Building a Learning Organisation

According to Fortune magazine, the most successful corporation of the 1990s is those learning organisations who learn faster than their competitors. The concept of a learning organisation is becoming increasingly important in this knowledge-based economy. Continuos learning is essential in order for organisation tu sustain its competitive advantage.The concept of organisational learning and learning organisation emerged during the 1960s and 1970s. Learning organisation is a collective entity which focuses on the question of "what". It is the development of tools, models and methodologies for creating change and improving learning proceses. The ideas of learning organisation refer to a type of organisation rather then a process (Yeo, 2003). Organisation learning is a process which answers the question of "how". It refers to the process of learning. It is merely the understanding of the nature and processes involved in individual and collective learning in an organisation. The fith discipline bring word of "learning organisation", organisations where people continually expand their capacity to create the results they truly desire , where new and expansive patterns of thinking are nurtured, where collective aspiration is set free, and where people are continually learning how to learn together. Five diciplines are described as the means of building learning organisations. (Senge,1990) Many organisations have adopted five diciplines as their core learning diciplines. The objective of this dissertatiion is to have better understanding on how to build a learning organisation by systematically exploring the descriptions given in the learning organisation literature about how organisations conceptualise and go about implementing learning disciplines. It will use a multi-case method to analyse the various learning disciplines used by the learning organisation