Quality Success: Do Organisational Learning Attributes Make a Difference?

The purpose of the study is to investigate the learning attributes of organisations following a continuousimprovement approach to operations. The focus will be on the examination of organisations with both successfuland unsuccessful quality programs to identify organisational learning attributes that discriminate theorganisations at either end of the success continuum. Data was collected through a survey sent to Australianorganisations certified to quality standard ISO9000. The findings suggest that organisations that have a qualityprogram that has exceeded expectations have been able to develop and encourage the attributes necessary for alearning organisation. It would appear that learning has been an important lever for these organisations tosucceed in the quality endeavours. The findings of the study provides further empirical evidence of the roleorganisational learning has in improving organisational outcomes especially in relation to quality practices.