What is the relationship between business process improvement and organizational learning?
Business process improvement seems to be at the core of what is often referred to as the organization learning movement. MIT professor and author of the seminal book The Fifth Discipline Peter Senge is believed by many to be the father of the learning organizations movement. Nevertheless, Senges work builds largely on ideas developed a decade earlier by University of Lancaster professor Peter Checkland, in the general field of system dynamics, and by Harvard professor Chris Argyris. One particularly important contribution by Argyris has been the concept of double-loop learning, which he contrasts with that of single-loop learning. Argyris seems to often adopt a cybernetic perspective (i.e., a control-centered perspective) in his interpretation of learning, hence his choice of explaining the concepts of single and double-loop learning by often using analogies with control devices – e.g., a thermostat-activated heater. A device that senses a decrease in the temperature of a room and chan
