The Learning Organization: Adult Learning and Organizational Transformation

SUMMARY The concept of the ‘learning organization’, with its roots in self‐development and action‐learning, has recently caught the imagination of many organizations and researchers. However, emerging definitions are creating ambiguity. There is, therefore, a need to add substance to them, and widen our understanding of what the concept means, by concentrating on what is meant by ‘learning’, and focusing on exactly how adults learn. Understanding and facilitating adult learning in organizations is, by and large, a confused activity that fails to connect with an individual's other experiences and needs, and with what modern psychology and research have to teach us. In particular, learning and skills need to be linked to the questioning of purpose and value in an organization.