Learning organization from an employee perspective

The purpose of this essay is to develop knowledge about how learning among employees is perceived to occur practically in a pre-school unit seen as a learning organization. From an employee perspective the intention was to gain an understanding of how they perceive the organization regarding employee learning in the workplace when it comes to in which contexts and what conditions that enable collaborative learning. Because learning organization is mostly a vision from a management perspective thereby it should in this case mostly be viewed as the context in which the employees work in. The essay is based on a qualitative research approach with eight semi-structured interviews. It was based on hermeneutics as method of analysis with the intention to gain an understanding of the employees' subjective perception. It is a case study on a selected pre-school unit in Stockholm. Eight themes emerged in the results and these formed the basis for analysis and discussion. The results have been interpreted on theories about learning organization, collective and organizational learning. The results indicate that employees perceive the importance of working closely with competent colleagues and that much of their common learning occurs primarily in the work teams. This takes the form of cooperation, openness with competencies, dialogue and reflection. The planned meetings also appeared to be supportive of the work outside of them. Furthermore, possible power aspects appeared in the communication, and particularly in the dialogue. Individual differences in how employees can manage themselves in communication also appeared to be an obstacle. Throughout, a picture emerges in which employees perceive that learning and development is based on personal responsibility