The message of good and desirable learning plays a key role in the modern management concepts that are "travelling", i.e. disseminated and produced throughout industry, society and work organizations. Indeed, the rhetoric emphasises that if a work organization becomes a learning organization, the needs for learning are provided for and this will become a tool for improving the quality of the services or products provided.
In a study examining teachers' working conditions, it became apparent that even in a school organization claiming to be a learning organization, learning gaps could be identified ([31] Parding, 2007). The study reveals that the conditions for workplace learning were not optimal, at least from the teachers' point-of-view. The teachers describe a change in how work is organized and what professional development is emphasized by the management, issues that affect the conditions for the teachers' learning negatively. The main idea of the learning organization (in the school organization studied) is to enhance the conditions for the students' learning using "problem-based learning" and multi-disciplinary teams of teachers which has become a rather common approach in the strive to make schools more efficient and competitive ([37] Scardamalia and Bereiter, 1999). In fact, in the policy documents for the school organization, it is the students' learning that is in focus; the teachers' role is rather invisible. To achieve problem-based learning, teachers from different subjects are to collaborate to bring students' understanding, autonomy, development and overall knowledge in focus. A mixed team of teachers is seen as the ideal organizational form. Overall, it is reasonable to assume that this creates a new kind of professional role, new ways of working, and new skill requirements for teachers in addition to the "old" more subject specific tailored knowledge base. For example, the teachers need to learn multidisciplinary methods and how to put their own subject in other contexts while also staying updated in their specific subjects. The study reveals discrepancies in values between the profession and the organization. This result highlights the importance of applying sociology of professions' perspective on the teachers' experiences of the conditions for learning in relation to the concept of a learning organization.