The concepts of organizational learning and the learning organisation emerged in the second half of the 20th century to address the unassumed challenges faced by organizations in the context of rapid globalization. While there are many studies that discuss the usefulness of these concepts for private companies, there are not many that address their usefulness for government and public organizations. This paper focuses on one such government/public agency, a government international development agency, and examines the usefulness of the concepts of organizational learning and the learning organization for this agency through a literature review. Organizational learning and learning organizations say that organizations can respond to turbulent environments by taking risks, practicing trial and error, and practicing double-loop learning. However, the usefulness of these concepts is limited because government international development agencies are situated in a unique social and institutional environment with a rigidly defined scope of work, strict accountability, strong political and bureaucratic pressures, ambiguous organizational goals, and the culture and values of their overseas offices in non-Western countries.
This paper is part of the JICA Sadako Ogata Institute for Peace and Development Research’s “Study on the Response to Overlapping Institutional Environments by Overseas Offices of Bilateral Development Cooperation Agencies,” which was published in April 2022 in the academic journal, International Journal of Public Sector Performance Management” in April 2022.
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