Specific organisational learning

This chapter, as with Chapter 6, draws heavily on the responses from those interviewed for the research programme underlying this book. While the previous chapter looked at general factors affecting organisational learning, this chapter discusses seven concepts of more specific application. These concepts, derived from analysis of the research data, appear under the following headings: conditions for disaster; information and disasters; safety by regulation; personnel; organisational economics; organisational responses to public inquiry recommendations and lessons learned about fires. These specific concepts are factors which can affect the degree to which the potential for active learning is realised. The chapter begins with brief definitions of each of the seven concepts. It then proposes a diagrammatic systems model that highlights one way in which the concepts can affect an organisation’s potential for active learning, and thus the amount of active foresight generated. It then discusses each concept in more depth.