Redrawing the portrait of a learning organization: Inside Knight-Ridder, Inc.

Contemporary descriptions of the “learning organization” have appeared throughout the management literature. These descriptions portray learning organizations as capable of adapting to changes in the external business environment by practicing continuous renewal of their structures and practices. Many accounts of learning organizations suggest that the path to becoming a learning organization is often wildly experimental, intensely focused around team processes, structured into nonhierarchical clusters, and operating in virtual time/space through electronic networks. For many managers, such a radical image might discourage attempts to enhance performance by becoming a learning organization. Ongoing experimentation, innovative human resource programs, radical revisions in structure, and generous doses of information technology may simply be too risky, especially where payoffs are uncertain. By offering a less radical portrait of one learning organization. Knight-Ridder, Inc., we will demonstrate that learn...