a learning organization within a private company. Also, the type of organization is a moderator for the relationship between the hierarchical culture and adhocracy on one hand and the dimension of experimenting organizational learning on the other hand, but also between the market culture and dialogue dimension.

Research limitations/implications

– The reduced dimension and the structure of the sample or using certain self-report-type questionnaires represent some of the limits of this study.

Practical implications

– The results highlight the way the type of organization and the organizational cultures influence the factors that facilitate learning. Knowing this allows the specific intervention upon those factors that can contribute to the increase of the organizational learning capabilities.

Originality/value

– The study depicts the factors that make a difference on the learning and action level of the organizational culture in two different organizational realities: a public one with local top management and a private one with foreign top management.