Becoming a learning organisation: A social work example

Under the turbulent conditions associated with globalisation, a critical characteristic of organisations will be their capacity to learn from experience and adapt continuously to changing external conditions. The concept of the 'learning organisation' is unexplored within social work research; theoretical development and research has primarily taken place within the disciplines of management studies and business administration. This paper reports on qualitative research undertaken in a national child care agency to identify how practitioners and managers conceptualise learning within their organisation. Using a grounded theory approach, interviews were conducted with practitioners, middle and senior managers. The transcripts were coded using principles of constant comparison and four themes were identified relating to: the primacy of teamwork within the process of learning; the need to reduce implicit epistemological hierarchies which downgrade the role of practitioner knowledge; the need to develop systems of data storage and retrieval to create an 'organisational memory'; and the incorporation of evaluative inquiry within organisational processes.