The Learning Organisation Meme: Emergence of a Management Replicator (or Parrots, Patterns and Performance)

Organisations and organisms are self-maintaining systems which spontaneously seek to preserve an evolved order. Both are enabled by replicators: memes or genes respectively. Whereas genes are the units of transmission of our biological inheritance memes are the units of transmission of our cultural inheritance. They cause organisations to settle into patterns, routines and habits of behaviour: manifestations of a particular memetic inheritance. These patterns enable the organisation but simultaneously limit its performance. Both systems share the evolutionary dynamic of adaptive radiation followed by stabilisation. Memetic examples include new markets, new technologies and new business ideas. Business theories and their derivative, managerial fads, are a class of memes. This paper illustrates the increasing returns dynamic in the evolution of management recipes by contrasting Business Process Re-engineering and the Learning Organisation. It ends with a plea for the Learning Organisations to retain memetic diversity rather than be trapped in sterile competitions to define an LO. The power of the Learning Organisation movement may, paradoxically, be that we are not stuck with what it is.