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This paper aims to identify the ethical foundations and principles underpinning the learning organization (LO) concept.

By interviewing one thought leader in the field, Professor Robin Snell, this paper traces how his early days in academia shaped the development of an ethics-driven research agenda on LO.

An ethical perspective advocates the importance of establishing a covenant or constitutional foundation of rights that would enable and empower organizational members at all levels to enact the processes of LOs, thus signifying the importance of employee development and a more sustainable approach for developing LO.

A personal reflection of Robin Snell on his own academic career development and research trajectory offers some insights into how an ethical perspective of LO evolved and flourished as a field of study.

The purpose of this paper is to identify attributes and practices that are salient for effectiveness in middle- and senior-level service leadership positions.

Critical incident interviews were conducted with 17 key informants, who were service leaders in various service sectors in Hong Kong, and with ten stakeholders.

Grounded theory analysis generated a 7 Cs model with seven categories of service leadership attributes and practices: character, choreography, care, creativity, charisma, collaborating and competence self-improvement, and 24 constituent concepts. There was concordance between pairs of key informants and stakeholders.

Further research could investigate the impact on frontline service leaders’ performance if one or more of the 7 Cs are perceived to be absent or deficient among leaders at more senior levels, and whether there are acceptable substitutes for particular Cs.

The 7 Cs model identifies service leadership attributes and practices across diverse sectors.

The 7 Cs model provides a map for orienting the developmental preparation of individuals, who are aspiring to become middle- and senior-level leaders in economies that have become highly dependent on service.

The moral ethos profiles (MEPs) of six Hong Kong companies were investigated via questionnaires and in‐depth qualitative interviews and analyzed according to the Kohlberg stages model. In five of the companies, the MEPs obtained via interviews were consistent with those obtained from the questionnaires. Interviews and questionnaires were also used to investigate how managers in these companies tackled ethical dilemmas (both real work‐based ones of their own and hypothetical ones). In the company with the consistently least virtuous MEP, managers used more lower‐stage ethical reasoning to tackle ethical dilemmas. There was, however, no difference between managers in companies with the most virtuous and moderately virtuous MEPs in terms of the stage‐level of ethical reasoning they used to tackle ethical dilemmas. The study helped to refine a moral ethos questionnaire.

The choices facing a management developer in using open and distance learning are described. The three identifiable types of programme are materials based for solo learners, learning‐group based for two or more learners, and materials and learning‐group based, depending on both materials and learner interaction. The options are explored, and guidance given on how to evaluate them for the organisation's particular needs.

We identify lessons from a project sponsored by a large charitable trust, which sought to build capability for end-of-life (EOL) care in Hong Kong through interdisciplinary and multi-agency collaboration.

An in-depth case study drawing on 21 in-depth interviews with diverse stakeholders was conducted. Lyman et al.’s (2018) model of organisational learning (OL) in healthcare settings was applied to analyse the relative emphasis on particular contextual factors and mechanisms, and to identify outcomes perceived to have been achieved.

Infrastructure such as materials for assessment and education received the most emphasis among the contextual factors and deliberate learning such as training sessions received the greatest attention among the mechanisms. While perceptions indicated that desired outcomes were being achieved in terms of social impact, there were relatively few mentions of “soft” factors such as enhanced motivation, leadership or OL skills among staff.

This study extends the literature on how to create valuable social impact through OL. While prior studies have examined social impact in terms of solutions for social and environmental problems, ours is one of the few that examines how improvements are made to organisations’ capability to deliver such impacts in the context of healthcare.

Argues that the ways in which managers learn experientially are unnecessarily painful and will remain so without significant change in the shape and patterning of organizations and the wider socioeconomic infrastructure. First identifies distinct sets of experiential learning patterns from interviews with managers and administrators in three organizations. Then discusses the barriers preventing the widespread adoption of these patterns in day‐to‐day managerial practice.

Argues that the ways in which managers learn experientially are unnecessarily painful and will remain so without significant change in the shape and patterning of organizations and the wider socioeconomic infrastructure. First identifies distinct sets of experiential learning patterns from interviews with managers and administrators in three organizations. Then discusses the barriers preventing the widespread adoption of these patterns in day‐to‐day managerial practice.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate Peter Senge’s ideas from the perspective of the spiritual ideal of harmony/He (和).

Following a literature review of the conceptualization of Senge’s fifth discipline and harmony, an appreciative case study of Alibaba is adopted to demonstrate the role of harmony in guiding the transformative application of the five disciplines of the learning organization.

In developing as a learning organization, Alibaba is portrayed as having embraced three levels of harmony: person-within-oneself, person-to-others and person-to-nature harmony. The authors identify three equivalencies between Senge’s disciplines and the traditional Chinese ideal of harmony. First, personal mastery and metal models correspond to developing person-within-oneself harmony. Second, team learning and shared vision entail developing person-to-others harmony. Third, systems thinking aligns with person-to-nature harmony.

The case study demonstrates various approaches that can be used to foster the development of person-within-oneself, person-to-others and person-to-nature harmony within an aspiring learning organization.

This paper shows how core values of Confucianism, Taoism and Buddhism, distilled into the Chinese ideal of harmony, can encourage the cultivation of learning organizations.

Identifies four separate and distinct patterns through which managerial and micropolitical styles may be acquired by means of modelling. Each of these patterns is illustrated by examples drawn from research in two British‐based organizations, which invited managers to describe how they had learned and developed in the workplace. Discusses the plausibility of each pattern along with its potential advantages and disadvantages. Concludes by pointing out that the choice and use of particular patterns of modelling is imbued with an ethical stance, and that there is a need for greater clarity about what is entailed in learning through modelling.

Recent research from the USA has painted, for the humanistically inclined, a bleak picture of the ethical predicaments of business executives. Jackall (1988) conducted 143 interviews with managers in three organisations. He explored, essentially, the following question: