case study as a concrete example of its application, can potentially be used more widelyboth within the larger multinational organization and beyond. We are, however, awareof the limitations on generality inherent in a specific case study, and in particular of thefollowing local conditions so far identified that facilitated this success:

(1) The senior management of the national branch had recently set out a newstrategy of becoming a services organization, so they and the rest of theemployees were prepared for change. Staff saw the need for this, whichminimized the resistance that often meets an ambitious change programme.

(2) In support of this, senior management identified becoming a learningorganization as a key strategic aim. Again, staff widely recognized the need forlearning in order to successfully make the required changes.

(3) Head office had granted the national division the autonomy to make strategicdecisions such as those set out in conditions 1 and 2.

(4) While the senior management set the strategy, they had no preconceived ideasabout how this should be accomplished. But through regular meetings, theyestablished trust in the development team, and provided the support needed toimplement the programme.

(5) The senior management recognized the need to obtain CPD Employeraccreditation from the national professional body, EI, as this was demanded bya number of larger clients. This provided a strong motivation for allocatingsufficient time to the programme, and the motivation was reinforced after thefirst year by the programme being selected as a finalist in the EI nationalaward scheme.

(6) Senior management support was further reinforced in subsequent years byachieving successively higher levels of EI accreditation, regarded as makingunusually rapid progress; and also by being given a top company award by theparent multinational.

There were thus a number of critical initial conditions and several reinforcing eventsthat helped ensure the required management and staff support for the project.While this particular set of conditions is unlikely to be replicated elsewhere, somethingsimilar would need to be in place for the framework to be applied and testedsuccessfully by others, particularly with respect to the initial conditions.

The viable systems model as a guide to future developmentAn organization’s learning needs to result in changes in its behaviour that enable it tosuccessfully adapt to, or take innovative advantage of, changes taking place in itsoperating environment. However, a measure of this which simply enables one to assessthis success on a scale (e.g. increased profit) is too simplistic to enable a changemanager to establish how their interventions could be optimized. Stafford Beer’s ViableSystem Model (Beer, 1979, 1981, 1984) is entirely about analysing a system’s ability torespond to changes in its environment, and provides a set of diagnostic methods foridentifying in which parts of the system problems are located. It therefore seemsa promising approach to map our organizational learning interventions onto the VSM,in order to gain insight into how they can be targeted more precisely.

For example, the double loop learning meetings were focused on both the internalassumptions of operational teams, and on other teams’ assumptions about the external

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world and its future changes. This balancing of internal and external concernssuggests a strong parallel, if not identity, with Beer’s Viable System Model’s (VSM)System 3-4 homeostat and the need for a higher level System 5 to learning decide ona course of action when internal and external concerns conflict Conversely Beer’sarticulation of System 5 acting as a balance to the 3-4 homeostat could be mapped backinto Argyris and Scho¨n’s, (1978) model as an example of triple loop learning.This aspect has already been put in to practice in our work by keeping seniormanagement informed of the outcomes of the double loop learning meetings andcalling on them if disagreements arise. In future it is proposed to use them VSM tobroaden learning to encompass learning about the external operating environment,iteratively developing appropriate responses as well as learning how to implementthem through training and other means of informal learning. The VSM’s modellingof recursion will also be used to establish a clearer understanding of the role of learningat different organizational levels, moving up from the individual and operational unitlevels, through the national division, hopefully to the multinational level.

ConclusionsThis study has presented a work-focused action research project to create a learningorganization, informed by cybernetic theories and models and the literature of learningorganization. These have been integrated with an abstraction of the process involved tocreate a framework.

The case study shows both how the framework emerged from the action researchand how it can be applied in practice. It aims to contribute towards an understandingof the roles of formal and informal learning, and of second order learning, each withtheir respective feedback and action loops, in the development of a learning organizationand hence of the adaptation processes that are necessary to an organization’s continuedlearning and sustainability.

References

Argyris, C. and Scho¨n, D. (1974),Theory in Practice: Increasing Professional Effectiveness,Jossey-Bass, San Francisco, CA.

Argyris, C. and Scho¨n, D. (1978),Organizational learning: A theory of action Perspective, AddisonWesley, Reading, MA.

Australian Industry Group (2006),World Class Skills for World Class Industries: EmployersPerspectives on Skilling in Australia, Australian Industry Group, Sydney.

Baldwin, T.T. and Ford, J.K. (1988), “Transfer of training: a review and directions for futureresearch”,Personnel Psychology, Vol. 41 No. 1, pp. 63-105.

Beer, S. (1979),The Heart of Enterprise, Wiley, Chichester.Beer, S. (1981),Brain of the Firm, 2nd ed., Wiley, Chichester.

Beer, S. (1984),Diagnosing the System for Organizations, Wiley, Chichester.Brinkerhoff, R.O. and Gill, S.J. (1994),The Learning Alliance: Systems Thinking in Human

Resource Development, Wiley, Chichester.Brinkerhoff, R.O. (2003),The Success Case Method, Berrett-Koehler, San Francisco, CA.

Coghlan, D. and Brannick, T. (2010),Doing Action Research in Your Own Organization,3rd ed., Sage, London.

Cross, J. (2006),Informal Learning: Rediscovering the Natural Pathways That Inspire Innovationand Performance, Pfeiffer Publication, New Jersey.

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