ABSTRACT

This chapter introduces early ideas about adaptation and learning based on Ashby’s ‘Design for a Brain’ (1956) before considering the specific work of Peter Senge (1990), the ‘guru’ of the learning organisation. Senge’s ‘Fifth Discipline’ identifies five principles for learning and seven learning disabilities which inhibit the development of truly successful organisations. Flood (1999) revisited this theme to bring to the field a deeper andmore robust appreciation of the breadth and power of systemic thinking applied to the notion of learning. There is an emerging literature in the field of learning, or adaptive, organisation, and readers should consider Images of Organisation (Morgan, 1986), The Innovating Organization (Pettigrew & Fenton, 2000) and The Intelligent Organisation (Beckford, 2016) to further develop their understanding. Learning results from a cycle of planning, experimentation, reflection and consolidation

which the PDCA or EPDCA cycles of Shewhart, Deming and Oakland reflect. A learning organisation employs these cycles systemically throughout its horizontal and vertical dimensions. This means learning has to become embedded in the organisation’s processes, systems and structure and in the behaviour of its people.