After sneak-reading the communication on the list for at couple of
weeks, I now think I should introduce myself before plunging into the
debate.
Since 1993, I have worked as consultant (for the last year as senior
consultant) in one of Denmark's largest consultancies, PLS Consult
(homepage www.pls.dk). My focus of work is socio-welfare development.
My customers are primarily public bodies ranging in size from
individual institutions at the municipal level to the EU Commission.
I work with change processes, especially those who involve more actors
(e.g. users/institutions/municpal administration) or sectors (the
interface between training policies and employment policies).
Before that I was employed at the County of Aarhus, Denmark, where I
created projects which employed the resources of unemployed graduates
in creating regional development through a concept which included some
course activities, and lots of project work involving the unemployed
in a close dialogue with enterprises.
My education never lead my surroundingws to suspect that this was
where I would go, as I hold an MSc in Planning geography and a PhD in
energy policy (to which extent has energy policy been influenced by
popular/grass-root action)
Nevertheless, my own sense of "mission", though so far not put into
words (that will follow shortly, no doubt) has always been related to
the development of interrelations between humans and organisations.
In the present state of the world I think there should be no need to
discuss the necessity of learning organisations. Certainly not in this
forum where we will all probably readily agree that learning
organisations is a Must.
Disagreement (and life) comes to the discussion, when we get to
clarification of the concepts (what do we mean when we say that an
organisation can learn? What are the signs of the learning
organisation? Which methods and tools does it use in the process?). On
these issues I look forward to learn and to inspire others.