Organization learning (OL) was defined in 1978 by Argyris and Schon as the “correction and detection of errors”. So a learning organization is a company that take benefit of its experience to improve its practices.Argyris and Schon identified three kinds of organization learning:
- Single loop learning: based on errors’ detection and correction in order to fulfill the same purposes as before. The firm keeps the sames goals and strategy
- Double loop learning: single loop learning + modification of process, routines, strategy and objectives.
- Deutero learning: the firm is learning how to deal with single and double loop learning: necessity of learning and adapted processes are in the center of this phase.
Single loop is only concerned by change, Double loop and Deutero are concerned by “why and how” and questions about core beliefs, strategy, and the company’s fundamentals.
So, let have a few questios about that:(we’ll talk about that in a next post…)
- in wich measures OL is a step to intelligent firms, which other steps are necessary to go from one to the other?
- as feedback is essential in OL, how is it collected, managed, treated (individually, collectively, at which level of the company?)
- which factors are key in such a process…and what were the braking factors.
- did this theory have a real impact, or was it only partially adopted?
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