Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning for Development: KM4Dev Workshop Background Paper

Summary:

Have you ever wondered:

• What are the origins of knowledge and learning focused approaches to change in development?
  

• Are these approaches (KM and OL) diverging or converging?

• What will the third generation of KM/OL approaches look like?

The background paper for the Brighton KM4Dev Workshop explores issues that will be at the heart of our discussions in July. Written for the workshop by Kath Pasteur, Jethro Pettit and Boudy van Schagen of IDS, "Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning for Development" offers an accessible review of experience and literature.

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  KM4Dev_2006_Background_Paper.pdf

Grupo Chorlaví – Building a Social Learning Network 1998-2005

Summary:

This document consists of the systematization of the experiences of the CG from its start in 1998 up to the year 2005. The Chorlaví Group (CG) is an initiative aimed at supporting the social learning process focussing on institutional and production transformation in rural, poor and traditionally marginalized areas in Latin America and the Caribbean. The systematisation provides the framework for critically analyzing the process that the CG has undergone since its creation. It is meant to document the CG’s development process and identify lessons that might be interesting and useful for other learning networks.

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  System. Chorlavi Group Final.pdf

Knowledge Sharing, Communities of Practice, and Organizational Change at the World Bank Group

Summary:

This article by Lesley Shneier, Sr Knowledge Specialist at the World Bank, chronicles the Knowledge Management initiative from its early days through 2005. Lesley was a member of the original 5-person KM team that introduced knowledge sharing to the World Bank and grew it into a world-class institution-wide program.

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Toward An Interdisciplinary Organizational Learning Framework

Summary:

Organizational learning theory is multidisciplinary with no current consensus regarding a model for organizational learning theory. This paper searches for points of agreement regarding organizational learning among organizational theorists, then gives special attention to the economic perspective of organizations and learning. Much of the neoclassical theory of the firm, a set of human resource holders maximizing profit under a known production function, is under question. Organizational theorists now generally embrace the relevant transaction cost and agency perspectives. Harvey Leibenstein, Harvard economist, views the firm in terms of internal efficiency, embraces Argyris & Schön’s perspective of organizational learning as a process of error handling, sees the individual actor’s motivation to admit, detect and correct error as a special case of the productivity problem, and analyzes it from a game theoretic, agency like manner. Leibenstein’s perspective respects much of the noted concordance regarding organizational learning.

http://www.tonypolito.com/wri_orgl.doc

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Knowledge Management and Organisational Learning: An International Development Perspective

Summary:

An Annotated Bibliography by Ingie Hovland, Overseas Development Institute, London, UK (August 2003).

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