In a recent study of adult vocational education in the correctional system, one of my colleagues raised the question: "Why are prisons involved in education?" We might ask a similar question of business: Why are business organizations involved in fostering learning? How we answer that question frames the ways in which we study and come to understand the process of learning in the world of work.
Although the workplace has long been regarded as a site of learning, it has only recently emerged as a location for the formal study of adult learning. One strand of this research and theory focuses on the notion of the learning organization (Senge, 1990). an idea that expresses organizational environments conducive to fostering continuous learning in the workplace. Although the idea of the learning organization has received considerable attention in recent years from a wide variety of scholars, few studies have systematically examined the processes by which learning is facilitated in such organizations. One approach, as Ellinger, Watkins, and Bostrom suggest, is to examine the role that managers in these organizations play in facilitating the development of the learning organization.
Managers have always been responsible for fostering learning among those in their direct charge. With the emergence of the idea of learning organization, however, we are only beginning to think theoretically about the role of the manager or supervisor as one who facilitates organizational learning, both individually and collectively. The study by Ellinger and her coauthors takes an important step in this regard. Guided by an explicit conceptual framework, they used a critical incident technique to provide a descriptive account of how twelve managers, who had been identified as facilitators of learning in learning organizations, view their role. The specific purposes of this study focused on the managers' beliefs about their role, triggers to learning episodes, behaviors used to facilitate learning, and outcomes of learning episodes.
Despite the encouraging step represented by Ellinger, Watkins, and Bostrom's study, however, it presents a problematic picture of how organizational learning