Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of the history, the present and the future or the learning organization as a concept and a practical approach, from the perspective of Professor John Burgoyne. Design/methodology/approach: This conversation piece follows the development of the concept from its early days into the current debates and…

Purpose: This paper aims to demonstrate how the Nordic model, featuring highly regulated trade union-employer collaboration, has enabled the building of learning organizations through a co-generative learning model involving both practitioners and action researchers. Design/methodology/approach: A literature search on the Nordic sociotechnical…

Purpose: This paper aims to provide an overview of the development of learning organization concepts from the perspective of Professor Bob Garratt and presents an interesting evolution toward his work on learning boardroom members. Design/methodology/approach: Through a conversation with Professor Garratt, the authors capture several topics…

Purpose: Sustainability is, in itself, the idea of a harmonic answer to the dual nature of the most pressing problem for global society. Most of the problems dealing with sustainability concern its dual and contradictory nature. That paradoxical reality is in no way a unique feature of sustainability; its universal pervasiveness is demonstrated by…

Purpose: While the importance of organizational learning for sustainability has been stressed by a number of authors in the literature, the practicalities of how organizational leaders might foster such learning are seldom treated. This paper seeks to demonstrate that there is much that could be learned from the aviation industry about…

Purpose: In order to understand the pros and cons of an open organization regarding the flow of knowledge between firms, this paper introduces the concept of "protective capacity". The purpose of the paper is to elaborate the concept of "protective capacity" especially in relation to absorptive capacity, by presenting a number of propositions.…

Purpose: This Special Issue is intended to heighten awareness of the importance of organizational learning in addressing the demands of organizational sustainability, and in particular triple bottom line (TBL) sustainability. A definition of TBL sustainability is provided, together with an exploration of the practical issues relevant to adopting…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to describe how interruptions in organizational learning effect institutional absorptive capacity and contribute to organizational inertia. Design/methodology/approach: An exploratory model is presented as a heuristic to describe how interruptions in organizational learning affect absorptive capacity.…

Purpose: Based on showing the significance of embodied and relational learning, this paper aims for contributing to a more comprehensive and integral approach to learning in and of organizations and its underlying dynamics. Design/methodology/approach: Methodologically, advanced phenomenology and an integral framework are used for generating a…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical contribution to explicate the various factors and aspects that influence Senge's five disciplines and their outcomes. Design/methodology/approach: The paper develops a conceptual framework for the analysis of antecedents and outcomes of Senge's five disciplines, and offers moderators to…

Purpose: Although the notion of wisdom confronts the economic rationale of business organizations, this paper aims to argue that organizations are coming under increasing pressure not only to learn, change and adapt, but also to take actions that are ethically acceptable and respond to the expectations of multiple stakeholders, or in other words…

Describes organizational learning as existing activities or processes of learning in organizations and the learning organization as an ideal form of organization. Further distinguishes the two concepts on the dimensions of amount of normativity, entities of learning, and location of knowledge. (Contains 56 references.) (SK)

Describes the customer service training program in the European Patent Office, which involved active listening, empathy, case studies, videobased role playing, and feedback. (SK)

Describes self-organizing activities and the natural emergence of new systems as a model for a new type of learning environment. Explores the facilitation of self-organizing activities in a separate learning space with an organization and outlines theoretical elements for making the space successful. (Contains 26 references.) (JOW)

Purpose: Establishes a connection between the concepts of "learning organisation" and "human resources development". Design/methodology/approach: A brief and broad overview of the current state of human research development research. Findings: One conclusion to be reached is that the subject is healthy. Another conclusion is that human resource…