Replying to LO29897 --
Dear Organlearners,
Gaetan Guenette < gaguenette@borealc.on.ca > writes:
>My name is Gaetan Guénette and I'm the program coordinator
>at the School of Business at Collège Boréal in Sudbury, Ontario,
>Canada. My passion for the concepts of the learning organization,
>that I have learned about only in the last year, have brought me to
>the conclusion that our College should transform itself into a
>learning organization. I have chosen this subject to complete my
>MBA which I'm in the process of finishing. This MBA-Executive
>management in Educational Administration at Royal Roads
>University requires that we complete an OCP(organizational
>consulting project) as our final thesis. My project is to produce
>an action plan to implement the Learning Organization model at
>the college.
Greetings dear Gaetan,
You have chosen an exciting project and i wish you success in all of it.
Let us assume that there is some relationship between the Learning
Organisation (LO) of Senge and the Living Organisation of de Geus. Now
think of an insect. We can have a detailed and organised knowledge of its
physiology, i.e., the structure and functioning of all its organs an how
they interrelate. However, we cannot implement such knowledge to produce
this insect. Its production has to follow the route of reproduction. That
usually involves a number of metamorphic phases, for example, eggs, worm,
pupa and flier.
Similarly the five disciplines 5Ds of a LO describes its "physiology".
They can be used improve a LO an keep it healthy. But i do not think that
they can used to produce a LO. An organisation will have to undergo, so as
to speak metaphorically, a metamorphosis according to its kind (business,
education, religion, government, etc.) into a LO.
A problem typical to educational institutions is that they will assume
that they are learning organisations because their main business is
learning. The Sengian Learning Organisation (two words, one concept) is
something different.
>Some postsecondary institutions are becoming learning colleges
>where everything is centered around the learner but I feel it is
>very important to be a learning organization before you can be
>a learning college. What do you think?
Yes, i have seen also here in South Africa how this "client orientated"
approach made many an educational institution nothing but a sausage
factory.
If a college becomes a LO, then every person in that college is at its
"centre", from the janitor to the rector and from the learner to the
lecturer. The students will not be only subjected to learning objectives
and information sources with the lecturers somewhere in the back ground,
but the lecturers will also be given the opportunity to act as mentors for
the students in life at large.
With care and best wishes,
--At de Lange <amdelange@postino.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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