ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author describes around the field of learning businesses and he uses a variety of models (maps) to say something of the territory. He discusses some concerns about how learning in organizations is seen and the author suggests that some kinds of organization are more congenial than others for developing strategic learning. The author shows that organizations need to consider how they align people with roles and roles with people – and how dynamic and systematic dimensions themselves need integrating. He argues that the Japanese tradition had a Zen basis which saw learning as a perpetual process of self improvement. The problem of closed approaches to knowledge management is that they become mechanistic IT-driven initiatives. Organizations accumulate masses of information and assume that the constitutes knowledge management. They have also shown how such communities can be creative social units which get round corporate bureaucracies in order to serve customers better.
