I strongly recommend the book "How Organizations Learn" by Tony DiBella
and Ed Nevis. This brand new book has helped me immensely as I work on
the literature review and research proposal for my dissertation. For me,
chapter one was worth the price of the book. However, the remainder of the
book is a tightly woven strategy to help organizations learn. The solid
theory explained in this work is grounded in the actual experiences of
learning organizations. This is a very practical and readable book, which
(in my opinion) moves the field of organizational learning forward.
I remember an excellent anthropology professor, Paul Hiebert, that I
studied under while doing my MA said, "90% of what is published is not
worth reading." Not so with this book, it is in the 10% category. This
work will reward nearly everyone who interested in organizational
learning. I'm curious what others on the list think of this work.
If some participants on the list are reading this book, I hope this post
will encourage you to share what you're learning. I found that the
reasoning and approach in this book are so integrated that individual
parts are less than the sum of ideas.
Tony
Tony Barrett
University of Idaho
tonyb@uidaho.edu http://www.uidaho.edu/~tonyb
[Host's Note: I reviewed a pre-publication copy of the book... Dibella and
Nevis discuss seven Learning Orientations and ten Facilitating Factors
which provide a useful framework for assessment and action planning for
any organization that wants to be more of a Learning Organization.
...Rick]
--"Tony Barrett" <tonyb@uidaho.edu>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>