Växjö Airport - A Learning Organization? : What factors facilitate the becoming of a Learning Organization? What obstacles can arise?

This thesis deals with the need for development in contemporary organizations in order to stay competitive. Thereby, we focus on the concept of Learning Organizations, which is a well-known theory of developing for organizations. In the context of this thesis we identify the key factors for the becoming of a Learning Organization in the contemplated organization, which is Växjö Airport. However, this thesis also includes an attempt to improve the situation at the airport. The thesis at hand is conducted with a qualitative approach due to the need of a thorough understanding about the procedures in the organization. It is important to mention that the thesis is based on a previous study, thus our pre-understanding was influenced by the empirical findings of this study. In this context the most suitable approach is the abductive method. For the development of our conceptual model the pre-understanding was of utmost importance, since the results from the previous study made it possible to choose the key factors for the becoming of a Learning Organization in the special case of Växjö Airport. The model namely includes the factors systems thinking, groups and teams, shared vision, leadership style and communication. Another important component of this thesis is the practical accomplishment of several meetings, which attempted to improve the main obstacles in the organization. The analysis capitalizes on the comparison between the model and the collected empirical data, which is based on the interviews with several employees of the organization as well as our observations of the conducted meetings. Thereby, we identify the special characteristics of each key factor. In addition, we highlight the possible obstacles or problems in the implementation. Due to this analysis we can conclude that our model presents the most important key factors for the becoming of a Learning Organization in the contemplated organization. However, we also realized the difficulty of changing people’s mind and thus the complexity of the implementation. We also discovered that Organizational Learning is an ongoing process, which is never completed