Rol,
Thank you for your reply. I agree with your thoughts below. Your
suggestion as to the meaning of "dramatically improved results" makes
sense as have the similar suggestions of several other correspondents. My
reference to stock price was deliberately arbitrary to make the point
about the sorts of measures that matter most to those in control of
publicly held companies. (Other organizations undoubtedly have different
orientations to this issue.)
What I have not seen in the replies is any listing of the companies that
fit the criteria for LOs that also enjoy success in the sort of measures
you suggest. One might argue that Thomas Stewart gives some examples in
Intellectual capital but do all of the companies cited also qualify as
LOs?
Even if such instances of LO success appear, there remains the question as
to whether being an LO was the cause of that success. My hope and bias is
that this correlation would exist. I recognize that there may be great
worth in the process of building and maintaining an LO even if it doesn't.
However, Richard Goodale started this thread with some very common sense
questions as to the rigor with which observers and participants examined
the concept of LO. I think we are doing better at framing the questions
but with the exception of some case studies links I do not believe that we
have answered the question.
Rol Fessenden wrote:
> To my simple mind, "dramatically improved results" applies to resource use
> (money, people), and peoples' satisfaction, whether customer-type people,
> employee-type people, or other stakeholder-type people. There are
> numerous devices to measure customer and employee satisfaction, but no
> standards that I am aware of. Stakeholder satisfaction for others than
> customers and employees is hardly recognized in any business literature.
> Resource use can be measured by return on sales ( work productivity),
> return on equity (investment productivity), return on employee (people
> productivity), and return on assets (asset productivity). No single
> measure will be effective. Short term measurement is not valid. Stock
> price is universally available, and so it is appealing. Unfortunately, it
> is heavily influenced by market issues that have little to do with
> learning. Witness the dither over Viagara. Of course, there is research
> there, but that is not corporate learning. They just have a
> market-beating idea, and it is having a big influence on stock price.
--"T.J. Elliott" <tjell@IDT.NET>
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>