Learning, whether associated with people or organizations, is a set of processes that produce change. Edwin Nevis, Anthony DiBella, and Janet Gould from the MIT Organizational Learning Center define organizational learning as "the capacity or processes within an organization to maintain or improve performance based on experience." The purpose of this section is to identify ways leaders can influence these processes to promote learning and improve strategic leadership and decision making.
Earlier in this chapter we described the features of organizations as open systems. Two features among them were relevant to organizational learning:
The capability of organizations to internally review the effectiveness of systems' processes against the dynamics of the environment and within the parameters of its core competencies.
Cumulative process modification that results in the quantitative and qualitative growth of an organization's capability to respond to future environmental contingencies.