Title: A tertiary school organisation on the road to become a Learning Organisation

Authors: Les Tien-Shang Lee, Franco Gandolfi

Addresses: College of Business Management, Kun Shan University, No. 949, DaWan Rd., Tainan Hsien, 710, Taiwan. ' Faculty of Business and Law, Central Queensland University, Bruce Highway, Rockhampton, Qld, 4702, Australia

Abstract: The Learning Organisation literature reveals that organisations that have opted to become Learning Organisations have the ability to cope with major changes more successfully. The concept of the Learning Organisation also includes school organisations which have an increasing need to adapt to an ever-changing environment. To date, little research on schools as Learning Organisations has been documented. This research proposes a model entitled |Learning Organisation model for school organisations| which was applied to a Taiwanese school that had not yet commenced the journey of becoming a Learning Organisation. The study established that there was significant endorsement to move towards becoming a Learning Organisation. Strong leadership was seen as pivotal. Continuous improvement, customer satisfaction, staff recognition, staff development, and rewards were perceived to be cornerstones of a Learning Organisation.

Keywords: learning organisations; learning organisation implementation; school organisations; innovation; organisational culture; cultural change; leadership; continuous improvement; customer satisfaction; staff recognition; rewards; case study; Taiwan; tertiary education.

DOI: 10.1504/IJIL.2007.012383

International Journal of Innovation and Learning, 2007 Vol.4 No.3, pp.290 - 307

Published online: 09 Feb 2007 *

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