Strategic downsizing and learning organisations

The quality of individual and collective learning has been held to be a key determinant of organisational success. It has been strongly advocated that the "continuously learning organisation" is perhaps the greatest business asset in an organisation. Organisations are becoming more systematic in identifying measures to overcome losses caused by downsizing by proactively developing learning systems to capture, record and manage the knowledge of operational employees and engineering/technical staff. This paper discusses the nature of the planned "brain-drain" phenomenon, the concept of the learning organisation, and the conceptual relationship between the two, and by analysing an empirical case study demonstrating that restructuring and organisational learning are not necessarily mutually exclusive concepts.