یادگیری سازمانی - بازتاب از صنعت هسته ای

Organisational learning has attracted scholarly interest for some time. In parallel a recommendation has been expressed to nuclear power plants to become learning organisations. I start from systems and practices of organisational learning that can be observed within the nuclear industry. After that I give a short description of the LearnSafe project and its main results. Next, I suggest a model that may provide help to nuclear organisations in structuring their discussions of organisational learning. Finally, in the last main section of the paper I discuss implications for the nuclear industry. At the end conclusions are drawn to give suggestions for future research.

Organisational learning has attracted scholarly interest for some time (Easterby-Smith, 1997, Easterby-Smith et al., 1999 and Easterby-Smith et al., 2004). In parallel the recommendation to the nuclear industry has been that operators of nuclear power plants should become learning organisations (IAEA, 2002). Unfortunately however, this recommendation has been given without concrete guidance for how this could be achieved. The aim of this paper is to explore models that can provide help to the nuclear industry in structuring their own discussions on facilitators and hindrances of organisational learning. Organisational learning has in the management literature been seen as adaptations to changed operational environments. The deregulation of the electricity market represented such a period of change for the nuclear industry, which during the years 1995–2005 due to low prices for electricity introduced many tensions in the operation of nuclear power plants. Increased prices during recent years have caused a revival of nuclear power and the plants are now seen as very profitable. Fulfilling the requirements for safe operation is however still the major challenge to managers and organisations at the nuclear power plants. In the first major section of the paper I give a description of practices in the nuclear industry, which have an application to organisational learning. After that I describe briefly how data was collected in the LearnSafe project1 and how it was analysed. From there I develop a model that may provide help to nuclear organisations in structuring their discussions of organisational learning. Implications for the nuclear industry form the last section of the paper. At the end I draw some conclusions and give suggestions for future research in the area.

The most important part of organisational learning is to close the loop from analysis to actual and persistent improvements. This can only be achieved if identified problems are brought to practical recommendations that are possible to implement. The very general recommendation to the nuclear organisations to become learning organisations must be far more concrete to be useful. This may be achieved by making theories, models and findings from research available for managers at the plants. If that could inspire them to initiate discussions and initiatives by which organisations can increase self-reflection and organisational development it is likely that safety can be improved. Becoming a learning organisation has been marketed as a panacea for ensuring safety in nuclear power plants. This recommendation has to be qualified in several ways to be practical. One path of future research may be to validate proposed models such that they can support insights in discussions of organisational learning. More importantly however, organisational learning must be integrated into a larger research agenda on how organisational factors influence nuclear safety (Wahlström and Rollenhagen, 2007).