Demetre,
I believe you are short changing the breadth of the learning organization.
Companies must learn and change . Learning and change go hand in hand. If
new comes along and a company does not learn form it then they will die.
Surely the few companies over 200 years old have learned . the survivors
learn. Toyota learns. Dupont learns. Bendix did not learn.The list of not
learning is longer than those that made learning a part of their culture.
Every time I visited Japan in the late 70's and early '80's I saw change.
When I visited the same kinds of plants in the US over the same period I
saw the same problems that existed 5 years before. Today you can visit US
companies like Harley Davidson and West Bend and they are visibly changing
from month to month just like the Toyota is changing (using their
learning).
They are learning what works better.
Gene
At 09:10 PM 9/16/97 -0400, you wrote:
>My interest in LO is coming from a different angle, really not related to
>the practice of learning. I am interested in working structures. From
>systems point of view and from intellectual point of view. The company
>organization is for me a working structure. The ownership structure of
>interrelated companies is another structure. The organization of the
>Vatican and the catholic hierarchy is another very interesting structure.
>
> I don't see these structures as Learning Organizations. I see
>them as utility structures to achieve certain objective. When the
>objective is learning, than these structures are LO. I do agree that most
>structures where humans intermingle have elements of learning. So we can
>speak of any humane activity as a LO.
>
>Demetre Tziougras
>CLONE <flucacad@interlog.com>
Eugene Taurman
interLinx ilx@execpc.com http://www.execpc.com/~ilx
"What you see depends upon what you thought before you looked."
--Eugene Taurman <ilx@execpc.com>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>