Learning Organizations

Learning organizations emphasize the continuous education and development of its members with an aim to adapt and transform. Inspired by Peter Senge's "The Fifth Discipline," learning organizations focus on five characteristics - Systems Thinking, Personal Mastery, Mental Models, Shared Vision and Team Learning - that facilitate adaptability, innovation, employee satisfaction and operational effectiveness.

Police organizations that are transitioning to a learning organization find it isn't without its challenges, such as resistance to change, resource constraints and alignment issues that can impede its transition. Yet they can still successfully establish learning environments that encourage growth, adaptability, increased effectiveness and enhanced community trust and confidence through committed leadership, employee training programs, open communication channels and emphasizing both success and failure as opportunities for growth.

Knowledge Management (KM) and Learning Organizations are complementary concepts that can maximize intellectual assets to advance rightful policing. While KM provides the systematic tools and processes for creating, capturing, and sharing knowledge; Learning Organizations provide the cultural environment which encourages continual learning and adaptability - or "why." Essentially KM gives the "how," while Learning Organizations set the cultural tone necessary for effective use of that knowledge.

Knowledge Management systems become even more effective within an adaptive culture of a Learning Organization, where members are encouraged to contribute knowledge-rich databases, intranets, and knowledge repositories - encouraging both individual as well as organizational learning. This framework can be extended to the community to increase the organization’s understanding of crime and disorder and increase community trust and confidence in the police. Integrating KM structures within an adaptive culture of such may create a synergistic effect which promotes effective, empathetic and just police organizations.

In this section we examine the concept of police agencies as learning organizations and the many ideas and strategies police leaders can use to make their agencies more responsive in the future.