Conceptual clarifications for 'organizational learning', 'learning organization' and 'a learning organization'

Organizations need to be highly adaptable and continue to improve if they want to prosper and take the lead in a fast-paced, competitive and unpredictable world. One of the major recommendations concerns ‘organizational learning’ and ‘learning organization’. However, some people do not make a distinction between the concept of ‘organizational learning’ and the concept of ‘learning organization’; between ‘learning organization’ and ‘a learning organization’. They think that these concepts are interchangeable. To clarify the fuzziness around the use of the three terms, this paper tries to distinguish these concepts from a linguistic point of view. Then, it explores the broader implications of these conceptual clarifications from three perspectives. It unfolds the major differences in the definitions of ‘organizational learning’, ‘learning organization’ and ‘a learning organization’. Moreover, it discovers that, among the definitions of ‘a learning organization’, there exist three different types. It separates, generalizes and classifies them.