How will political, economic, educational and social
organizations adapt to the rapidly evolving environments of the new world
order? What structures and strategies will prove most successful to survive
and thrive?
These were among the questions considered by 95 researchers
and practitioners from business, government and education who participated
in an intimate, invitation-only gathering. This brief summary is a survey of
“Organizations in the 21st Century: Knowledge and Learning—the Basis for
Growth” a two-day conference held November 16-17, 2001, at the
Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung (WZB), the Social Science
Research Center of Berlin. The program was designed around workshops for
exchanging experience, insights and knowledge from different professional
and disciplinary communities, with key speakers explore central themes in
plenary sessions. The net result was looking beyond current issues and
assumptions, seeking the breakthroughs that can close the gap between theory
and practice
The group was particularly well-equipped for the task,
because most of them had spent the past seven years assessing the state of
the art in organizational learning world-wide as part of the Ladenburg
Kolleg on “Organizational Learning in Various Environments,” sponsored
by the
Gottlieb Daimler and Karl Benz Foundation which also sponsored this
meeting. They were able to draw on distinguished professional and academic
careers and on insights from the recently published
Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge (published by
Oxford University Press 2001 and also in Chinese by the People's Publishing
House, Shanghai 2001)., to which many of the participants had contributed.
This report is divided into three parts:
1.
What is organizational learning, where is it
going, and how does it connect to other fields?
2.
How does organizational learning differ in
business, government and academia and what aspects might connect one sphere
to another?
3.
What variables affect organizational learning
and how can they be connected to current thinking in the field?
