The learning organisation 2.0? A participative and exploratory case study on corporate blogging

Abstract: The phenomenons called blogging and learning organisations are both contemporary and research is inconclusive (e.g. Easterby-Smith et al., 2000 and Wattal et al., 2009). This study aims to merge the two by means of a participative and exploratory case study on corporate blogging. By use of qualitative interviews and a data analysis focusing on concentrated meanings and thematic categorisation, the purpose is to explore how corporate blogging could be related to developing learning organisations – for which the scientific base mainly consists of Senge's (1990) five disciplines regarding learning organisation; personal mastery, mental models, shared vision, team learning, and systems thinking; and various prior research on blogging (e.g. Gilbert et al., 2009 and Adamic & Glance, 2004). This study aims towards deepening the understanding of the above relationship and to generate new ideas for future research. The case study takes place at a department working with electronic communication, part of a global company with over 20 000 employees, that use an internal pilot blog for a period of one month. There are 21 full-time employed persons and about five consultants working in this specific department. Findings reveal that some aspects of creating learning organisations seem to have different kinds of relations to corporate blogging – taking either the role of an enabling process for blogs or for the development of a learning organisation – following which a general framework is used to depict how these different aspects may operate and suggestions on future research are presented.