| Some public administration scholars (Moynihan & Ingraham, 2004; Moynihan & Landuyt, 2009; Simon, 1991) consider organizational learning an emerging field, although it has been prevalent for over three decades in business administration. Government, however, tends to approach learning from the perspective of policy learning in the context of policy failure and policy implementation. Missing from this analysis is how public organizations learn, or in exploring the public-sector learning process, focusing on the agency implementing the public policy or program in an ethical manner. This research fills a gap in public administration literature by identifying relevant constructs of public-sector organizational learning that can be used to build theories and by explaining practical implications using a long-term, in-depth case study. The present approach responds to Denhardt’s (2011) charge for theory-building guided by “praxis,” requiring ongoing critical reflection on the connections between theory and practice. Practically, research design studies how one public organization learned over the short- and long-term. Normatively, this study applies organizational learning concepts to that learning process in exploring theory-building in the public sector. The working definition of organizational learning is grounded in the Fiol and Lyles (1985) conception of both changing rules, or short-term learning, and changing norms, or long-term learning. The present framework for understanding the process emphasizes learning in the context of public sector organizational culture, public-sector politics, and public performance. Organizational learning is distinguished from organizational change, though closely linked in the scholarship. The process-centric nature of learning requires, as Denhardt (2011) and Fiol and Lyles (1985) aptly note, reflection on the interface between behavioral and cognitive development. Although not an exhaustive list, organizational culture, public-sector politics, and public performance apply to organizational learning in the literature and provide the mechanism to overcome private-sector bias in research. Scholarship shows that these factors manifest differently in public organizations. To be sure, learning in public and private organizations is not a distinct process, but there is merit to this approach. For example, Simon’s (1997) satisfying rule-following Homo bureaucraticus versus profit-maximizing Homo œconomicus in the decision-making process and Allison’s (1979) comparison of the functions of public and private managers conclude that the sectors are similar in all unimportant respects. Perry and Rainey (1988) examine the research on public-private distinctions, arguing that qualitative, longitudinal research designs like this study “ha[ve] led to increasing recognition of the importance of issues such as this” (۱۹۸۸, p. 198). |
