How Organizations Learn: An Integrated Strategy for Building Learning Capability (Jossey Bass Business and Management Series) (Hardcover)

by Anthony DiBella (Author), Edwin C. Nevis (Author) "When we (the authors) began our work together, we looked carefully at what the academic management literature said about how organizations learn and how they..." (more)
Key Phrases: building learning capability, organizational learning capability, seventeen elements, Facilitating Factors, Systems Perspective, Learning Scope (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
?This work is a rare find in business literature: simultaneously highly readable, practical, and academic. For the involved manager who wants to help increase the long-term viability of his/her organization, this book will prove to be highly important and valuable.? (Herbert Rau, strategic marketing manager, Fairchild Semiconductor)

?The authors accomplish an amazing feat in providing an insightful synthesis of numerous theories of the learning organization, ranging from Argyris to Senge and then moving rapidly beyond them through case studies to identify a set of how-to tools for leaders and change managers. For those interested in transformation, a most valued addition.? (James J. Gannon, senior vice president, Human Resource Development, Royal Bank of Canada)

?How Organizations Learn gets to the practicalities and realities of organizational learning. This is not a fad, it's the outline of effectiveness for organizations of the future.? (Patrick Canavan, corporate vice president and director of global leadership and organization development, Motorola)

?This book should appeal to anyone looking for a single resource about the practice of assessing the learning capabilities of organizations. The authors provide an elegant and comprehensive approach that is based on theory yet grounded in actual learning organizations.? (Mark Van Buren, senior research officer, American Society for Training & Development)

?DiBella and Nevis provide a highly insightful framework for analyzing and transforming a company's learning style. Provocative and pragmatic!? (John Seely Brown, chief research scientist, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center)

?To understand and drive changes is difficult for everyone, both individuals and organizations. DiBella and Nevis supply CEOs and managers with a set of very useful tools to analyze and increase the learning capability of their organizations and to balance day-to-day decisions with the implementation of long-term strategies.? (Mauro Mastrogiacomo, manager of human resources and organizational development, Fiat Auto)

Product Description
Empower Your Business to Succeed by Learning

?How Organizations Learn gets to the practicalities and realities of organizational learning. This is not a fad; it's the outline of effectiveness for organzations of the future.?

?Parick Canavan, corporate vice president and director of global leadership & organization development, Motorola

In this essential volume, authors DiBella and Nevis outline exactly what it means to be a learning organization. And they offer sound advice on how to increase the learning capabilties of your own company. Here you will discover a powerful array of tools and techniques for leveraging your organization's unique learning style, as well as a productive framework that will help your company learn more fully and adapt more quickly in today's volatile marketplace. A practical fusion of theory, original research, and real-world methodology, How Organizations Learn is the most comprehensive work to date concerning this all-important competitive advantage.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1st edition (October 10, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787911070
• ISBN-13: 978-0787911072
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #730,342 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An Organizational Learning Model That Makes Sense, January 20, 2000

By	Roberta B. Teahen (Traverse City, Michigan) - See all my reviews

In my quest to learn about organizational learning, I have probably read the majority of what has been written on this topic. I have found this book by Anthony DiBella and Edwin Nevis to be the most useful in providing insights to capacity development while building on some solid theoretical foundations.

The authors build on the work of giants in organizational development, but their approach is considerably more pragmatic, consistent with the movement of organizational theorists to link their work to practice. They describe the importance of involved leadership and provide examples of how that would look. They note the difficulty of linking specific outcomes to learning inputs, because of the time lags that exist. They note that "learning itself becomes transparent over time, and we fail to recognize what we have learned or accomplished" (DiBella & Nevis, 1998, p. 199). Another feature is the acknowledgment that leadership is not vested in a single individual but rather "is exhibited both vertically and horizontally throughout any organization" (p. 76), a view that is espoused by enlightened leadership writers and valued by employees around the world.

They present organizational learning as a learning cycle, consistent with the beliefs of other theorists and practitioners. By using the learning cycle as a foundation, the authors set up a model of organizational learning as a continuous process, similar to continuous quality improvement processes or the widely recognized experiential learning model of David Kolb.

The authors respond to an identified need for tools to measure organizational learning and offer a variety of methods by which organizations can be analyzed and improved. Their model is grounded in theory, but it offers tools for translating the theory into organizational practice.

In addition to providing a meaningful model, describing organizational learning styles, and identifying facilitating factors (those factors that could be changed to enhance organizational learning capacity), the authors offer practical advice on how to enhance the factors that contribute to more productive organizational learning.

The DiBella/Nevis model is the most concrete and complete of all of the organizational learning resources reviewed. Unlike most of the writings about organizational learning, there is a research base, a research tool, and guidance on planning organizational interventions.

Their model makes sense with what we understand about learning. It also makes sense with what we know about the way organizations work. And helping organizations learn makes sense for individuals and society.

Director of the Center for Learning, Northwestern Michigan College

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars In-depth, practical, best book on learning organizations!, September 8, 1999

By A Customer

I am an organization consultant and have found DiBella and Nevis's book very useful. For instance, they provide a practical framework for assessing learning in teams. This book lacks the usual faddish gibberish surrounding learning organizations. I believe this book is significant, particularly for trainers and consultants. I chose this book to review in-depth for Training Media Review magazine. Solid, useful conceptual presentation.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Change through learning, February 7, 2000

By	Barbara Maynes (Massachusetts) - See all my reviews

There are many books on the change process but few address the learning that must occur by those who are changed. DiBella and Nevis provide a tool for you to analyze the learning capability of your organization, as well as to help you identify those learning leverage points that need to be tweaked for the organization to achieve its goals.