From Management to Adaptation: An organizational learning approach to strategic renewal of the environmental management function at The City of Calgary

This study looks at how organizational learning can be applied to enhance the relationships between human organizations and the environment. A team of environmental management professionals at The City of Calgary will work with the intern/researcher to design and test the effectiveness of an organizational learning tool. The tool will be applied to explore principles of complexity and self-organization in the context of The City of Calgary’s interactions with its environment, and will look at how organizing from the bottom up can complement The City’s existing systems-based environmental management approach. A multi-phased organizational learning exercise will be applied to identify intuitive knowledge and experience gained by individuals at the operation level of The City as they do their jobs, and to feed this knowledge forward into the institution. The study will investigate how the learning program contributes to developing the capacity of The City to self-organize and adapt to its environment.

Faculty Supervisor:

Dr. Veronika Bohac-Clarke

Student:

Faye Bres

Partner:

City of Calgary

Discipline:

Education

Sector:

Management of companies and enterprises

University:

University of Calgary