Flexibility of Content for Organisational Learning - A Topic Map Approach

Description
Many approaches to explain and/or define the process and objects of organisational learning have been proposed in the last decades. Most of these approaches give detailed statements on the process or organisational learning of focus on the enablers and obstacles within this process. However, when it comes to the objects of organisational learning, they either remain unspecific (e.g. Argyris & Schön or March & Olsen) or explicitly argue for being open in these terms (e.g. Kim with his statements on mental models or Firestone & McElroy } with their definition of knowledge claims).

The ambiguity and uncertainty of what to learn in organisational learning remains uncritical as long as the frame of reference is a purely social one (in contrast to socio-technical systems). Considering organisations as social systems, organisational learning (OL) occurs directly among individuals. The main concern of OL approaches is to enable and aid the learning process itself, the objects of learning are of lower interest, as they are transfered directly on an interpersonal level.

Considering organisations as socio-technical systems, however, broadens the scope of possible carriers and facilitators for OL. Especially ICT-based tools to enable and support learning are a fundamental enabler for OL. Within this area, however, knowing the objects of learning becomes crucial. In ICT-based systems, learning content has to be represented in data structures, which requires to have a defined data model. A data model can only be designed, if the data to be represented (and thus the objects of learning in this case) are known.

The overall goal of this research is to develop a means to flexibly represent and manage content for organisational learning.

Duration
Phase 1 - Foundations: 2006 - 2007
Phase 2 - Application: about to start in 2007
Publications
S. Oppl, "Flexibility of content for organisational learning - a topic map approach", Master’s thesis, University of Linz, 2007, to appear.
Link
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