A Review of Policy Exercise Interactive Learning Environments

Abstract

The most successful corporations of the next decade will be those that include learning as a key element within the organization. This is because the problem of ambiguity is conspicuous and change has become both pervasive and persistent. The rate at which individuals and organizations learn may be the only sustainable competitive advantage. The challenge, then, is to discover new management tools and methods to accelerate organizational learning. In this article, the authors clarify the theoretical meaning of the learning organization using their model of double-loop learning and, based on several case studies, claim that policy exercise, a managerial support system using gaming/simulation, can prove to be a powerful methodology in creating a learning organization. Policy exercise can provide interactive learning environments based on systems thinking, which is essential for organizational double-loop learning. The paucity of empirical study on double-loop learning shows among other factors the difficulty in observing and analyzing change in interpretative frameworks. Because it is a cognitive process, such change can hardly be observed from the outside. In the cases reported in this article, the authors had the opportunity to get involved in the process of the change within the organization.