Creating Conditions for Healthy Learning Organizations:

Complex collectives and phenomena – the mind, physiological subsystems, the biological body, social and cultural configurations, governance structures, evolved species, and the larger ecosphere, for instance – manifest themselves in many diverse forms across a wide range of possible dynamical patterns. Over the past two decades, these various and varying complex collectives increasingly have been thought of, and described in, terms of certain dynamical principles and patterns, framed by the emerging contemporary field of “complexity science.” These complex collectives, conceived as “bodies” or “living” organizations, are extending the usually-taken-for-granted sense of an organizational body. As such, the notion of what a “healthy” body might look like for other complex living organizations can be raised, allowing one to consider what a healthy learning organization might look like for social collectives of various kinds. Conventional medical research suggests that physiological irregularities reflect the presence of particular pathologies or disorders. These irregularities, however, appear as highly ordered patterns determined by stable, predictable processes. Healthy physiological systems, on the other hand, show differently ordered organizational patterns and processes that reflect a number of important organizing principles for complex living forms across various scales of organization. This paper will examine the dynamics and dynamical patterns of healthy learning organizations and possibilities for “healthier” alternatives through the use of cross-scale analogies of particular dynamical patterns between different “living bodies.” By attending to a number of complexityrelated principles behind seemingly disparate living phenomena, this paper will consider the possibility for healthy learning organizations and the kinds of conditions that need to be in place for such phenomena – starting with the need to change the way individuals think about organizations and the health thereof.