Organisational learning as a tool for social change

Learning as an individual happens almost as a matter of course. You make a mistake or a project goes particularly well and you remember that for future reference. But how does an organisation learn? How does an organisation make sense of successes or failures and use the knowledge that can be gained from these experiences for future reference?

What does it take for an organisation to learn?

PSO decided (along with CDRA and VSO) that this crucial question is particularly relevant to organisations wishing to effect social change. In order to make social change happen, organisations need to learn from their experiences and mistakes. And while this learning is almost a matter of course at an individual level, organisational learning can be difficult to organise and accomplish. So, PSO has brought together eleven civil society organisations in order to try to pinpoint what it takes for an organisation to learn and how this learning can be stimulated.

Practitioners sharing experiences in Egmond aan Zee

Professional practitioners from these eleven organisations, all with expertise and experience of trying to get an organisation to learn, came together in May 2010 in Egmond, the Netherlands. They discussed and analysed what their experiences have been thus far. Moreover, they consulted existing academic literature on the topic of organisational learning to see what academia have to say on the subject; and they each conducted an interview with one of their partner organisations to find out what they understand under organisational learning.

A period of writing, testing and adding

Bringing all this information together, they have settled on four topics that will form the thread for their further activities. The first activity will be to write a guide on how they think organisational learning can best be achieved. These ideas, theories and outlines will then be put to the test by a larger group of civil society organisations together with their partners. They will experiment and relate their findings back to the original writing group. Once exposed to the harsh wind of reality, the ideas and suggestions in the guide will be improved by adding the experiences and successes from the period of action learning.

Main topics of the guide

The topics that will lie at the heart of the guide on organisation learning are:

• how learning lies at the heart of social change;
• knowing ourselves: as individuals, as an organisation, and being aware of the context in which we act;
• connecting to our work: learning from and with the community with whom we work;

• enabling ourselves to learn: what tools, processes, styles are required to stimulate learning.

Interested to learn more and/or take part?

Should you and your organisation wish to take part in the learning action on organisational learning, please contact Arja Aarnoudse, aarnoudse@pso.nl

Participating organisations

The organisations already taking part in this exciting Thematic Learning Programme are : CDRA, PSO, VSO (International, Netherlands, Thailand and Ghana), IICD, Cordaid, MCNV, Hivos Belgium, ActionAid, Red Cross International, Easun, The Learning Company and Tony Sedington attached to the University of Cape Town.