My name is Ruediger Reinhardt, I am working as an assistant professor at
the Technical University of Chemnitz since beginning of June.
My own OL-experience is as follows: In 1993 I have completed my PhD-
thesis about how to model a learning organization (well, this was the
epistemological part of the thesis - the model is based on radical
constructivsm) - and how to build learning organizations.
The last 2.5 years I have been working with ODI Germany as a consultant in
the context of TQM implementation - and I also have had the opportunity to
design some "beyond TQM change management concepts", the implementation of
which seem to be somewhat difficult in Germany.
In my actual job I am involved in a project, in which we (my boss, Prof.
Pawlowsky and our cooperation partner, Prof. Forslin) want to find out
a) what kind of OL-tools resp. tools for knowledge management are used in
companies/organizations (and if they are really different to TQM- tools
etc. - from a manager's point of view)
b) why and how they have been introduced
c) what kind of experiences have been made with those tools - esp. if the
intended aims have been achieved etc.
The aim of this research project is to find out whether the OL discussions
still have a somehow normative character (e.g. "it is a good idea since in
a LO there can be humanistic values realized more adequately") - or if
there can be shown empirical evidence of systematic
planning/implementation of OL-tools also with regard to the intende
results.
Concretely this means that we want to identify managers who want to share
with us their expierences in an interview.
Hence, this leads to two central questions of this (well, this
introduction is not that brief as intended) mail:
1. Are there any managers/consultants who like to share with us their OL-
expierences?
2. And - since the no. of published OL-literature increased dramatically
during the last few years: Does anybody know systematic research about OL
tools which goes beyond the description of case studies?
We would be very happy if we would get some answers about these questions.
Thank you in advance
Ruediger
--Ruediger Reinhardt <Ruediger.Reinhardt@Wirtschaft.TU-Chemnitz.DE>
Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>