This article observes that the political environment will always compromise the application of the organisational learning concept in government. In an attempt to overcome this problem, it seeks to demonstrate that a conceptual synthesis between policy learning and organisational learning has an important contribution to make in terms of developing an understanding of how and why policy transfer occurs. Although the concept of organisational learning is now fairly well established in management approaches for improving organisational effectiveness, its current attraction is largely a result of the same environmental pressures that have allegedly globalised policy-making. The efforts of the UK government to improve learning from the international environment are examined and it is argued that while adaptive behaviour is common, true learning is rare. This observation underscores a key problem with the policy learning approach. The article therefore considers how the demands for effective organisational lea...

Organisational learning in a political environment

Purpose – The organizational learning and learning organization literatures lack empirical support in delineating the role leaders play in fostering or hindering learning. This study aims to build upon previous research on facilitative leadership in learning organizations to consider how leaders contribute to and detract from learning at the individual and organizational levels in the corporate context.Design/methodology/approach – Preliminary survey research confirmed that the Fortune 500 company being considered for the study was perceived as a learning organization by its employees. The study then proceeded with critical incident interviews with managers and their direct reports, resulting in a cross‐case content analysis of four categories: triggers, beliefs, behaviors, and outcomes, which prompted the development of a preliminary model of the learning process depicted by participants.Findings – The findings revealed that learning leaders have several distinct characteristics and skills, but the parti...

Leaders as facilitators of individual and organizational learning

Social learning in planning: Seattle's sustainable development codebooks

This article looks at benchmarking as a tool for promoting performance improvement and the ‘learning organization’ ideal. Specifically, it considers some of the ways the European Foundation for Quality Management Excellence Model and self-assessment approach are being applied within the UK public service. Further, the article introduces ‘Dolphin’, a new self-assessment tool based on the Excellence Model, and describes how the tool can be applied in practice. Finally, whether benchmarking can aid organizational improvement, organizational learning and establish the basis for a ‘learning culture’ is discussed. Copyright © Crown Copyright 2002. Recorded with the permission of the controller of Her Majestry's Stationery Office. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Benchmarking: a tool for facilitating organizational learning?

Purpose – The purposes of this paper are to take a closer look at the relevance of the idea of the learning organization for organizations in different generalized organizational contexts; to open up for the existence of multiple, context-adapted models of the learning organization; and to suggest a number of such models. Design/methodology/approach – The suggested context-adapted models are deduced from works arguing that not all aspects of the idea of the learning organization should be adopted by organizations in some certain generalized organizational contexts. Findings – The idea of the learning organization needs to be reformulated, to some extent, to become fully relevant for public organizations, safety organizations, human service organizations and knowledge-intensive organizations. Research limitations/implications – To achieve a more inclusive contingency model than presented in this article, there is a need for further research examining the (full) relevance of the original learning organizati...

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

As part of the Government’s drive for responsive, high quality public services, the 1999 White Paper on Modernising Government suggested that the public service must become a learning organisation. Yet the application of the learning organisation ideal in public sector organisations is viewed in the literature as significantly constrained by a number of factors, including the obligation for public accountability. The research reported here sought to assess the feasibility of the learning organisation ideal for Civil Service organisations by devising and applying a measure comprising seven dimensions of organisational behaviour, drawn from the learning organisation literature, with an eighth dimension of “notions of accountability”. In 1996 all Civil Service organisations were placed under an injunction to achieve accreditation as Investors in People (IIP). The research offered an opportunity to assess the extent to which striving for this contributes to progress towards the learning organisation ideal.

William G.K. Taylor

Papers

The learning organisation ideal in Civil Service organisations: deriving a measure