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Reader Resources the concept is evolving and remains fairly abstract or, as a senior consultant engagingly described it:...
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Learning organizations

the concept is evolving and remains fairly abstract or, as a senior consultant engagingly described it: 'quite fluffy'

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Learning Organizations

The Fifth Discipline: The Art and Practice of the Learning Organization

Human Resource Development: Strategy and Tactics

Learning Organizations

Walton (1999) states of the concept of the learning organisation: 'Perhaps more than anything else it has helped to put HRD on the strategic agenda.' But the concept is evolving and remains fairly abstract or, as a senior consultant engagingly described it: 'quite fluffy' (Prothero, 1997, quoted in Walton, 1999). What follows is necessarily a considerably simplified consideration of the concept.

The seminal ideas of the concept come from two main sources: Pedler et al's (1991) ideas on the 'learning company' and Senge's (1990) 'five disciplines'. According to Senge (1990) learning organisations are organisations in which:

- the capacity of people to create results they truly desire is continually expanding;
- new and open-minded ways of thinking are fostered;
- people are given freedom to develop their collective aspirations;
- individuals continually learn how to learn together.

This set of goals may seem somewhat ambitious but Senge contends that they can be achieved through the gradual convergence of five 'component technologies', the essential disciplines which are:

Source: adapted from Alan Price (2000) Principles of Human Resource Management: An Action-Learning Approach, Blackwell, Oxford.

Excerpts from Chapter 5, The Trainer's Handbook

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