carold.whisnant@astd.noli.com wrote:
>
> Replying to LO4077 --
>
> The learning organization has always been a part of every organization.
> You can chose to reject that. If you do choose to reject that
> perspective, then maybe you should go back and study the life cycle of
> organizations.
I agree that all organizations learn in order to survive.
However, imagine for a moment, an entrepreneur who starts a company to
produce a product that he/she has invented. The boss hires 50 workers to
assemble the parts of the product, and another dozen people to handle
managing the finances and so forth.
As production ramps up, the boss hovers over the process,
directing changes here and there, and accepting little feedback from his
hirelings. Over the course of a couple of years, one could say that this
organization has learned some things or it would not survive.
However, since the organization is learning only at the top level,
and since it refuses information from those closest to the process, I
would not call it a learning organization. A learning organization, in my
definition, capitalizes on learnings from all levels.
There is a great difference between bureaucracies based on the
military model of organizations, and the flatter, information-sharing,
stakeholder driven organizations which are able to learn from everyone.
-- @__Roy_J._Winkler,_AAS,_BSM... @__Consultant:_OD/HRD/Group_Dynamics @__UAW/GM____Anderson,_Indiana___USA @__E-Mail: rwinkler@iquest.net