En lärande Försvarsmakt?

The purpose of this essay has been to analyse to what extent the Swedish Armed Forces is a learning organisation based on experiences concerning Defence medicine and the Operational Mentoring and Liaison Teams (OMLT) in Afghanistan. Strengths and weaknesses are highlighted. The ambition has been to increase the overall understanding of the organisation in light of learning organisational structures. Qualitative text analysis of recently published reports on the Swedish Armed Forces' mission in Afghanistan form the study basis. The reports summarize experiences concerning Defence medicine during 2002-2014 and the OMLT 2009-2011. The theoretical framework comprises P.M. Senge's The fifth discipline. The results show that the Swedish Armed Forces is a learning organisation concerning Defence medicine and the OMLT, but flaws and weaknesses are identified for all of Senge's disciplines. The primary strengths are found in 'personal mastery', 'mental models' and 'team learning'; the organisation has learned gradually, made significant efforts to learn from lessons and implement these into the organization. The Defence medicine been developed positively in many different ways. The organisation's primary flaws concern the discipline 'system thinking' and the ability to make use of and follow up lessons learned at the operational and strategic levels