Audit of a Learning Organisation LO27568

From: AM de Lange (amdelange@gold.up.ac.za)
Date: 11/20/01


Replying to LO27527 --

Dear Organlearners,

Chris Macrae <wcbn007@easynet.co.uk> writes:

>So is core business - the idea of knowing what
>businesses an organisation will be in year in year
>out, and therefore what the learning focus -and
>relevant communities of practice/competence -
>relevant to the particular organisation is. That's
>fairly easy to audit whether a board has been
>consistent on that.

Greetings dear Chris,

Your paragraph churned up the following question within me. What is the
core business of a Learning Organisation?

As for myself, I think that the core business of any LO is learning and
whatever it produces year in year out to get an income.

You wrote to Malcolm

>I can't really understand why you are on a LO
>list but have no interest in trying to audit LO, to
>the extent that you even imply that system
>principles may not exist.

I personally think that to audit any LO would be one of the most difficult
undertakings possible. The reason is that the core business of LO is
learning. Learning results in continual metamorphosis from a less complex
to a more complex organisation.

After each metamophosis the previous audit will simply be outdated with
respect to what have emerged. The standards of audit will have to undergo
metamophosis as rapidly as the LO to keep up reflecting its present form
rather than one of its past forms. Such a "pace keeping metamorphosis of
standards" is alien to present auditing practices.

Measurements which lead to magnitudes become increasingly useless to
identify systems with increasing complexity. For example: only a few
atoms, each from a different element will have the same mass. When we move
to more complex molecules consisting of many atoms, hundreds of different
molecules may have the same mass. When we move to more complex biological
cells consisting of many molecules and millions of atoms, thousands of
different cells may have the same mass. When we move to more complex
multicellular systems like plants and animals, it becomes foolish even
trying to characterise them in terms of measuring their mass.

I think that auditors will have to shift their paradigm from numbers
matching to pattern matching to be able to get some indication whether an
organisation acts as an LO or not.

With care and best wishes

-- 

At de Lange <amdelange@gold.up.ac.za> Snailmail: A M de Lange Gold Fields Computer Centre Faculty of Science - University of Pretoria Pretoria 0001 - Rep of South Africa

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