At,
You extrapolated from some of my comments that "there is no organisational
learning taking place among the (at least) majority of participators on
the stock market. Will you please explain? I interpret you as follows:
When an insurance company or a pension fund dealing on the stock markets
become a LO, they would qualify for "corporate learning" according to
you."
I think you base this on my statement that stock price is not a valid
measure of a learning organization.
I am highly unqualified to answer any questions regarding the stock
market, but let me plunge in anyway.
I would never say there is "no organizational learning taking place among
the participators on the stock market." I believe the contrary. However,
the occurrence of organizational learning is not the same as saying that
an org is a learning organization, which I think, means that an
organization has reached some -- ambiguous and poorly defined, but high --
level of organizational learning.
So, for example, if an organization has a different mental model of its
competitive environment in the nineties than it had in the fifties -- and
virtually all organizations do -- then organizatiional learning has
occurred. But that is not the same as saying that they consciously
practice the five disciplines of Senge, and are good at practicing them.
As far as stock markets ever emerging to LOs, I don't know. Today,
government intervention is required to prevent stock markets from melting
down, and even that may not be adequate. A year ago, I was in the far
east when major problems were found in corporate debt structures, and the
IMF became involved. At that time I commented that even though the
economies involved were small, the potential for leveraging the entire
world into a slump of significant magnitude was quite high.
Why did I think that? Because of two factors. First, the problems
discovered -- primarily lack of transparency -- are all over the place in
undeveloped countries, and stock markets -- very logically -- would start
to look for the same potential problems in other places, and they would
find them. They have done that in both Russia and in Latin America.
Second, the interconnections cause ripples in all directions. Yes, the
Asian economies had little direct trade with the US, but they had
significant trade with Japan, who is our largest trading partner. Yes,
Russia has almost no trade directly with the US, but she had significant
loans -- now written off -- with American banks, and more importantly,
with Germany who is a significant trading partner. There is, for the
American economy, no free lunch, and therefore, there is no free lunch for
any other economy either.
--Rol Fessenden
Learning-org -- Hosted by Rick Karash <rkarash@karash.com> Public Dialog on Learning Organizations -- <http://www.learning-org.com>