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LEARNING ORGANIZATION: A FAD AND A CAPRICE

Dr. Slobodan Adi


Docent
University Union Nikola Tesla, Faculty of Management F@M, Sremski Karlovci, Serbia
Email: s.adzic@gmail.com
Web: www.slobodanadzic.com
Phone: 00381638566000
Research Interest: Leadership, Strategic Management and Organizational Studies

Abstract
Management researchers nowadays generate the unnecessary theories with a lot wandering
and sideways, known as fads. Fad tends to heave little and short-time impact on the
management practice. We have put the emphasis on learning organization in our paper, which
is one of the most documented and researched fads. Many critics of this concept we have
divided into critics from the perspective of postmodernism and critics from the perspective of
critical realism. We presented our analysis of articles covering the learning organization
phenomenon in Serbian and Austrian academic journals. Our findings indicate that fads are
unwilling but unavoidable ingredient of management science and that learning organization is
a still vivid management research concept with no practical benefit. We conclude that learning
organization is a fad and that further study of this concept is a pure caprice.

Key words: management fad, learning organization, content analysis, critical realism

Introduction

The second decade of the 21st century will likely be remembered in science for discovering of
the Higgs boson at CERN research centre. The importance of Higgs boson or "God particle"
is that the existence of this particle confirms the validity of the standard model of physics.
Namely, if it was discovered that the Higgs boson does not exist, this would cause the fall of a
standard model, and the scientists should look for another model. The emphasis is on the fact
that there can be only one model, no matter how it is called.

In the management, which is neither a science nor a profession (Mintzberg, 2013), manager
work in practice is quite different from what the books say. Therefore, we could not argue that
there is one standard business model. If we exclude the fact that the competitive nature of the
market may never allow one business model, we wonder whether the management scholars
agree at least about one desirable way of doing business. In this paper, we argue that the
answer is negative, and that in the management science exist, perhaps more than in the
management practice, a lot of wandering and sideways, which generate theories that are
unnecessary and sometimes harmful. Such theories are called management fads. We argue in
this paper against one particularly fad, learning organization from the standpoint of critical
realism as scholars who believe that the management science should be of the real practical
benefit.

After defining what management fad is and its consequences in business practice, we will
give the evidence that the learning organization is recognized as one of the few documented
management fads. British carmaker Rover served us as a perfect business case for

documenting the fallacy of the concept of learning organization. We will present the basic
theories and the roots of this concept, which led to a boom of this theory in the middle of the
last decade of the 20th century. Many critics of this concept we were divided into critics from
the perspective of postmodernism and critics from the perspective of critical realism.

Hereinafter we present the empirical research on the phenomenon of learning organizations in


Serbian and Austrian academic journals. The research methodology is based on content
analysis, more specifically on the analysis of abstracts of the articles where the title, abstract
or keywords are appeared as "learning organization". As critical realist, we discussed whether
the fads are ingredient of science today, whether learning organization is a fad that is fading
away and whether learning organization studying has the practical benefit. In conclusion, we
present our attitude that studying of the learning organization is questionable and our criticism
of contemporary academic researches on learning organization.

Management fads

In marketing, there are three special categories of the product-life cycles, distinctive from its
usual bell-shaped curve (Kotler & Keller, 2008), and these are: style, fashion and fad. Fads
are the fleeting fashions. They come quickly into the market, their acceptance cycle is short,
they experience peak in demand very early, and then quickly falls and disappears. Fads do not
survive because they usually do not satisfy the strong need. Fads attract those consumers who
are longing to be different from others, but they quickly forget an old fad, as soon as some
new and unusual fad arises. Hula-Hoop is an example of a fad, a product that came suddenly
and became very popular and wanted, but quickly disappeared.

Management fashion can be defined as management concepts that relatively speedily gain
large shares in the public management discourse (Jung & Kieser, 2012), while short-term
fashions which fluctuate around long-term fashions are fads (Bort & Kieser, 2011). Although
business consultants are guilty for producing the most fashion and fads, and derived from that
for their sale and application (Williams, 2004), the biggest fads propagators are, in addition to
consultants, management gurus (Furnham, 2004). In fact, it is difficult to discern who is more
interested in fads, whether the academics who write about them, whether the consultants who
sell them, or the managers who use them. Management gurus, management consultants,
business schools, and publishers are in a race of creating the new techniques and approaches
for managers (Clark, 2004). In any case, managers, who are always eager for something new
and innovative, are the target audience.

Distinction should be made between the management fads and the management fashions,
because these are very different social processes (Abrahamson & Eisenman, 2008).
Management fashions occur because of supply and demand in a knowledge market;
management fads do not occur out of necessity, but by accident. Fads tend to have little or
short-term impact, both on the language of management techniques and on organization,
however, this may not always to be the truth. Downsizing, as a pillar of business process
reengineering, gave rise to the often unnecessary and disruptive layoffs. Today you will hear
not more a word downsizing from consultants ... but you will hear a rightsizing. Management
fashion has to appear rational and progressive (Flory, 2005). New fashion access and process
management topics in a new way, which is more effective than the old way.

There is no definitive list of management fads. Besides learning organization, which is in


focus of this paper, we can recognize Cultural Change Programs, Total Quality Management,

Business Process Reengineering (Balogun & Hope Hailey, 2008), Benchmarking (Furnham,
2004), and Knowledge Management (Hislop, 2010) as management fads. There is the list of
management fads of the 20th century sorted by decade when they have had the pick of
popularity (Howcroft & Trauth, 2005): Management by Objectives in 1950s, Sensitivity
Training in 1960s, Quality Circles in 1970s, Total Quality Management in 1980s and Selfmanaged or Self-directed Teams in 1990s.

As a professor, I can imagine my lecture, where I would talk all in superlative about the
abovementioned theories before the break, and after the break, I would challenge all those
abovementioned theories that were once popular, but now obsolete, either because of some
new theory or because of the failure in practice, since all these theories are management fads.

The decline of a management fad is usually associated with the development and popularity
of a new one. The life cycle of a fad can be displayed in a bell-shaped curve and in five stages
(Jung & Kieser, 2012). The first stage is the invention stage; the second stage, the
dissemination, is the wild-acceptance stage, the stage when the fad becomes very popular.
Stage three, the acceptance is on the top of a bell-shaped curve, fad reaches its peak, but also
it appears critics that the fad cannot be a universal panacea. The fourth stage is the
disenchantment stage, when large audiences realize that problems exist with the fad. The
decline is in the last stage, when the fad disappears from the wide use, and retains only the
staunch supporters loyal to the fad. Other authors (Nslund, 2008) suggest that fads follow a
life cycle into seven stages: (1) An academic article was written on a new discovery or theory;
(2) The study is discussed, summarized and repeated; (3) The concept is popularized in a
bestseller book; (4) Management consultants carry the new techniques to their client base; (5)
Managers embrace the fad and become champions of the concept; (6) Time passes and

enthusiasm dims; and (7) New discoveries occur and consultants are turning to them. The
shapes of the curves for different management fads are not identical nor symmetrical and vary
between countries (Clark, 2004).

Scholars have discovered fads not only in the social sciences, but also in some disciplines of
the natural sciences (Abrahamson, 2009), but some authors (Bort & Kieser, 2011) argue that
in organization theory fads are prevalent. The last decade of the 20th century was the decade of
arrival of a plethora of management tools and theories, often contradictory, and the question
arises (Naidoo, 2004) if the modern management theory is nothing more than an accumulation
of contradictory fads? Those accumulation of fads cause that practicing managers have to
check through trial-and-error the value and application of many management theories,
because rigorous scientific methodology seems as it is not present in the modern management
theory. More and more, fads seem to be getting a negative reputation and it is a common view
that the fads are a waste of time.

There is a last three major problems in management fads between academics and
practitioners. First problem is in people believe that true knowledge replaces wrong
knowledge, as well as that science is supposed to be universal and objective, in contrast to
subjective and short-lived fads. Regrettably, that is not an image of the science today (Bort &
Kieser, 2011). Scholars are under pressure of impact factors for ranking of their research.
Peer-review system have caused that scholars are forced to choose to write about hot
concepts and theories, in order to satisfy editors and peers. Journals are becoming
conservative, more and more concepts and theories are out. There is an evidence in increase
of articles referring to existing concepts, which indicate an increasing emphasis on

exploitation of theories and concepts at the cost of exploring new concepts and theories (Bort
& Kieser, 2011). In this way, fads could find its way into science.

Second problem is that management research and management practice are two autopoietic
systems (Kieser & Leiner, 2009). Specialized systems of modern societies are highly
autonomous or autopoietic. They operate in isolation from each other. Elements of an
autopoietic system are neither persons nor actions but communications. Main characteristics
of these systems are self-reference and operative closure. In science, theories, analyses, or
findings are discussed in scientific publication, as the basic communication element in
science, with regard to the criteria true/false. Sales, profit, and liquidity are crucial goals for
survival of organizations, and therefore managers consider intuitive decision-making based on
the past events superior to scientific rational decision-making. Busy managers do not need a
research papers, they need the knowledge in a condensed and easy-to digest format
(Rethinking the cause of management fads, 2005). Because of the differences between
management science and practice, it is impossible to assess practical benefit of research
output within the system of science. Collaboration between them makes sense, but it is a false
hope to expect that collaborators from practice and science can jointly produce research.

Third problem is a time gap between the discovery of fad in management theory and detection
of fad in management practice. The vast majority of managers, even 96% of them, were
familiar with Total Quality Management (TQM) technique, which in theory had been
recognized as a fad, while 94% of them felt that TQM was still applicable for use (David &
Strang, 2006). A global survey of 708 companies from five continents found that managers
were using more tools than ever (Naidoo, 2004). Of the 25 different management tools used,
on average the companies used 16 such tools, with the greatest emphasis on compass-setting

tools as mission and vision statements and strategic planning, while managers as ineffective
rejected tools such as stock buybacks, corporate venturing and merger integration teams.

Fads will be always present in management research community, not only because memetic
evolutionary understanding (Williams, 2004) that successful management ideas will survive
not just because of their economic capacity, which only generate the profit to organizations,
but instead of their interpersonal reproductive capacity. The main reason is that nobody can
make a perfect evaluation of each idea ex ante. There is no such a phenomenon as a metaconsensus among scholars (Abrahamson, 2009) how to judge the scientific knowledge and
how to eliminate the faddish ones. Of urgent importance would be the higher degree of
criticism, both among academics and among practicing managers. What is critical is not that
the ideas actually work but that they are perceived to be of practical benefit and relevance
(Clark, 2004).

Learning organization

The study of learning organization has long been associated with the British carmaker Rover
case study. Rover has served as the learning organization par excellence, as the exemplar
learning organization and it is called as the very first true learning organizations in the world
and most oft-cited of British business examples (Simm, 2005). Rover was established in
distant 1861 year. The Rover Group Ltd. was the UK's leading car manufacturer and exporter,
producing more than half a million cars annually; over half of them were exported. In the
seventies, various problems in business led the company into bankruptcy, which caused the
company's takeover by the UK Government and nationalization of the company. After
unsuccessful attempts to sell Rover to U.S. car-makers Ford and General Motors (Whiteley,

2012), the UK Government under the leadership of Margaret Thatcher sells Rover in 1985 to
also the state-owned company the British Aerospace (BAe) for 150 million. At that time
begins the story about Rover as a learning organization. The company established the Rover
Learning Business (RLB) and invests substantial amounts of money in training, with an
annual budget of 30 million (Simm, 2005). RLB was an organization within an organization,
whose primary objective, based on the personnel mission statement from 1990, was that
success in business has to be achieved through the success of employees in a manner to
provide quality learning and development to all employees by the emphasis from training to
learning. The system of rewarding employees was changed and participation in learning
programs had a direct impact on salaries. By 1994, when BAe sold Rover to the German
company Bayerische Motoren Werke (BMW) for 800 million, Rover has already gained a
reputation as a successful and respected company, which is not only a highly productive
company, but also the company where the satisfaction of employees is at a very high level.
The merits of such a turn attributed to the fact that Rover has become a learning organization.
Consultants and academics have raced more to beautify the company and many other
companies and organizations, and even the United Nations (UN) have visited the Rover to get
familiar with the practice of learning organization (Simm, 2005).

There was talk about the great performance of that learning organization, about the great
financial indicators and about the growth of several hundred percent, but all that talk was not
even close to true. Revenue per car, per employee, break-even level per car remained near
identical measures before and during RLB, while sales volume was in constant decline. On
top of that, as often case in the state-owned companies, strong unions resisted any
improvements to efficiency where this was seen to lose jobs, so Rover did not really have a
learning culture (Whiteley, 2012). The only change was profit of the main and only

shareholder, the Government of Margaret Thatcher, who has earned 650 million on behalf of
the privatization of Rover.

After only six years, BMW sold Rover to the company Phoenix Consortium for only 10.
While was owned by BMW Rover piling up losses at a rate of 2 million a day (Whiteley,
2012). The case of purchase of Rover by BMW was intrigued to many and various reasons
why Rover is bought and sold in such a short time were assumed (Button, 2012), but the truth
was that BMW bought Rover as a learning organization. When BMW realized that they
bought something virtual which only generates huge debts, the faster the better they got rid of
it. The future of that learning organization could to assume perhaps even then, but Rover and
its 6,000 workforce finally went to bankruptcy and disappeared from the market five years
later in 2005, after unsuccessful takeover negotiations with the Chinese company Shanghai
Automotive Industry Corp. (BBC, 2005). How inglorious end of the learning organization
pride!

It's easy to dismiss the idea of learning organization: simplistic, poorly researched, poorly
conceptualized, and hopelessly unrealistic (Adi, 2012a). Learning organization is not only
vaguely conceptualized theoretically, but problem lies in the lack of its exact definitions. Field
that covers learning organization is murky, with little systematic and cumulative research,
with limited agreement on basic concepts and with little connection between normative
prescriptions, on the one hand, and underlying concepts and research, on the other hand.
Learning organization treats organizations as they are human beings, it helps heuristic for
thinking about organizational learning, however, that particular deficiency mystifying this
phenomenon (Friedman, Lipshitz, & Popper, 2005). My favorite example to my students is
heating in my house. I myself, as a human element, and machine elements, as heater, pump

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and pipes, together we do one organization, known as the heating system. However, no matter
how I have tried to learn machines, as part of our heating system organization, to be frugal, to
spare and to make less heating bills, nothing happens. Machine just will not learn. Precisely,
machine cannot learn.

The roots of this broad used and abused concept can be traced to the distant 1947 year;
however, a leading promoter of this concept is Peter Senge. In his book The Fifth Discipline:
The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization, Senge (2010) laid the foundations of
learning organization. According to him, the basic disciplines that organization should meet to
consider as learning organization are systems thinking, personal mastery, mental models,
shared vision and team learning. Fantasy Theme Analysis, a dramatically based method of
rhetorical criticism, could be used for suitable explanation of Senges The Fifth Discipline
success. Senge's irresistible dramatically interpretation of reality and rhetorical vision proved
to be very successful, as it has inspired followers. Social foundations of his work was
successful in inspiring followers, i.e. workers in organizations, in terms of their beliefs and
convictions that the fate of the company will be in their hands, if they are actively engaged in
building a learning organizations.

After The Fifth Discipline, learning organization becomes a fad in management. In 1995, a
year after the publication of Senge's book, learning organization reaches its peak as a fad,
measured by learning organizations hits in the Proquest database. In the coming years
interest in learning organization began to fall sharply, but that interest has been offset by a
sharp increase in enquiries into knowledge management, from 207 articles on the knowledge
management topic in year 2000 in the Proquest database to more than double, or 440 articles
eight years later (Hislop, 2010). During the same period, while academic interest in

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knowledge management remained at a high level, there appeared to be, in stark contrast, a
significant decline of interest in it among global consultancies and professional service firms.
The similar conclusion was reached from a scientometric analysis of knowledge management
and intellectual capital academic literature of 2,175 articles in 11 major peer-reviewed
journals (3,109 unique authors from 1,450 unique institutions) in period 1994-2008, leaded by
Serenko (Serenko, Bontis, Booker, Sadeddin, & Hardie, 2010). Knowledge management
discipline has attracted the attention of a tremendous number of individual contributors from a
variety of both academic and non-academic institutions, but, on the other hand, the top five
universities and academics generated only 4.8 percent, and 2.5 percent of the total research
output, respectively. Pragmatic field studies and experiments constitute only 0.33 percent of
all output. As a result, the practical relevance and applicability of the scholarly research was
questioned and, therefore, the researches are concluding that there is a great danger that
knowledge management and intellectual capital may lose its practical side and become a pure
scholarly discipline. The same conclusion was received by Grant (Grant, 2010). An extensive
bibliographic review was carried out over a 20-year period, from 1990-2009, to determine
patterns in the discourse. Next, the actual patterns of diffusion of knowledge management in
five professional services firms were examined. While the bibliometric analysis demonstrated
that knowledge management and with the knowledge management associated topics,
including learning organization, have sustained a high level of interest over the last 10 years
and is not seen to present the typical characteristics of a management fad, actual practice in
the field differs from what is recommended within the literature. The greatest concerns from
this research is the increasing divide between practitioner and researcher in the field
knowledge management

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We will criticize the learning organization from the perspective of postmodernism and from
the perspective of critical realism, excluding the perspective of positivism as disadvantageous.
Whilst a positivist tends to conclude his final judgment on just one phenomenon, even though
the reality may be a result of interaction of many phenomena, a social constructivist does not
see the reality, he constructs the reality in his mind, and therefore it is possible that there are
as many realities in social constructivism as there are researchers. Unlike them, for a critical
realist the reality is important, and he believes that there is only one reality. A critical realist
does not seek the quantification of the reality, but the understanding of it, and he selects those
phenomena, which best explained and best decode that one reality (Adi, 2012b).

Postmodernists perspective is twofold (Adi, 2012a), either the studying of learning


organization as a Utopian sunshine or a Foucauldian gloom. For first group of postmodernists
learning organization is an ideal that is close to a dream, for second group it is a nightmare for
its members. This split is particularly apparent with regard to the following dimensions
(Akella, 2008): control, power, politics, ideology, and the painful employee experience. The
first community presents learning organization as a new workplace paradise, while the second
community presents learning organization as a negative ideology, as another way to exploit
workers, locking them into physic prison to serve the interests of those in power.
Knowledge is power. Foucault argues that governance was achieved by knowledge,
knowledge that came from subjugation and surveillance (Symon, 2005). The basis of
governance and management processes is the maximum utilization of company resources in
quest to competitive advantage. That utilization asks for control of companys resources and
workforce is one of the main resources of each company. Therefore, the role of knowledge in
companies is problematic. Empirical studies (Symon, 2005) has shown that the organizations
where knowledge is of primary importance are far from the ideal emancipated workplace.

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When an employee holds the knowledge that is valuable for the organization, it is rational to
use that knowledge in his own interest in order to secure a better position in organization for
himself, rather than for some rival employee in the organization, even for all employees.

Learning organization is an innovation of the post-industrial era. It's a postmodern approach


to work that requires paradigm change in the organization, but all postmodernist theses based
on the paradigm change are problematic (Symon, 2005). The emergence of this concept
occurs on the moment when Britains companies show a lack of competitiveness, lack of
skills and poor industrial relations, and as the panacea aroused learning organization, as an
idealistic image of cooperation, harmony and flexibility of the satisfied and fulfilled
employees. Learning organization is a state of humanistic unitarism, in which the charismatic
leader empowers followers, giving them power and reduce its own. It is simply a not possible
state; the charismatic leader certainly has no aspiration to minimize his power (Sajfert, Adi,
& Cvijanovi, 2012). Indeed, economists on both sides of the Atlantic concluded (Symon,
2005) that better economic performance is the direct result of the leaders success, along with
sophisticated organizational restructuring. It is also important to understand that the present
era in which we are living, without going into debate how the postmodern can exist in modern
time, does not make a fundamental shift in the political economy. Most work is still
happening in a context of selling the labor to employers whose primary goal is to make a
profit, certainly not to make an ideal organization for labor.

From the perspective of critical realism, the idea of a learning organization should be
abandoned, because this imaginative idea has not even "run of steam", but it never had any
(Grieves, 2008). Learning organization has failed to meet three objectives which are essential
for any well-founded theory (Grieves, 2008): (1) a clear definition, (2) practical operational

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advice which managers can use, and (3) tools and assessment instruments to measure their
achievements. The concept of learning organization ignores the ways of rewarding and
punishing in organization, because it not recognizes the fact that management rewards those
who contribute to the success and punishes those who make the damage, the terms measurable
in financial form. How to quantify in financial terms the rewarding of those who learn more
and the punishing vice versa; if it were possible to quantify these behaviors, the best
companies would imply only PhD staff, and companies like that are extremely rare, if there
are any.

Learning organization did not last very long due to the way in which learning in learning
organization was understood and enacted (Elkjaer, 2004). The emphasis was on individual
learning and individual change, but the organization itself, its management structure and
business practices have remained unchanged. Learning in learning organization has been
studied as an epistemological process, while the situational and social context was not the
issue, and the learning process cannot be seen outside the situational and social context. A key
argument against, in this context, is a democratic deficit in today's organizations (Ferdinand,
2004). The concept of learning organization is navely

apolitical (Grieves, 2008). The

political question is related to the fundamental question: for whose interest does the business
organization exist, whether the interest of workers or the interest of capital? The answer is
very straightforward. The legitimacy of managerial authority is a function of maximizing
efficiency and effectiveness in the interests of capital. Imagine a potential scenario: if
manager needs to lower labor costs, would he start to build a learning organization, which is
expensive, or would he start to release the redundant workers? The interest of capital demands
second option. In a contemporary social context where capital dominates, learning
organization is pleading for a fluid, flexible, and adaptable postmodern future-oriented

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organization. That is simply impossible in the modern business environment. Therefore, we


can point that this postmodern theory fails to recognize the limitations of its own paradigm
(Grieves, 2008).

Finally, the concept of learning organization assumes that HR strategy should be central to
business strategy, which is wrong. HR strategy should be neutral with respect to business
policy as regards the benefits to the employees of chosen business strategy. HR strategy has a
strategic importance only due its primary task a good fit between demand for human
capitals in a company, information derived from a business strategy that indicate the future
position of a company, with an offer on the labor market. Usually, companies with strong
unions are companies where HR strategy is of great importance, and the result of such a
strategy is the redistribution of power in favor of unions, and, in the long run, lower operating
results (Adi, 2011). A contemporary management approach is certainly not based on HR
strategy or policy, the modern management approach is based on leadership, with focus on
strategic leadership (Sajfert et al., 2012). Today's effective leader needs to have a strong
vision and charisma, both to deal with people and with operations; he is a successful
strategist, educated to be a manager, trained to be a leader. That is the image of strategic
leader, the image of leader who will shape tomorrow, which is now in the focus of
management science today.

The idea of learning organization can be regarded as a Snark (Tosey, 2005). Lewis Carrolls
poem Hunting of the Snark, the nonsense literature of the highest order, as defined by the
Encyclopaedia Britannica, introduces the Snark, a fabulous creature whose existence is equal
to the probability of the statement what I tell you three times is true. Learning organization
is an idea that will quietly and slowly vanishing away.

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Empirical research of the learning organization phenomenon in Serbian and Austrian


academic journals

In this section, we will search the articles that cover the topic of learning organization in two
different European countries: Austria and Serbia. Our goal is to determine the trend and to
compare that trend with data from other researches, presented in previous section. Their
(Grant, 2010; Hislop, 2010; Serenko et al., 2010) findings are that academic interest in
learning organization is at a high level and still raising, and the typical bell-shaped curve of a
management fad is not seen, but also that practical benefit of tremendous number of papers is
almost none. They have pointed that learning organization is almost a pure academic
discipline with significant decline of interest in it among consultants and practitioners.

For Serbian papers, the Serbian national citation index or SCIndeks was the basis of our
research. For Austrian papers, we did the research with the help of the Search engine of the
Austrian library network. The research was conducted in July 2013, but we have excluded all
articles from the current year in order to have the comparable data. The Serbian national
citation index or SCIndeks can be found on Internet at http://scindeks.ceon.rs. SCIndeks is the
Serbian national citation index, developed to serve as an add-on to the international
(Thompson-ISI) citation indexes. It is indexing locally published journals classified as
periodicals of scientific character. All of the journals listed are indexed on cover-to-cover
basis. In addition to basic article descriptions,

SCIndeks contains abstracts and

references/citations (metadata) for all articles. Articles from the journals of a certain level of
quality which accepted Open Access as a publishing model, are available as full texts.
1,878,022 references from 140,071 articles, 51,608 of which are available as full text

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published in 411 different Serbian journals from 2000 on in humanities from 1996 on, and in
social sciences from 1991 on. SCIndeks is developed and maintained by the Centre for
Evaluation in Education and Science (CEON/CEES), a non-governmental, non-for-profit
organization, in cooperation with the National Library of Serbia. The main sponsor of
SCIndeks is the Ministry of Science of the Republic of Serbia. The Search engine of the
Austrian

library

network

can

be

found

on

Internet

at:

http://search.obvsg.at/primo_library/libweb/action/search.do. It provides a broad search for


literature in the holdings of the Austrian Library Network member libraries and beyond.
Indexed content as of March 2012 consist of 10 million title-records (among them 400,000
theses) and 0,7 million journal-holdings. More than 80 mostly scientific libraries contribute
actively to the central catalogue of the Austrian Library Network. The Literature tab contains
above all literature published since 1980. It is actively maintained by the following
institutions: Austrian National Library, Vienna University Library, Graz University Library,
Robert Musil-Institute for Literary Studies of the University of Klagenfurt / Carinthian
Literary Archives, University of Innsbruck / Research Insitute Brenner-Archives, The Stifter
House / The Centre for the Literature and Language of Upper Austria, Austrian Educational
Libraries Network (VBK), Danube University Krems / Archiv der Zeitgenossen and Ernst
Krenek Institut Privatstiftung, Krems. Thousands of papers are available for download, but
unlike Serbian SCIndeks not all articles contain abstracts, which will affect our research.

In order to separate the articles which cover the subject of learning organization in the Serbian
national citation index (SCIndeks), we have searched the whole database by using the search
field in article titles, abstracts and keywords and by using the following terms: (1) uea
organizacija (Serbian); (2) organizacija koja ui (Serbian); (3) learning organisation (British
standard) and (4) learning organization (American standard). Serbian terms represent the same

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concept, but for the security reasons we have used also the English terms, because many of
the articles contain an abstract in English. From the database, we have allocated 211 articles
(uea organizacija: 8, organizacija koja ui: 24, learning organization: 8, and learning
organization: 171), which in article title, abstract or keywords contain the term "learning
organization". We have restricted our search to the social science: economics discipline,
because this discipline includes articles from the field of management, which is the focus of
our research. Thus, we have narrowed down the number to 70 articles. When we have
removed the duplicates because of a duplication of terms, the number of articles has been
reduced to 57 (not all articles have an abstract in English, especially the older ones). From the
above mentioned 57 articles, as some journals are only in English available, five articles, or
nine percent, has been published in English only. We have sorted the articles for further
analysis by year of publication (Table 1: Number of Serbian articles covering the subject of
learning organization per year). The results pointed that in years 2011 and 2012 were the most
published research articles with the subject of learning organization.

INSERT TABLE 1 ABOUT HERE

Graphical representation of results indicates a positive trend (Figure 1: Number and trend line
of learning organization hits in Serbian journals per year). Last two years from period of
research, 2011 and 2012 are the years with the maximum papers published, eight per year.
First two years in our research, 2000 and 2001, produced the minimum of papers, just single
paper per year. Definitely, result indicates that learning organization is far from management
fad in Serbian academic world and that number of articles which emphasis the learning
organization phenomenon is absolutely raising, year by year.

19

INSERT FIGURE 1 ABOUT HERE

In order to find the articles which cover the subject of learning organization in the Search
engine of the Austrian library network we have searched the Literature section of database by
using the Any search field, which cover title, subject, abstract, keywords, classification and
full text, by using the following terms: (1) lernende Organisation (German); (2) learning
organisation (British standard) and (3) learning organization (American standard). In order to
obtain the compatibility of data with Serbian research, we restricted our search on Media
Type: Article only. When we have removed the duplicates from the database (lernende
Organisation: 40, learning organization: 43, and learning organization: 21 before the
duplicates removal) , we have allocated a total of 84 articles which in article title, subject,
abstract, keywords, classification or full text contain the term "learning organization". Finally,
when we have removed papers which obviously do not cover the management discipline
(mainly from the pedagogy field, but also one about the synagogue in Vienna: ber die
virtuelle Rekonstruktion von Wiener Synagogen), the number of articles has been reduced to
59. From the above mentioned 59 articles, as some journals are only in English available, 17
articles, or 29 percent, has been published in English only. We have sorted the articles in
further analysis by year of publication (Table 2: Number of Austrian articles covering the
subject of learning organization per year). The results pointed that in the distant 1997 year
were published the highest number of 10 research articles covering the topic of learning
organization.

INSERT TABLE 2 ABOUT HERE

20

Graphical representation of results indicates a positive trend (Figure 2: Number and trend line
of learning organization hits in Austrian journals per year). With a pick in 1997, someone
could argue that learning organization in Austrian journals is recognized as a fad. However,
the number of papers after the pick is still higher than in previous period and graphically the
line is not analogous to a bell-shaped curve. In period of 26 years, with 26 papers in first half
of this period, and 33 papers in second half of this period, as well as with a second pick in
publishing in year 2008 with 5 papers, we can also conclude that in Austrian journals learning
organization is not recognized as a management fad, but that a positive trend line is less
steeper than among Serbian scholars, because Austrians 0.0803x + 1.1846 is less than
Serbians 0.5055x + 0.8462; if we replace x with 1, the results are 1.2649 and 1.3517,
respectively. However, this distinction is not of great significance.

INSERT FIGURE 2 ABOUT HERE

Now, when we are certain that learning organization statistically is still vivid in Austrian and
Serbian academic communities, our intention is to test the quality of the journal papers.
Unfortunately, much bigger Austrian base does not provide the abstracts or full text for all
articles, but does, so we will continue our project with a content analysis of all Serbian
papers abstracts, in order to determine two issues (Table 3: The content analysis of Serbian
articles covering the subject of learning organization). First one is to discover if a critical
approach is present among Serbian scholars and how many, as the contemporary world
science is strongly against the learning organization phenomenon. Second, to check how
many articles have the practical benefit for Serbian business community.

21

Of 57 articles in total, two articles (published in English) have Romania in focus, and one
(published in Serbian) Iran, not Serbia, while two articles have been published by the Belgian
and French authors, but in Serbian language. With our aim to search all articles that contribute
to the development of management science in Serbia, we have decided to include all these
articles in our analysis. It is interesting that only two of these 57 articles are available in full
text. The largest number of articles was published in journals Strategijski menadment (11)
and Kvalitet (10). There is no single author who excels in the observed subject, and we have
noticed maximum of two hits per author.

INSERT TABLE 3 ABOUT HERE

First, we have sorted the articles according to either authors attitudes about the learning
organization, affirmative attitude (positive articles) or critical attitude (negative articles). How
all of these articles are not only committed to the learning organization exclusively, but also
to other aspects of knowledge management, we have discovered a number of articles that have
a neutral attitude. From the abstracts of these articles, we cannot find out whether the authors
attitudes about learning organization are positive or negative.

As we can see from the table (Table 3: The content analysis of Serbian articles covering the
subject of learning organization), the content analysis of abstracts of articles has shown that
over half of articles positively evaluated the phenomenon of learning organization, 31 of 57,
or 54%. There are 26 articles that have neither a positive nor a negative attitude and not a
single one has a critical attitude towards learning organization. That is an alarming fact for the
Serbian academic community. Criticisms of learning organization in English speaking
journals are present more than two decades, but Serbian authors still glorify the learning

22

organization phenomenon. Maybe there is a link between Serbians bad economy situation
and Serbian weak management researches, but there is no sufficient data to support this
statement.

INSERT TABLE 4 ABOUT HERE

Further course of analysis would be the sorting of the positive articles by year of publication
(Table 4: Number of the positive articles per year). Although years 2001 and 2012 do not have
the positive articles, we have noticed that in the later years of our research is published more
articles that promote learning organization than at the beginning of research period, because
in first half only one third of articles is published, or 11, in contrast to 20 articles or two thirds
of all published articles in second half of period of our research. Graphic results are also a
proof that in later years of research period the number of positive articles was higher, as we
can conclude by the trend line, as well (Figure 3: Number and trend line of positive learning
organization hits in Serbian journals per year). Although the trend line is positive, however,
the scope of trend line of positive articles is lower than the trend line of all articles from
Serbia covered by our study, because the trend line equation of positive articles provides a
lower score than the equations of all abstracted articles, or 0.1264 x + 1.1923 definitely gives
a lower score than 0.2747 x + 1.9231; if we replace x with 1, the results are 1.3517 and
0.8351, respectively. However, without articles with a negative connotation, this result is of
no significance.

INSERT FIGURE 3 ABOUT HERE

23

Second, we also have sorted the articles whether they are only theoretical in nature, or they
include a business case and therefore are more practically applicable. The number of articles
that cover only theoretical aspects of the researched subject is extremely high, 50 or even
88%. We can notice (Table 3: The content analysis of Serbian articles covering the subject of
learning organization) that just four of seven remaining practical articles have affirmative
approach to the subject of this study, learning organization. Although those four articles are
just 7% of all articles in observed sample, the percentage is much higher of 0.33%. However,
Serbian practitioners are very much alike to the practitioners from other countries they do
not carry much about learning organization.

Discussion of results and conclusion

Why we are strong opponents of learning organization? As critical realists, we do believe that
there is just one reality. As management and business scholars, we do believe that the findings
from management and business researches should have the practical benefit in the real
business world. If management science is not much than a collection of fads, and if those fads,
learning organization especially, are of none benefits for the real business world, we, as
critical realists, should raise the voice against learning organization, even if we risk the ire
from our colleagues. Our goal, as critical realists, should be to understand and to explain the
phenomena of the real business world, in order to help the business community to manage
their business better. Their profit is our contribution to science.

Therefore, the fist research question that has arisen from our literature review and empirical
research should be: Can we claim that science is burdened with fashion and fad concepts,
especially the management science?

24

Fashion and fads are concepts very familiar with clothing industry or similar, but not with
science. Science should be pure and cleaned from all obstacles of our every-day life. For
general public these statements maybe sound fine, but scholars should admit the true. Science
is very much burdened with fashion and fad concepts and we cannot do much to correct this.
First of all, there is no something like meta-consensus among scholar what is true and what is
wrong. Scholars should criticize papers of other colleagues in journals and therefore metaconsensus is unreachable, which is beneficial for development of science. However, if
scholars primary goal is the chase for impact factors and rankings, necessary they would
point first on fashionable in concepts, and many of these concepts could be fads. Luckily,
academics are not the only creators of management fads, business consultants, management
gurus, business schools and management journals publishers are guilty as well. Fads are not
something that is prevalent for management science, all scientists are aware of them, but it
seems that management science is a collection of many fads. Fads are recognized today as a
waste of time and they have a negative reputation. Scholars should be aware and be more
critical, in order to reduce the number of fads and the time gap between the discovery of fads
in theory and detection of fads in practice. However, there is no such a brilliant scientist that
he or she could make a perfect evaluation of an idea ex ante. That is another reason why
fashions and fads will always be part of any science.

The second question that has arisen from our literature review and empirical research should
be: Can we undoubtedly claim that learning organization is a fad that is fading away?

The answer is not quite straightforward. Many scholars have criticized learning organization.
Many voices claim that learning organization is simplistic, poorly researched, poorly

25

conceptualized, and hopelessly unrealistic. In our papers, we divided many critics of this
postmodern concept on the critics from the postmodernism perspective and on the critics from
the critical realism perspective. Postmodernists are twofold: for ones learning organization is
a dreamlike ideal, what is unreachable, for others is a nightmare, what is not reachable and not
possible. Postmodernist researchers have found that organizations where knowledge is of
importance are far from the ideal workplace. Still is evident that better economic
performances are the result of leaders success and organizations restructuring, not because
the amount of workers knowledge. With a statement that all postmodernist theses based on
paradigm change are problematic, therefore learning organization as well, we have continued
with critical realists criticism of this concept. The concept is relying exclusively on individual
learning and individual change, but the change would be impossible if organization itself
remain the same. The learning organization concept does not cover this problem. Concept is
advising the reward systems in organization based not on financial terms rather on the level of
knowledge, what is an unknown concept in practice. Learning organization is costly and for
learning organizations, HR strategy is of a primary importance. In the real business world,
business strategy is central to HR strategy and one of the primary jobs of managers is cost
control, not the investment in concepts unrelated with business results and profit. Finally,
learning organization is navely apolitical. The fundament of business organizations in
contemporary almost unique capitalist business world is that organizations exist for interest of
capital, not for interest of workers. The primary goal of any company or corporation is to
make profit, not to make its workers happy. Therefore, we can claim that there is sufficient
evidence in literature that learning organization is a true exemplar of management fad.

However, our empirical research of Serbians and Austrians management journal papers, as
well as other presented empirical findings, do not give the evidence that learning organization

26

fad is fading away. On contrary, the production of new scholar papers about learning
organization is evident and trend is progressive. Academic interest in learning organization is
at a high level and it is still rising. Although shapes of the curves for different management
fads are neither identical nor symmetrical and vary between countries, the typical bell-shaped
curve of a management fad is not seen. We came to the same results, too. In Austria we have
noticed that pick in learning organization papers was in 1997 and in Serbia fifteen years later.
However, although the curve shapes are different, both Austrian and Serbian trend in
publishing new papers about learning organization is positive. Therefore, we have to notice
that learning organization, although declared as a fad, is not fading away.

If learning organization is a still a very popular fad among scholars, our third and final
research question has arisen almost by itself: Should scholars continue to study the learning
organization phenomenon and what is the practical benefit of it?

Rover case is a proof of low practical benefit of learning organization phenomenon. Pride and
joy of early learning organization academic supporters ended in bankruptcy. Contemporary
learning organization theory becomes a pure academic discipline. Increasing divide between
practitioners and researchers is evident. Although management research and management
practice are two autopoietic systems that communicate inside their own boundaries, we cannot
dismiss the practical significance of management research. These two systems will not
produce researches together, but output of management science should be of a practical
benefit and relevance for practitioners. Our research and other researches presented are
warning about significant decline of interest in learning organization among practicing
managers and consultants. Pragmatic case studies and experiments constitute only seven
percent of Serbian papers with the learning organization topic; other scholars have claimed

27

even less than one percent, one third of one percent only, to be precise. Our content analysis
project has pointed to another anomaly. Not just more than half of all published papers have a
positive attitude toward learning organization, but also there is no evidence of papers with a
negative attitude or critics of learning organization. We argue that scholars should not
continue to study learning organization if output of those studies is not critical or practical. If
we take into consideration that management practice began to lose interest in this concept
almost 20 years ago, soon after Senges most influential work about learning organization, we
are pledging here about less purely academic papers with no significance at all. Further
theoretical concepts about learning organization are of no use, they are pure caprice and
nothing more.

In the title of this paper, we stated that learning organization today is a fad and a caprice. A
variety of arguments that learning organization is a management fad we have provided. It is
definitely a fad, but still a very productive fad according to results from our study. We hope
that this concept will start to fading away from contemporary management literature, as many
scholars provided ample evidence of its uselessness.

We argue, without hesitation, that learning organization definitely is a fad. Is the study of this
concept still needed today, a concept which is not recognized in contemporary management
practice? Definitely, it is not needed. We argue that learning organization should be left where
it belongs, in the history with all other concepts that have proven to be the unproductive fads.
Studying the learning organization today is a pure caprice.

Although we are opponents of learning organization, this does not mean that we are enemies
of learning organization. The idea of learning is important and deserves attention. It may be of

28

a central importance in efforts to manage change and achieve better performance in


organizations. The idea of learning merits attention and such attention should overcome the
limitations of the idea of learning organization. Business organizations are complex and
complicate systems, very vulnerable to impacts of uncertain and unpredictable changes in the
turbulent environment today. Simplified recipes, such as learning organization, are not helpful
for modern organizations.

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Table 1: Number of Serbian articles covering the subject of learning organization per year
Year
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
TOTAL

Number of hits
1
1
3
3
3
6
5
6
3
4
6
8
8
57

34

Table 2: Number of Austrian articles covering the subject of learning organization per year
Year
1987
1988
1989
1990
1991
1992
1993
1994
1995
1996
1997
1998
1999
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
TOTAL

Number of hits
2
0
0
0
0
0
2
2
3
1
10
4
2
3
0
3
3
4
1
2
4
5
2
2
3
1
59

35

Table 3: The content analysis of Serbian articles covering the subject of learning organization

36

Table 4: Number of the positive articles per year in Serbian journals


Year
2000
2001
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
TOTAL

Number of POSITIVE hits


1
0
1
3
1
3
3
3
2
3
4
3
4
31

37

Figure 1: Number and trend line of learning organization hits in Serbian journals per year

38

Figure 2: Number and trend line of learning organization hits in Austrian journals per year

39

Figure 3: Number and trend line of positive learning organization hits in Serbian journals per year

40

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