LIVE TO LEARN ANOTHER DAY

Abstract: Studies have shown that there are several advantages to armed forces in having a well-developed learning organization. Scholars mainly argue two things on the subject, firstly, the military organization with the stronger organizational learning capability will win contemporary wars and conflicts. Secondly, the academic interest on the subject have been small and thus studies on military learning organizations are lacking in numbers.   The organizational learning capability of the Swedish naval forces might be built in peacetime, but by testing theories on organizational learning in combat we might get a chance to see how it could or could not hold up in a wartime setting. With a theory consuming research design the purpose of this study is to use Frank Hoffman and Meir Finkel’s theoretical frameworks to investigate the Swedish naval forces more closely.   The result of the analysis shows that the Swedish naval forces have a strong ability to engage lower level learning which leads to adaptation. The analysis also shows that the ability to engage higher level learning in combat situations are lacking. Adaptation without an ability for organizational learning have shown to almost always lead to organizational forgetting, the price of which historically have shown to be dire both economically and in human lives.