What is learning that an organization (or anything else) can do it?

Abstract

Abstract This chapter locates the rise in the use of “learning” as a premodifier in the context of a wider learning turn in the discourse and practices of education, employee development, and other arenas of organizational management and public policy. Given the claims made for learning within the learning turn, the chapter subjects the use of the term to conceptual analysis, and identifies major problems which undermine the possibility of rational enquiry and debate. To overcome pessimism, it argues that an interdisciplinary approach is required, based on adequate and coherent meta-theorization. It then suggests that critical realism, the philosophy of natural and social science, affords a meta-theorization for and of learning, and presents an outline sketch of the key elements of such an approach.