Building a Supportive Culture for Sustained Organizational Learning in Public Sectors Including Project Learning

Abstract

The purpose of this chapter is to provide an approach to build a supportive organizational culture for sustained organizational learning in public sectors and means of extending such learning culture to project level. Changing culture is not an easy task. It involves an in-depth understanding of culture and its relationship with organizational learning. First, this chapter provides a brief introduction to organizational learning, organizational culture and their relationship. Then, characteristics and attributes of a learning culture are identified. Such discussion is then extended to the project culture and the learning culture at project level. Next, using case study research findings of a public sector construction organisation operating in Sri Lanka, an approach is presented in this chapter on how to identify the present culture of the organisation and change it to a learning culture. Finally, possibility of extending such learning culture to project level is discussed at Sri Lankan context.