Creating the Learning Organization

Organizations as adaptive rational systems that learn from experience is a view that was first proposed 35 years ago by Cyert and March (1963). Sociotechnical system scholars articulated organization design principles that intend to foster the organization’s ability to learn. (e.g., Emery and Trist, 1965; Cherns, 1976; Pasmore, 1994; Taylor and Felton, 1994). Senge defined a learning organization in terms of continuous development of knowledge and capacity (1991), yet over the last three decades relatively little has been written about the specific organizational learning mechanisms that enhance the organizational capacity of learning. Among the few exceptions are the works by Lipshitz, Popper, and Oz (1996), Popper and Lipshitz (1998), and Wick and Leon (1995), which investigated the structural and cultural aspects of organizational learning.