Handbook of Organizational Learning and Knowledge Management, Second Edition

Analyzing Learning Portfolios

When an organization’s learning portfolio is examined in its entirety, several questions and concerns come to mind. First, what’s in the portfolio now? Answering this question requires having an inventory of the learning practices and profiles that exist throughout the organization or firm. This inventory of data about learning provides the basic building block for analysis. At FIAT Auto, knowledge acquisition, adaptation, correction, and communities-of-practice are all supported and used.

A second concern pertains to the relatedness of the items in the inventory. To what extent are the learning practices and styles complementary, in conflict, or redundant? We should expect, for example, that what gets learned at FIAT Auto through its internal methods of self-correction and communities-of-practice would complement the more externally focused activities of acquisition and adaptation. In another work context, nuclear power plants, we would expect to see incremental learning taking place among operations plant staff which would complement the learning of a research and development unit engaged in transformative learning. A transformative or double-loop style, which may lead to unanticipated consequences, would be inappropriate in an environment like nuclear power operations where controls are needed to avoid disastrous outcomes.

A third concern about learning portfolios is the extent to which current practices or styles align with or match learning needs ...