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Organizational consultants employ scientific methodologies to collect data and generate an organizational diagnosis. Between‐method triangulation is a means of leveraging the strengths of several methods while mitigating weaknesses. This article briefly reviews common scientific data collection methodologies and provides an illustration of between‐method triangulation in organizational diagnosis. Interpretations of organizational social reality were based on the triangulation of data from interviews, systematic observation, observer‐as‐participant observation, and archival data. Between‐method triangulation resulted in a more complete assessment of organizational problems than any lone method.

This article presents a psychoanalytically informed diagnosis of top management team (TMT) dysfunction during TMT training in a public sector organization. Outdoor management development exercises and the psychodynamics of family groups increased the psychological depth of a training intervention, eliciting dysfunctional behavior and facilitating diagnosis based on Bion’s theory of groups. Dysfunctional basic assumption behavior prohibited the group from effectively accomplishing the task of the work group. Implications for trainers and consultants are discussed.

The rapid technological changes experienced throughout industry in the 1970s and '80s have radically altered the nature and experience of work for many people in both public and private sector employment. Increased production capacity and quality have been accompanied by changes in the way work is organised, and in the strategies adopted by both management and unions to tackle the new conditions with which they are faced.

The original concepts and methodology for this study were invented and developed in January, 1973, with the assistance and guidance of D Stuart Conger, Vernon Mullen, Glen Tippett and James Williams.

This article focuses on the development and current situation of services for people with learning disabilities in England. Deinstitutionalisation started in the 1960s, when a series of scandals in hospitals were brought to public attention. In response, the 1971 government White Paper Better Services for the Mentally Handicapped was published, and the first community‐based services were introduced. Further policy papers attempted to modernise social services in the following period. The 2001 White paper Valuing People is the most recent policy framework specific to people with intellectual disabilities. It identifies rights, independence, choice and inclusion as the four leading principles for services and support, and will be of primary importance for future development. However, at present implementation is in the very early stages. Not least, the intense implementation of market mechanisms by the Thatcher Government in the 1980s and 1990s has led to a situation that is hard to grasp, the organisation of care and support varying from authority to authority.

The purpose of this paper is to introduce the Special Issue; to provide a practitioner's retrospective views of the learning organization concept; and to comment on the status of The Learning Organization journal.

The approach adopted involves recounting a personal history of a practitioner's experiences with the concept, and an observation on the health of The Learning Organization journal.

The paper finds that, although the learning organization concept is deemed narrow and out of date, it is judged to have had significant positive influence on organizational thinking. The Learning Organization is shown to be a healthy and popular journal.

The paper is included in a Special Issue that is part of the series commissioned by the journal on organization‐related topics of interest to its readers. Its originality stems from its examination of the learning organization concept through a particular practitioner's lens, provoking reflection amongst others engaged in both the delivery and the consumption of practice and study.