Purpose: To develop a biological approach to the analysis of learning organisations based on complexity theory, autopoiesis, and evolutionary epistemology. Design/methodology/approach: This paper synthesises ideas from disciplines ranging from physics, epistemology and philosophy of science to military affairs, to sketch a scientific framework in…

For the past ten years the management literature has increasingly discussed the concept of learning organizations. Yet, more that a decade later, few organizations have figured out how to create the structures and processes necessary to assure continuous learning. This article purports that this problem can be attributed to the mental models of…