Towards an architecture of organization-led learning

This paper takes, as its starting point, the fact that one of Europe's stated strategic goals over the next 10 years is to become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based society in the world. Here, lifelong learning is viewed as a critical element of achieving this strategy, central not only to competitiveness and employability, but also to social inclusion, active citizenship and personal development. Learning is thus fast becoming the conventional wisdom of organizational life, and yet, perplexingly, the relationship between work and learning remains a complex one. Located at the cusp of organizational learning, the learning organization and knowledge management fields, this paper reviews the theoretical underpinnings of organizational learning, arguing that, despite its inadequate conceptual coherence, it has been raised almost to the status of orthodoxy. In an attempt to address some of the inadequacies, the paper advances the idea of an architecture of organization-led learning that captures the consciously constructed systems and practices that could be put in place to facilitate learning at work.