John Burgoyne

The Learning Company

The learning company is an organisation which facilitates the learning of all of its members and continuously transforms itself in order to meet its strategic goals. The paper introduces the concept of the learning company and examines its relevance in modern industrial society. A study of Director‐level personnel in eight large public and private sector organisations in the United Kingdom provides support for the concept. Following a discussion of the learning company as an organisational transformation, guidelines for designing learning companies are proposed.

Towards the Learning Company

INTRODUCTION The concept of the Learning Company is beginning to attract those concerned with the development of people in organisations. Having been stirred up by the prescriptions of In Search of Excellence in terms of how to organise for action and innovation (Peters and Waterman, 1982), this theme is the one most likely to preoccupy managers in the next few years. Even before the notion has been thoroughly defined and explored it has entered the mainstream. For example, Item 6 in the new Charter Group Initiative’s ’Code of Practice’ uses the term ’Learning Organisation’ (FME/CBI/BIM, 1987, p. 5) as does a recent survey report from Ashridge to designate the coming phase of training and development in organisations (Barham et al., 1988, p. 49, et seq.). The Learning Company is the new frontier and the scouts are busy bringing back reports. However, while many people are talking about it no-one has, as yet, claimed to be able to offer a working model of what a Learning Company is. There is both excitement about the possibilities and a lack of clarity about what it looks like. In short we are now standing at the ’vision’ end of the vision-to-reality sequence in bringing the idea into being. In October 1987, we began a 6-month pilot project entitled ’Developing The Learning Company’ with funding from the Manpower Services Commission. The aim was to define and test the feasibility of the idea as

What has action learning learned to become

This inquiry originates in a conversation between the first two authors which concluded with the challenge that a Revans Institute for Action Learning & Research should not only be doing research by action learning and but should also be researching into action learning itself.

Politics and Organizational Learning

In this paper it is argued that organizational learning is facilitated by a free and open form of politics in the workplace based on a system of political, social and civil rights and obligations within a framework of legitimate authority, parallel to the system that exists in the wider society. The argument is developed by examining issues at three related levels: why ‘psychic’ space is needed to nurture selfidentity and learning; the institutional pressures in the wider social environment that bring about learning within a whole business sector through open political activity; and how existing organizational learning theory and practice reveal numerous ways in which space for learning and innovation can be made available within work organizations through political processes. Finally, suggestions are made for ways of creating a framework within organizations that will enable such processes to develop.

Management Learning: Integrating Perspectives in Theory and Practice

Burgoyne and Reynolds tackle several challenges simultaneously in their edited volume on management learning. They take on the ambitious task of attempting to integrate theory and practice. The already difficult chore is further complicated because the chapters have a largely critical perspective, and the topic of management learning has a strong action orientation. Practitioners desire normative and descriptive theories to aid in intervention, whereas critical theorists often offer negative critiques or utopian ideals rather than useful alternatives for action. Critical theorists risk having nothing useful to say to practitioners. Fortunately, for the most part, the authors manage to raise critical questions for practitioners to contemplate without stifling the possibility of action. The chapters also encourage academics to consider the work on management learning in organizing the classroom experience. Too often our teaching of managers does not reflect our understanding of how managers best learn.

The Competence Movement: Issues, Stakeholders and Prospects

Выдвигается и исследуется положение, что повышение компетентности служащих должно служить мерилом качества полученного ими образования и тренинга. Для оценки успешности обучающих и тренинговых программ предлагается использовать наглядные индикаторы в виде стандартизированных тестов. Построение тестов делалось с учетом разделения вопросов на: микро- и макро-вопросы, теоретические и практические, а также технические и требующие стратегического подхода. Отмечается, что хотя подобный подход несколько упрощает реальную ситуацию, путем постепенного усложнения вопросов можно получать очень неплохие результаты в росте компетенции персонала.

Creating the Managerial Portfolio: Building On Competency Approaches To Management Development

INTRODUCTION The current ’Charter Group’ initiative on management development puts a strong emphasis on a competency approach, and various listings of managerial competencies are under discussion and development as the basis of a national scheme of management qualifications. The aim of this article is to develop a position on competency approaches to management development, and to make both critical and constructive suggestions about some of the emerging Charter Group initiatives. The general conclusion is that competency approaches have a valuable part to play in management development, but that there are eight underlying problems or issues that any specific competency based scheme must face up to. These are: 1. the divisibility of competencies, and their reintegration for performance; 2. the measurability of competencies, and appropriate methods; 3. how universal or generalisable a listing is over different categories of manager; 4. the ethical/moral content of professional management, and their representation in competency listings; 5. the permanence of competency listings given the changing nature of managing; 6. accommodating different styles and strategies of managing; 7. how managerial competencies relate to the whole person; 8. how individual competence contributes to and integrates into collective

Learning organizations: the measurement of company performance

While the concept of the learning company has now become a fairly well‐established idea within academic and practitioner circles, it is still a concept which is in emergence and thus a certain amount of ambiguity and confusion surrounds it. It is, therefore, necessary not only to develop an understanding of the concept to the point at which it is possible to begin to understand the implications for practice, but also to establish the relationship between the presence and the development of learning company characteristics and organizational performance. Reviews the application of learning company ideas in a primarily small to medium‐sized enterprise environment, and using a case study approach considers the training, development and learning potential of one company after the application of The Learning Company Project questionnaire, developed by The Learning Company Project in Sheffield.

Learning from experience

Learning from experience assumes particular importance at times of fundamental transition because inherited learning becomes irrelevant or misleading. The current fundamental transition is from work for the production of knowledge to work for the production of identify/meaning (mentofacture to spiroculture). The accompanying transition in terms of learning from experience is from individual discovery of personal and environmental realities to collective meaning making. Examines the contemporary concern with “dialogue” as a core process of collective meaning making in organizational learning and proposes a process of meta‐dialogue as an approach to facilitating learning from experience in a way appropriate to the times. Meta‐dialogue involves sharing and reaching an understanding of the ways in which beliefs under discussion in dialogue can be believed to be true or useful.

Towards Best or Better Practice in Corporate Leadership Development: Operational Issues in Mode 2 and Design Science Research

The research reported here was part of a UK government initiative to improve management and leadership capability. Corporate leadership development was one element of this initiative. The researchers, also the authors of this paper, were tasked with developing a best practice guide in leadership development. The aim was to establish current best UK corporate practice in order to inform similar organizations striving to improve their approach to leadership development. The aim of this paper is to present the findings of this inquiry as an example of Mode 2 research, i.e. that which is co-produced with practitioners in a rigorous yet actionable way. The paper addresses operational issues by exploring the tensions inherent in Mode 2 research and makes some additions to previous literature on conducting Mode 2 research. It introduces the notion of technological rules derived from the concept of management research as design science, which enables the authors to articulate the way in which output can be developed in a form readily acceptable to end users of Mode 2 research. Actionable research products and accompanying dissemination issues are proposed as central operational concerns for Mode 2 research.