Theory Building in Applied Disciplines

9Case Example: Marsick and Watkins’s Learning Organization Culture Theory

WHILE THE LEARNING ORGANIZATION is a concept that came to the forefront with the publication of The Fifth Discipline (Senge, 1990), the first mention of the term learning organization was in 1979 (Huczynski & Boddy, 1979). Numerous other authors contributed to the literature in this area in the 1990s and developed the concept further (Coopey, 1995; Garvin, 1993; Kim, 1993; Nevis, Dibella, & Gould, 1998; Tsang, 1997; Watkins & Marsick, 1993). This chapter looks at the concept of the learning organization from a theory-building perspective. Only one contribution to the learning organization literature has framed its approach in terms of theory building—Watkins and Marisck’s ...